“Who hath a book

Hath friends at hand . . .” quoth Sherry about a mysterious league of 600.

“Boldly they rode and well,

Into the jaws of Death,

Into the mouth of Hell

Rode the six hundred. . . .

When can their glory fade?”

When penitential grief has wept

O’er some foul dark spot,

One only stream, a stream of blood,

Can wash away the blot.

Lift up Thy bleeding hand, O Lord,

Unseal that cleansing tide;

We have no shelter from our sin

But in Thy wounded side.

(a modern hymn by Cecil Alexander)

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.

For want of a shoe the horse was lost.

For want of a horse the rider was lost.

For want of a rider the battle was lost.

For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.

And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

According to Dana Gioia, poet Tony Connor’s “work is both original and entertaining …. Connor does not simply report events, he vividly recreates them, shaping each scene with the skill and care of a novelist …. his work remains clear-headed, intelligent and immensely readable.”

Take for example this poem of heros and apathy, “Aftermath”:

Slumped in a prickly armchair

on a humid summer night,

I listened dully to dogs

barking with brainless pleasure

far away and in this street

under the Victory flags.

The bronze eagles with spread wings,

flightless on walls and porches,

reflected the light from stars,

as my slow imaginings

moved between foreign corpses

and these Stars and Stripes of ours.

Read on

Author Marilynne Robinson writes about a new poetry anthology called, American Religious Poems, edited by Harold Bloom and Jesse Zuba:

Whitman’s nation was no nation in terms of the time in which he wrote. It had then, as it has now, no bond of blood, soil, or tongue to create in it the organic unity the theorists of nineteenth-century nationalism considered essential components of a legitimate national culture. Whitman’s genius was to reject all that, to see a real America and to create a visionary America based squarely and exuberantly on ever-changing patterns of life and newer streams of population. Dickinson’s poetry quietly presses every question religious belief might seem, to the hostile or the anxious, to preclude. If these are the two greatest American poets, as Harold Bloom and I and legions of other critics and writers and readers believe, then the classic achievement of our literature is an openness, intellectual and spiritual, that is utterly unlike the phenomenon of an “American religion” promoted by certain politicians and religionists and derided by Professor Bloom and many others. If American religion is narrow and unlikable, it is difficult to account for a book like this one, in which so many fine poets are represented.

Though doubt, alienation, and even parody are elements in some of these poems, the collection is quite appropriately aware that these all have reference to the field of thought and meaning ordinarily called religious. Any reader of Ecclesiastes or the Book of Job is aware that the canon of scripture has room for thought that can disrupt conventional assumptions about the nature of belief, whether these assumptions are held by the religious or by their critics. Indeed, religion is by nature restless with itself, impatient within the constraints of its own expression.

Thanks to Critical Mass.

On these emerging blogs, as well as on e-mail lists and forums, I’d finally found what I’d been looking for working in publishing, hanging around at readings, and going to grad school: other poets. Not famous ones, elder ones, teaching ones, laureate ones, or the ones with books from Knopf stocked at Barnes & Noble. The other ones. Ones like me.

(via Books, Inq.)

Michael Drout has recorded a CD of his reading Beowulf in Old English. If you’d like a sample, you can listen to MP3s of other Anglo-Saxon poetry on his Anglo-Saxon Aloud site. A remarkable sound, so Tolkienesque it seems, but then maybe Tolkien’s Welsh influences would pull the sound of his languages in a different direction for those able to hear it.

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,

And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,

I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,

Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,

And thought of him I love.

In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash’d palings,

Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,

With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love,

With every leaf a miracle — and from this bush in the dooryard,

With delicate-color’d blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,

A sprig with its flower I break.

That’s from the poem “When Lilacs Last In the Dooryard Bloom’d,” by Walt Whitman. I thought of it tonight during my evening walk, a little late, which is typical for me. The lilacs are disappearing now. Too bad. Lilacs have always meant a lot to me. We had some big lilac bushes in the front yard on the farm where I grew up (I understand my Uncle Orvis, who reads this blog, planted them originally). They looked pretty, and they smelled good, and they weren’t any trouble to take care of. And if you pulled the little flower out of its stem (my brothers and I learned) and sucked on its narrow base, there was a tiny little drop of sweetness you could taste.

It also brings memories of a reading of Whitman by the actor Alexander Scourby (famous for his Bible recordings) which I heard in college. I was working as a library assistant, and the librarian was in charge of booking cultural events for the school. When I heard that Scourby was coming I went ape (well, actually I allowed some emotion to cross my face. Pretty excessive for me) because I’d grown up listening to a record my folks had bought for educational purposes, featuring Scourby’s voice reading poetry. It was from Scourby I learned “Gunga Din.”

Shortly before the date of the event, the librarian asked me if I’d like to be one of the students having dinner with Scourby before the reading. Naturally I said, yes, please.

But as the day approached, the librarian said no more about it.

A reasonable person would have asked a question. I’m not a reasonable person, of course. In the environment where I grew up, asking about something a second time was a guaranteed way to make sure you’d be turned down. Just to teach you not to bother people.

So I said nothing, and waited for information to be given. None came. I never got the chance to meet Scourby, and never mentioned it to the librarian again. The reading was wonderful, and I remember that Scourby wore the most beautiful gray suit I’d ever seen.

The librarian did give me a publicity photo of the man, which I think I still have somewhere. And I remember each spring, when I smell the lilacs.

I am a poor wayfaring stranger,

While traveling through this world of woe.

Yet there’s no sickness, toil nor danger

In that bright world to which I go.

I’m going there to see my Father;

I’m going there no more to roam.

I’m only going over Jordan,

I’m only going over home.

I know dark clouds will gather round me;

I know my way is rough and steep.

But golden fields lie out before me

Where God’s redeemed shall ever sleep.

I’m going there to see my mother,

She said she’d meet me when I come.

I’m only going over Jordan,

I’m only going over home.

I’ll soon be free from every trial,

My body sleep in the churchyard;

I’ll drop the cross of self denial

And enter on my great reward.

I’m going there to see my Savior,

To sing His praise forevermore.

I’m only going over Jordan,

I’m only going over home.

Folk spir­it­u­al by Ri­chard W. Ad­ams

“The interrogator referred to the poem as a ‘document’ and to its writing as a terrorist ‘act.'” Read about the poem which became a sixteen-line death sentence.