Category Archives: Poetry

Authors, Blogs, Socials, Music, Poetry

God Is Infinitely Wise and We Are Not Remotely

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Something triggered a memory today. I told my parents, over apple pie at Dollywood, that Jonathan Edwards had suggested the Lord had risen in the East and could possibly return in the West, even America. I don’t think he was suggesting it would happen, just that it could and would flow with the pattern of history. The main reason I remember that is the impression of impressing my parents with this detail from Edwards. A small thing. Both of them passed away in the last few years; now the holidays are different.

Pastor and author Tim Keller has been fighting pancreatic cancer for over a year. It’s now at stage IV. On Twitter Friday afternoon, he said, “It is endlessly comforting to have a God who is both infinitely more wise and more loving than I am. He has plenty of good reasons for everything he does and allows that I cannot know, and therein is my hope and strength.”

In The Atlantic this year, Keller wrote about his faith growing in the face of this struggle. Speaking of earlier in his life, he said, “Particularly for me as a Christian, Jesus’s costly love, death, and resurrection had become not just something I believed and filed away, but a hope that sustained me all day. I pray this prayer daily. Occasionally it electrifies, but ultimately it always calms:

“And as I lay down in sleep and rose this morning only by your grace, keep me in the joyful, lively remembrance that whatever happens, I will someday know my final rising, because Jesus Christ lay down in death for me, and rose for my justification.”

Writing at Age 91. We don’t know what time or days we have…. what was I saying just now? Oh, never mind.

Do you like reading poetry? Does it matter if you enjoy it or is it a professional exercise? “I can only think that a large-scale revulsion has got to set in against present notions, and that it will have to start with poetry readers asking themselves more frequently whether they do in fact enjoy what they read, and, if not, what the point is of carrying on.”

Writing is ridiculous, bound to fail; even success feels like failure. “Some people doubt themselves far too much, others not remotely enough.”

Researchers have concluded contemporary worship songs are going stale quicker than they used to, for reasons they can’t explain. “The average arc of a worship song’s popularity has dramatically shortened, from 10 to 12 years to a mere 3 or 4.” I don’t want to suggest these are only the most consumeristic churches, but in my church circles, we sing old songs–maybe a new melody or arrangement, but the lyric is still several years to centuries old. What I’m sharing in our new Sunday post is the kind of singing I hope you have in your churches.

Photo: Wellsboro Diner, Route 6, Wellsboro, Pennsylvania. 1977. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Authors, Blogs, Socials, Fiction, Poetry

A Fictional Lewis, Miłosz in California, and Blogroll

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Gina Dalfonzo reviews Once Upon a Wardrobe, the second book from author Patti Callahan with a fictional story that draws in many actual details of C.S. Lewis’s life and habitat.

Czesław Miłosz, born in Šeteniai, Lithuania, 1911, spent 40 years in California before his death in 2004. Cynthia Haven has labored over a book on this great poet of last century and Czesław Miłosz: A California Life released this month.

“The Nobel poet spent more time in California than any other place during his long 93-year life,” Haven writes. “He wrote poems about the California landscape, engaged with our culture, and taught generations of students at UC-Berkeley. Some of those students became eminent translators of his work.”

David Zucker has written some pretty funny scripts, which cross the line too often for my taste. In Commentary, he writes about an opinion he often hears from fans: “You couldn’t do that scene today.” (Via Books inq)

Humor happens when you go against what’s expected and surprise people with something they’re not anticipating, like the New York Jets winning a game. But to find this surprise funny, people have to be willing to suppress the literal interpretations of jokes. In Airplane!, Lloyd Bridges’s character tries to quit smoking, drinking, amphetamines, and sniffing glue. If his “addictions” were to be taken literally, there would be no laughs. Many of today’s studio executives seem to believe that audiences can no longer look past the literal interpretations of jokes.

Dracula: How did Bram Stoker’s novel become a pop-fiction hit?

Malcolm Muggeridge: “If it should prove to be the case that Western man has now rejected these origins of his civilization, persuading himself that he can be master of his own destiny, that he can shape his own life and chart his own future, then assuredly he and his way of life and all he has stood and stands for must infallibly perish.”

To close, here are a few words plucked from Miłosz’s “City Without a Name,” written in California, 1968.

The Earth, neither compassionate nor evil, neither beautiful nor atrocious, persisted, innocent, open to pain and desire.

And the gift was useless, if, later on, in the flarings of distant nights,
there was not less bitterness but more.

If I cannot so exhaust my life and their life that the bygone crying is
transformed, at last, into harmony.

Like a Noble Jan Dęboróg in the Straszun’s secondhand-book shop, I am put to rest forever between two familiar names.

Photo: George Joe Restaurant, La Mesa, California, 1977, John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress.

Blogs, Socials, Poetry, Uncategorized

Nobel Prize for Lit, Blogrolls, and Other Reading

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We started this blog in May 2003. I’ve impressed very few people with my posts here. I would have benefitted by having an editor, someone to tell me to press on to a better idea or a better development of the idea I had.

My writing process, in case you’re wondering, is to think about a post for a while, begin to write it down, distract myself with tangents or diversions for far too long, and after a couple paragraphs shoved into the blog engine, to doubt the point of it all. As Descartes once quipped, I doubt therefore I’m not.

Blogs have changed a lot in the last twenty years. Most people chatter into social media apps and discussions board communities. Having a blog is no longer the easiest way to publish your words online, and one part of blogging that has gone the way of yesteryear’s Internet is the blogroll. Most blogs, even those updated infrequently, had lists of websites down one side to other blogs that they presumably admired and even read. One of our readers said he missed our blogroll when we moved to this WordPress platform, and because I’m nowhere near as smart as I used to think I was, I have now concluded I might start linking to other blogs in regular weekly posts. That’s not what a blogroll was, but that’s what I’m going to do.

The photo above is of The Donut Hole in La Puente, California, circa 1991, from the John Margolies Roadside America Photograph Archive. It’s a picture of the quality of another day. Let that inspire you.

The Literary Saloon has been going since Creation. I think it was the second blog to have ever been launched, right after Justin Hall created the first one from a faux-swarthy corner desk at Swarthmore College. They focus on international and translated fiction, so naturally they have the goods on the Nobel Prize for Literature this week. M.A. Orthofer notes, the books of winner Abdulrazak Gurnah haven’t sold much in the U.S. Only three thousand copies of all of the books combined.

“It’s not like his work hasn’t gotten any attention,” Orthofer says, “The New York Times has reviewed six of his novels — but they certainly do not seem to have found readers — no wonder his latest, Afterlives, hasn’t found a US publisher.”

Word, a poem by Andrew Frisardi that reads like spoken word, is in the Fall 2021 issue of Modern Age. (via Books, Inq. – Frank has been old-school blogging since 2005.)

October 9th is Leif Erickson Day, a day that has yet to catch much heat from those who demonize colonization. Erickson and crew stayed at L’Anse aux Meadows for many decades, well before Columbus landed in the south, and they didn’t take over the continent, which makes them more immigrants than colonialists.

Eudora Welty’s first collection of Southern gothic short stories was released in the fall of 1941, 80 years ago this season. I confess I haven’t read any of them yet, but that’s normal for me. I barely read as it is. Gregory McNamee of Kirkus Reviews offers this appreciation.

Poetry, Reviews

‘Beowulf: A New Translation and Commentary,’ by Andrew P. Boynton

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A lone Geatish widow   a death-wail
braided for Beowulf.   Bound hard, 
she sang sorrowfully   of how she in full 
dreaded the dark days   that soon would come, 
a flock of the slain,   the fear of the folk, 
thralldom and shame….

Andrew P. Boynton is a friend of mine on Facebook, so I may be prejudiced, but I was greatly impressed by his recently released Beowulf: A New Translation and Commentary.

Boynton, unlike some modern translators who’ve opted for rhymed verse or prose, has taken up the challenge of recreating Old English alliterative poetry (very similar to Norse). Lee Hollander took the same approach to Eddic poems. This is difficult to do in modern English, which lacks the flexibility of diction the old languages possess. One way to increase your options is to employ obscure words (something Hollander did too). However, these words are explained here in the copious notes. Tolkien fans (and Tolkien’s influence is a constant presence) will welcome the word “mathom,” though Boynton uses it to mean “treasure,” which is not quite how Tolkien used it.

I found Boynton’s Beowulf vigorous and enjoyable, though sometimes difficult to follow (the notes help). Seasoned fans of the poem will find it very satisfying. The Commentary seems to me (as an amateur) very good; the best modern scholarship is referenced, and Tolkien is there in abundance.

I will make this one recommendation – the paper version is probably better for most readers. I got the ebook, and this particular work is awkward to use in that format. It’s set up for facing pages – the translation on one side, the original Old English text on the other. That means the pages are tied to one another, so you can’t adjust typeface size as in an ordinary Kindle book. The print was quite small for me, so I had some trouble reading.

Otherwise, I recommend Beowulf: A New Translation and Commentary.

Poetry

There was a DISTINGUISHED Old Fellow

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May 12th is Limerick Day, perhaps for the arbitrary reason any day is a national day of some kind. May 9th is Lost Sock Memorial Day as well as National Sleepover Day. May 17th is Cherry Cobbler Day, which must not be allowed to carryover into May 18th, because that, honey child, is Cheese Soufflé Day. There are so many of commemorative days for every day of the year it’s no wonder Congress can’t get anything passed between the cobbler and soufflé.

But I was talking about limericks, being an apt subject for the distinguished readers of this blog.

The form of the limerick is believed to have been created as a party or festival song that invited participants to spin their own verse of the marvelous attractions or mishaps of Limerick, Ireland. Each verse would be capped by a chorus inviting everyone up to Limerick. I get this from The Complete Limerick Book by Langford Reed, published in 1925.

Reed notes the artist and author Edward Lear is the name many people associate with limericks and could easily believe to be the one who created them whole clothe. Of all that he accomplished in his life, his Book of Nonsense is the main thing for which he is famous. Reed offers these lines on the subject of fame:

A goddess, capricious, is Fame;
You may strive to make noted your name
But she either neglects you
Or coolly selects you
For laurels distinct from your aim.

In honor of the day, let me repeat one of the most excellent of tongue-twisters, this one from Ogden Nash:

A flea and a fly in a flue
Were imprisoned, so what could they do?
Said the fly, “let us flee!”
“Let us fly!” said the flea.
So they flew through a flaw in the flue.

Poetry, Writing

Snow and poetry

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Photo credit: Andrew Small @ andsmall. From Unsplash.

Remember that snow I said we’d probably still get, because you can’t get out of March in Minnesota without an encore or two? It came last night. A couple inches, and it’s already starting to melt. I guess some’s coming tomorrow too. But Spring has the big momentum now. Even if the snow keeps coming back, it’ll be in short, vicious snaps, like a rat dying in a trap.

Here’s something I don’t think I’ve written about before here. Poetic prose. I am, as I’ve often said, a poor poet, even when I bother. (I was fairly well on in years before I even started to figure out what poetry is.) But over the years I’ve picked up some ideas about adding poetic touches to my prose. Father Ailill in the Erling books, stage Irishman that he is, is particularly prone to poetic flights, which is one of the things that makes him fun to write. And with St. Patrick’s Day coming up, this might be a good winter’s day to discuss the subject.

A while back I was in a gathering where someone mentioned, cautiously, that they’d been writing poetry, and what did we think of it? And they read some of it. I think that person was hoping I’d say it was great, but I said nothing. Because it wasn’t very good. I wished I had the opportunity to talk to them about it one-on-one, but I didn’t get that.

Here’s what I wanted to say to them:

You think you’re writing poetry here, but what you’re actually doing is just writing prose, the way you’d write prose any time, and then breaking the lines up. Poetry is more than just the way you lay your words out on the page. It’s about using words, and loving words, and manipulating words, marshaling the power of words to say more than bald prose can.

When I think of good poetry, one line comes to mind – my favorite line of poetry in the world. I’m not generally much interested in Dylan Thomas, but his poem, “The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower,” amazes me. Just the first line (which is also the title), actually. I think it’s almost perfect.

“The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
“Drives my green age…”

Look what Thomas does with that first line.

Eleven syllables. Of those syllables, each is single word, except for the last one.

Such a sequence constructs a picture in the listener’s mind:

Dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-double.

Which translates, semi-visually, to:

Stem-stem-stem-stem-stem-stem-stem-stem-stem-FLOWER.

It’s a picture of a flower.

But then the poet takes that picture of a flower and manipulates it. The stem becomes a “fuse.” “Fuse” is obviously a loaded word. Slightly sinister. Suddenly, instead of a mental picture of a flower, the picture is of a fuse burning down toward a dynamite charge. And when the fuse gets to the end, the charge explodes, and that explosion is a flower.

Suddenly we see the flower in a whole new way. It’s not just a pretty (kind of effete) plant sitting in the ground, looking decorative. It’s a little explosion, driven by some kind of a “force.” The rest of the poem expands on that idea of a life force. This is not one of Wordsworth’s daffodils. This is a dangerous flower, a flower from a rough neighborhood.

That’s what poetry is. It exploits the sounds of the words, the rhythm of the words, the associations of the words, and even the way the words look on paper, to turn ideas into little explosions in your head. You think in a new way, and you see in a new way.

It’s like a workout for your brain. And your spirit. It makes the muscles stronger, capable of doing things you never knew they could do.

Poetry

A Threshold Crossed: 30 Robertson Poems

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Each threshold crossed a point of no return;
each turn of the door knob a turn of fate.
Take each step boldly, confident you’ll earn
access to behold some mystery great
with import or delight, that dawn will break
on an undiscovered country with stores
of adventure and peril that can slake
the greatest thirst––all this and so much more
awaits you on the other side of every door.

“Enter” by Steven R. Robertson

Robertson spent November 2020 writing a poem a day, the above being his first offering (I hope he doesn’t mind me copying it here.)

Poetry is a difficult art, easy for good-hearted folk to do badly. That’s isn’t a sin, of course. If they enjoy crafting their poems, who can say they have wasted their time? Robertson’s poems are rather good, each in a different style. The one above is a Spenserian Stanza.

Short poems like these are a bit like flash fiction; they present you with an idea or emotional picture and sometimes a clever turn of phrase, but they are easily sipped up and forgotten. Reading these things within a social group may motivate readers to pause long enough to reflect on them. Do blogs still provide that kind of social group, or has the world moved on to shinier things?

Photo by Gisela Bonanno on Unsplash

Poetry

Who Wrote the Footprints Poem?

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One night I dreamed a dream.
As I was walking along the beach with my Lord.
Across the dark sky flashed scenes from my life.
For each scene, I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand,
One belonging to me and one to my Lord.

This is the start of the famous, anonymously written “Footprints” poem. Many have tried to establish ownership. Justin Taylor makes a few notes and points out an introduction to one of Spurgeon’s sermons that takes the footprints in the sand imagery in a better direction than the poem did.

Poetry

‘And Some Seed Fell’

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I’m making slow progress on the book I’m reading, so no review today. I’m not sure if the book is long, or if I’m just reading it slowly (a disorientation sometimes found in reading e-books). There’s this strange sense that, though I’m interested in the story, I’m not making very rapid progress with it.

I wrote a poem. As I’ve said before, I don’t consider myself a very good poet (and this one was written off the cuff). But I think it’s obscure enough to challenge the reader.

And some seed fell
On a gloomy place.
O’ershadowed by 
The cliff’s hard face.
The roots reached down,
The ground was dry,
And looming rock
Warped out the sky. 
That plant no flower
Would ever know
And on the breeze
No seed-stuff blow.
A little drink
The dew might give,
And sunlight blink
Enough to live.
Poetry, Reviews, Uncategorized

‘The Fall of Arthur,’ by J. R. R. Tolkien

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Not long ago I reviewed Beren and Luthien, Christopher Tolkien’s scholarly reconstruction of much-revised textual material left behind by his father, J. R. R. Tolkien. I judged the book a sort of a scholarly exercise.

I’d have to say the same about The Fall of Arthur. Tolkien, always a promoter of Anglo-Saxon literature, wanted to demonstrate what he could do with Anglo-Saxon-style verse (pretty much the same as Old Norse verse), by re-telling the story of King Arthur in that meter. There’s a certain irony in that project, as the real King Arthur (if he ever existed) spent his life fighting the Anglo-Saxons.

Still, to the extent that it was finished, the poem works extremely well. There’s real vigor in alliterative verse, and the way it “sings” is strongly reminiscent of passages in The Lord of the Rings. One sees where Tolkien acquired his highly effective literary style.

Foes before them,
flames behind them
ever east and onward 
eager rode they, 
and folk fled them  as the 
face of God,
till earth was empty, and 
no  eyes saw them, 
and no ears heard them in 
the endless hills,
save bird and beast  bale-
ful haunting 
the lonely lands….

The poem, unfortunately, was left as a fragment, breaking off before it’s properly underway. Arthur is returning from his campaign in Europe, having been warned that Mordred has raised a rebellion in his absence. Much has been made of the fact that Lancelot, who betrayed the king with Guinevere, has not been summoned to help him. No doubt more would have been made of that, and this could have been a pretty rousing work of literature. But as it is, what we have is another interesting scholarly exercise.

There are notes at the end, and a couple essays by Christopher Tolkien. I should have read those, but wasn’t aware of them until just now.