Category Archives: Poetry

Blogs, Socials, Poetry, Publishing

No One Said Liberty Would Be Easy

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The Critic: “Most of all Johnson wrote to drive away demons.”

Religious Liberty: A new book by Norte Dame political scientist Vincent Phillip Muñoz “provides one of the best treatments we have on the meaning of the religion clauses” focusing on the debates held in each state “about establishments and religious freedom. . . . These debates, and the views of a spectrum of Founders, allow Muñoz to craft a convincing argument. He contends that the founding generation’s concept of religious liberty was rooted, first and foremost, in natural law and inalienable natural rights.”

Science Fiction: Disney now has creative input into the BBC’s Doctor Who series, boasting it with financial support. I loved the classic series growing up. I watched every episode broadcast on PBS from Jon Pertwee’s run (#3), Tom Baker’s (#4 and still the best ever), Peter Davidson’s (#5), and Colin Baker’s (#6). I may have watched all the episodes with Sylvester McCoy, but the show lost its appeal for me during that time. Recently, I watched the new season 5 and part of 6 with Matt Smith, who is great as a title character, but over half of the stories were so much nonsense, I lost interest again.

Book Banning: At least 520 Penguin Random House staff and connections are arguing that Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s book contract be cancelled. They don’t oppose free speech, they write. They aren’t calling for censorship. “Rather, this is a case where a corporation has privately funded the destruction of human rights with obscene profits.”

Photo: Tivoli Theater, Stephenson, Michigan. 1980. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Blogs, Socials, Bookselling, Fiction, Poetry, Reading

Old Ogden Nash Hardcovers, Praising e-Readers, and Brain-Changing Reading

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For some years, I’ve had a water damaged copy of Ogden Nash’s Good Intentions. Here’s a look at a good copy of it; this one has the slip cover too (I hadn’t seen it before).

Yesterday, I found similar red, hardback copies of Many Long Years Ago, a collection of mostly previously published verse from 1931-1945, and The Private Dining Room, new verse published in 1953. I refrained from replacing Good Intentions or buying another volume they had, so you know what that says about me. We don’t need to say it out loud. I also could have purchased one of a couple more recently published anthologies. This is one of them. But, if I do anything, I’d like a set of the five red hardcovers.

Here are a few lines from Many Long Years Ago.

“Who wishes his self-esteem to thrive
Should belong to a girl of almost five.”

“We’ll remind each other it’s smart to be thrifty
And buy our clothes for something-fifty.”

“If turnips were watches they’d make as good eating as turnips.”

Reading: In praise of e-readers and the joy of winning an argument with a print-only reader who has so many books that he loses the ones he has.

How would Jesus advertise? I have a hard time believing Jesus would encourage us to spend millions on advertising his character traits. How many vice is being funded with a Super Bowl ad? But I also have a hard time throwing stones at this.

Does reading change the brain? “When it comes to a cultural trace in the form of literature, we would really like to know whether there is some sort of permanent alteration to the structure of the brain.” They chose Robert Harris’s Pompeii to see if they could detect a small brain change.

Banned Books: Anthony Sacramone has a book challenge for public schools. “Try and get all these at one go onto a public school curriculum (NYC, LA, SF) and see how that goes. I’d love to be proven wrong.”

Mystery: John Wilson reviews another Cameron Winter story, A Strange Habit of Mind, by Andrew Klavan, to be released in a few days.

Music, Poetry

‘Mountain Greenery’

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I have nothing to review today. That leaves me with no alternative to writing about stuff I’ve been thinking about – and that, as you know, can get weird.

Tonight’s subject, to take an example at random, is “broken rhyme.” You can find several examples of broken rhyme in the song, “Mountain Greenery,” by Rodgers and Hart, embedded above (the song was debuted on Broadway by the actor Sterling Holloway, who would live long enough to be the original voice of Winnie the Pooh in the Disney cartoons). A meme is going around Basefook where somebody asks to quote the greatest line from any song, ever. I haven’t responded to it yet, but when I do it’ll be:

We could get no keener re- 
ception in a beanery 
Bless our mountain greenery home!

That, my friends, is broken rhyme. At first I thought it was “enjambment,” and I prepared a long disquisition on that subject for this post, but then I found out enjambment is something else, so I cut that part. All in all, probably for the best.

Lorenz Hart was known for using broken rhyme in his songs. Cole Porter employs it in his song, “I Get a Kick Out of You,” where you have the lines (in the original, unexpurgated version):

Some get a kick from cocaine
I'm sure that if
I took even one sniff
That would bore me terrif-
Ically, too
Yet, I get a kick out of you

I’ve always been fascinated by broken rhyme. Love those word tricks in verse. It’s one of the reasons contemporary popular music leaves me cold. Today’s lyrics are generally simplistic, intended to be yelled. That’s why I like the old songs. There’s a station in St. Cloud, Minnesota (Uptown 1010, Ring-a-Ding Radio) that I make a point of listening to, every time I drive north on I-94. All oldies, with an emphasis on Sinatra and the crooners. Songs with lyrics worth paying attention to.

I could move on to the subject of Contemporary Christian Worship Music, but I think you can guess my opinion on that.

Authors, Blogs, Socials, Poetry, Religion, The Press

Don’t Call It a Culture War. Call It Being Salt.

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Last week, I wrote about an English teacher encouraging her students to read challenged books. Yesterday, World’s Doubletake podcast released a story on diversity libraries in schools and parents and teachers pushing back against school boards who advocate immoral reading. They mention a book “about a 17-year-old alcoholic girl in a sexual relationship with a 38-year-old man. . . . Other books describe teenagers in homosexual activity with adults. Others depict incest.

“Some parents, teachers, three school board members, and a librarian defended the material at that 2020 board meeting. They said young kids should be able to see themselves ‘reflected’ in the books. They said it was important to read about pedophilia because it was, quote, ‘culturally enriching.'”

This may be what school-choice supporters need to fuel their fire.

However, some have reacted negatively to this and any aspect that smells of a culture war. They would much rather Christians keep to themselves: “For all the voices calling our attention and energy to school-board politics right now, discipling our kids in a holistic and faithful way is a more constant, difficult, and worthwhile task.” Influencing your school board or, I guess, being a voice in your community is not within the scope of discipling your children. Maybe if we thought it as being the salt of the earth?

The World and Everything in It, another excellent podcast, has a segment reacting to the above article.

Discipline: “Religious discipline confounds the modern sensibility because it upends our ideas about the value of discipline and sacrifice. To a person steeped in modern heroics, religious discipline looks solely like abstention, with none of the benefits of lifestyle discipline. It is giving up pleasurable things just to make your life less enjoyable; it is overcoming, ignoring, or dismissing your own desires solely from masochism, or because of communal expectations, which is the worst possible sin these days, to do something because someone or some group expects you to.”

Faith: “O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you. Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called ‘knowledge,’ for by professing it some have swerved from the faith.” (1 Tim. 6:20 ESV)

Poetry: A cottage in which John Milton resided for a short spell survives and is open to the public for half a year. A couple weeks ago, a group met there to read Paradise Lost.

Used Bookstores: Carl Lavigne writes about his time at The Dawn Treader Book Shop in Ann Arbor, MI. “Is there a German word for being surrounded by stacks of once-feted, now forgotten novels piled in a deeply haunted basement wondering, ‘What if this is where my book ends up?’

“A customer demands a book recommendation. ‘Something good.’
‘Sorry,’ I joke. ‘Fresh out.'”

Poetry: Speaking of Ogden Nash (see post earlier this week), his last surviving daughter, Linell Chenault Smith, “an extremely classy woman,” died last month at age 90.

Photo: YMCA, Geneva, New York. 1995. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Poetry

‘Portrait of the Artist as a Prematurely Old Man’

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One of the shifting and inchoate goals I pursue in this blog, when I think of it, is promoting Ogden Nash as a great American light poet. Above, he reads his poem, “Portrait of the Artist as a Prematurely Old Man.” It’s about sin, and not doctrinally correct. But perceptive nonetheless.

Authors, Poetry

Poetry at the Kilns

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Courtesy of our friend, Dale Nelson, here’s a video of poet/priest Malcolm Guite (whose taste in clothing seems unnervingly similar to my own), reading some of C. S. Lewis’s poetry in Lewis’s very study, in his home — the Kilns, Headington Quarry, Oxford.

Blogs, Socials, Music, Poetry, Reading, Religion

Give Duke Ellington His Due and a Good Reason to Read Poetry

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The great American composer Duke Ellington would have been the first African-American composer to win a Pultizer Prize for Music back in 1965 had the award board agreed with its own jury. This week, scholar Ted Gioia has been raising awareness of this oversight in judgement and support for pressing the Pulitzer Prize board to reverse this decision.

He describes the decision in his post, “Let’s Give Duke the Pulitzer Prize He Was Denied in 1965.”

That missing award from 1965 has long been a source of disappointment and frustration to jazz fans, and a genuine disgrace in the history of the Pulitzer. The jury that judged the entrants that year decided to do something different—they recommended giving the honor to Duke Ellington for the “vitality and originality of his total productivity” over the course of more than forty years.

This was an unusual move in many ways. First, the Pulitzer usually honors a single work, much like the Oscar for Best Picture or other prizes of this sort. In this instance, the jury recommended that Ellington get the honor for his entire career. But even more significant, it would be the first time a jazz musician or an African American received this prestigious award.

But it never happened.

The Pulitzer Board refused to accept the decision of the jury, and decided it would be better to give out no award, rather than honor Duke Ellington. Two members of the three-person judging panel, Winthrop Sargeant and Robert Eyer, resigned in the aftermath.

If I have my facts right, the only African American with a Pulitzer before 1965 would have been poet Gwendolyn Brooks in 1950.

Reading Classics: Two books argue for reading Socrates and other classics and for “literature [as] a proven path to character formation.”

Resist or Compromise? “In 1981 I was sitting on a washing machine in Willow Grove, Pa., reading a Bible, when an elderly man approached and struck up a conversation. We spent the whole washing and drying cycle on chairs outside the laundromat, him telling me in detail of the persecution of Christians under the Japanese occupation of Korea (1910-1945) and of his imprisonment along with others who refused to bow to the Shinto shrine.”

Prufrock: Micah Mattix’s arts & literature roundup is now on Substack. He explains the reason here.

Poetry: Reading “rhythmic poetry” can help you handle stress, according to some biofeedback responses. Surely hymns would fit this pattern too. (via Miller’s Book Review)

Poetry: Irish poet Eamon Grennan says in a recent interview, “Of course, at the bottom of all is your engagement with the language itself. Loving that, loving and being able to admire how words make sense, how they fit into rhythms that give them a different kind of heft: the potential music of language, I suppose, needs to be part of your breathing.”

This kind of thinking gives him lines like this:
“Moonwhite the garden lightens
And the moon, a pealed clove of garlic, pales.”

Aliens in UFOs: Ron Capshaw says Jordan Peele’s “NOPE” captures the horror and wonder of an old-school UFO movie but doesn’t quite payoff in the end because we’ve seen many aliens who want to kill us over the years.

Photo: Cream Castle sign in Sikeston, Missouri, 1979. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Blogs, Socials, Bookselling, Poetry, Publishing

Writing as Reality TV, Old Tech, and the 2022 Bestsellers

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Writers everywhere say their craft is much like a reality show–their every action watched and analyzed, applauded and jeered. Looking awesome while writing or typing have been the notable skills of great authors such as Voltaire, Oscar Wilde, and Willy Makeit. The first reality star author, Dante Alighieri, is supposed to have said, if he were any more verbosely handsome, he’d be king.

Big Brother is after American authors in Kwame Alexander’s proposed show America’s Next Great Author. He’s putting together a pilot and calling for contestants who will pitch novel ideas to the judges. Six contestants will be selected for a month-long reality show retreat during which they will write the novel they pitched. And that’s not all.

“Throughout the retreat, they’ll also participate in storytelling challenges and work with mentors to develop their stories,” Publishers Weekly reports. Show co-creator David Sterry said “the challenges will ‘show off a writer’s ability to use words, think fast, be creative,’ but also help them to learn to market and promote their books ‘because writers are called upon to do so many different tasks now in modern publishing that have nothing to do with writing your book.’”

And will they have anything like their book or their sanity when they finish? (Via Prufrock)

Surely they took this idea from Monty Python’s Novel Writing sketch, featuring the athletic writing talents of Thomas Hardy.

Old Tech: Frank Adams’s Writing Tables, 16th-century English writing technology via 𝕊onja Drimmer on Twitter – “It’s especially famous for two things: its erasable pages and the survival of its original stylus.”

Bestsellers: Among the bestselling books of 2022, Colleen Hoover is making a killing. Publishers Weekly has the list. Hoover’s novel It Ends with Us is #1 and three other novels are on the list too.

National Poet: The Library of Congress has appointed the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States, Ada Limón. (via Literary Saloon)

Photo: World’s largest buffalo, Jamestown, North Dakota. 1990. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Authors, Blogs, Socials, Goofing, Poetry

When ‘Brunch’ Was New, the Limits of Science, and Worthless Commercials

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Something inspired me to look up a distinct definition for the word brunch the other day, and I happened upon this piece from Punch magazine in 1896. Merriam-Webster says the earliest brunch is believed to have appeared in print in 1894, and this aligns with that claim.

“According to the Lady, to be fashionable nowadays, we must “brunch.” Truly an excellent portmanteau word, introduced, by the way, by Mr. Guy Beringer, in the now defunct Hunter’s Weekly, and, indicating a combined breakfast and lunch. At Oxford, however, two years ago, an important distinction was drawn. The combination-meal, when nearer the usual breakfast hour, is “brunch,” and, when nearer luncheon, is “blunch.” Please don’t forget this. 

Tis the voice of the bruncher., I heard him complain,  
“You have waked me too soon, I must slumber again!  
When the clock says it’s 12, then perhaps I’ll revive,  
Meanwhile, into bed, yet once more let me dive! 

“The last meal I had was 3:00 AM.;  
I’m a writer, so please don’t such habits condemn!  
This cross between supper and breakfast I’ll name,  
If you’ll let me, a ‘suckfast’ –and ‘brupper’ ‘s the same!”

It goes on to lesser effect. What else do we have?

Lewis on Science: C.S. Lewis understood the limitations of science better than many scientists. Michael Ward writes:

What is frost to someone who has never encountered it? What is a degree of frost? Ordinary language would be more helpful in explaining the situation: “Your ears will ache … you’ll lose the feeling in your fingers” etc. The word numb will convey more than any number.

However, what Keats tries to convey in his poem can’t be rendered as a thermometer reading. It is not univocal or universal; we can’t translate his poem into, say, Japanese without loss or at least alteration. And yet if we want to know just what it feels like to go outside and breathe the bitterly chill January night air, Keats paints for us a very vivid and sensible picture. He communicates knowledge to us that the ordinary and scientific ways of speaking leave out.

In other words, poetry is a kind of knowledge, and since knowledge is a synonym for science we could quite legitimately say – if we wanted to – that poetry is a branch of science. 

“Numb and Numb-er,” by Michael Ward, Plough.com

Lewis on Science-Fiction: Lewis wrote about science-fiction a good bit and broke it down into several genre categories.

Poetry: How Fame Fed on Edna St. Vincent Millay

And this video by Rachel Oates, “Atticus Is Everything Wrong With Modern Poetry,” is an amusing criticism of a published writer who appears to have turned his Instagram posts into a paper-published thing.

Commercials: “If I were endowed with wealth, I should start a great advertising campaign in all the principal newspapers. The advertisements would consist of one short sentence, printed in huge block letters — a sentence that I once heard spoken by a husband to a wife: ‘My dear, nothing in this world is worth buying.’ But of course I should alter ‘my dear’ to ‘my dears.’”

Photo: The Big Shoe, Bakersfield, California. 2003. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Authors, Blogs, Socials, Coffee, Tea, Drinks, Fiction, Poetry

Heeding the Dark Side, Janus-headed Poetry, and Serpents in the Classroom

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“Nature’s dark side is heeded now–“

Herman Melville wrote a poem in 1860 of his “Misgivings” before The Civil War.

“With shouts of the torrents down the gorges go,
And storms are formed behind the storm we feel:
The hemlock shakes in the rafter, the oak in the driving keel.”

We’ve had storms and rumors of storms for about a month.

This week, the Russian army bombed a large theater in Mariupol, Ukraine, trapping over a thousand people who were sheltering from the siege. Last week, The Guardian ran an article reporting that some believe such destruction is an intentional effort to wipe out Ukrainian heritage and identity, to steamroll their country into Soviet-era sameness with Russia. (via Prufrock)

It’s difficult to take my mind off of the rattling, explosive thunder from the other side of the world. But here are a few other things.

The Complete Review reads The Runes Have Been Cast by Robert Irwin (not a recommendation to our readers, but still of possible interest):

With its colorful characters — notably Raven and Wormsley, but also, for example, Molly (who admits: “I don’t want a happy life. I want an interesting one”) — and a composed-seeming Lancelyn who finds himself coming apart in a world he can not readily categorize and impose an order on, much of The Runes Have Been Cast is tremendous good fun.

Poetry: “De la Mare (1873-1956) was among the first poets I read as a kid. Much of his verse is Janus-headed.” (via Books, Inq)

Coffeehouse Renovation: The Christian Study Center of Gainesville, Florida, is raising funds to renovate Pascal’s, their university community’s coffeehouse.

Education: Thomas Korcok’s Serpents in the Classroom reveals the religious agenda of many who formed how we think of education today. He shows how “these pillars of today’s education rejected Christianity and offered their approach to education as a way to undermine its influence and instill in young people something better.”

Camus: Albert Camus’s The Stranger “was first published in an underground edition in 1942, during the Nazi occupation of France, a time of widespread killing without emotion or remorse. It excited controversy from the start; Jean-Paul Sartre admired the novel but called it ‘unjustified and unjustifiable’ …”

Pilgrim’s Progress: “Bunyan gives us four ways to engage in the mental and spiritual fight. We have to fight thoughts with thoughts, words with words, untruths with truths.”

Photo: Belmont County Courthouse, Saint Clairsville, Ohio. 1995. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.