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.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Verdugo Dawn,’ by Blake Banner

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A man wakes up, sitting in a Jeep in the desert. He has no idea who he is.

All he knows is that he’s a killer. A highly trained, efficient killer (He becomes known as Verdugo, the Executioner). In the next few days he will have plenty of opportunity to do what he does best. He will tangle with the US military intelligence and drug cartels, and meet a woman to whom he is drawn, who knows who he is but won’t tell him.

All the elements of a pretty compelling thriller are here in Verdugo Dawn. Lots of action, plot twists and setbacks, an intriguing protagonist.

But the book didn’t work for me. Although I’ve enjoyed Blake Banner’s work, I had trouble with the latest of his series I tried, due to repeated targeting of the Catholic Church as a villain. Religious matters also turned me against Verdugo Dawn. The narrative is interrupted in a couple places by references to Carlos Castaneda and dream-like dialogues with an old wise man named “Olaf” who talks a lot of solipsistic physics that we’re expected to view as profound.

Also the action was often implausible. And there were lots of spelling and homophone errors in the text.

Didn’t work for me.

Religion

Pilgrim Fathers

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It has long been my custom to post about holidays on the holidays themselves, so that whatever I write isn’t generally read until the party’s over. It suits my character.

But today I’m going to write about Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving Eve. Just a few thoughts.

It’s become fashionable to denigrate the Pilgrims of the Plymouth Colony, as you are surely aware. They were bigots, they were imperialists, they spread disease among the native population. And, most of all, they weren’t that important. There were lots of earlier colonies in America – what makes them so special?

My short answer is, the Mayflower Compact, the first voluntary self-government plan in the English tradition, in what became the United States. The English tradition is the one we built on; it’s where we got our concepts of civil rights and self-government.

It will be no surprise to you that I’m up to here with revisionist history (unless I’m doing — or translating — it myself, as with Viking Legacy).

I think a lot of us have a sense that our civilization is senescent now, that it’s growing old and fading. That it lacks the energy to perpetuate itself and must inevitably fall to the new fascists of Wokeism.

But you know, if we’re senescent, it was a pretty accelerated decline. I know I’m old, but one man’s lifetime makes for a pretty brief ride from the robust patriotism I remember from my youth to the contemptuous national self-loathing of today.

It occurs to me it’s possible we may not be in our national old age, but in our national adolescence. Like adolescents, we’ve suddenly discovered the sins, foibles and hypocrisies of our parents, and we’re rebelling. We take the blessings Mom and Dad worked hard for for granted, not understanding the sacrifices they made, the prices they paid.

If we’re just in our adolescence, we might have adulthood to look forward to. Maybe we’ll grow up. Maybe we’ll come to appreciate our parents, as most kids eventually do.

Maybe we’ll develop thankful hearts.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Killed,’ by James Kipling

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I started out liking this book very much. In the opening chapter of James Kipling’s Killed, the author breaks the rules of thrillers by just spending time with our hero, Detective Jake Walker, on an ordinary day, before the bodies start falling. I personally liked this. I found Jake likeable and relatable – a dedicated police detective (in an unnamed city) whose work has destroyed his marriage, but who is still determined to do right by his three daughters.

When the call comes (on his weekend off) to come to the scene of a murder, he is galvanized – because the murder has taken place on the university campus where his oldest daughter is a student. The victim turns out to be the star player on the football team, tortured and murdered slowly. Jake is convinced this has to be a personal crime. When further bodies are found on campus – and later off campus – he continues certain that this is not an ordinary serial killer at work, but someone with a particular grievance to avenge.

The further I got into Killed, the more disappointed I grew with the writing. Although Jake interested me as a person, I had trouble buying him as a cop. I’m not an expert on police procedure, but the way he ran the investigation didn’t “ring true” to me. His superior seemed to be taking orders from him, and when they called in the FBI for help, Jake himself made the decision (I think that would be his boss’s call). And when the FBI did show up, there was no jurisdictional friction – the Feds and the locals always posture a little for precedence, at least in books.

And I figured out the killer before I think I was supposed to.

So I found Killed a bit of a disappointment. Not hard to read, but poorly plotted, in my opinion. Cautions for the usual.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Wonders Will Never Cease,’ by Robert Irwin

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Tiptoft is not happy with Anthony’s reply and says, ‘People prate about how wonderful life is, but I swear to you that reading is better. Search how you may you will never find happy endings in life. It is only there in books.’

I’m not entirely sure what to make of Robert Irwin’s Wonders Will Never Cease. It didn’t quite satisfy me, but it’s the kind of book where I don’t know whether that’s the author’s fault or mine.

The book is reminiscent of Susanna Clark’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. And, I suppose, of my own Erling Skjalgsson novels. It’s a book set in real history, where the supernatural and the magical intersect with historical events. It’s related in the present tense in a very spare, apparently artless, voice – I wasn’t sure at first (not being familiar with the author) whether this style indicated an inexperienced writer or a greater artistic purpose. I kept reading, and discovered it was the latter, successful or not.

The narrative begins with the Battle of Towton in 1461, when the Lancastrian forces of the English King Henry VI are overcome by the Yorkist forces of Edward IV (if you have trouble keeping your Roses kings straight, as I do, Edward came just before Richard III). Young Sir Anthony Woodville and his father fight on the losing side, but his father immediately switches his allegiance and becomes a favored retainer of King Edward.

But before that, Anthony is killed in the battle. He wakes up, however, a couple days later, remembering only a vision of the Grail Castle of Arthurian lore. As a man raised from the dead, Anthony is the subject of considerable curiosity, hero worship, and envy as he learns to become a great knight and servant of the king. Eventually his sister will marry King Edward. He will meet, among other people, Sir Thomas Malory, author of Le Mort D’Artur. All through his life he will be surrounded by wonders – miracles and horrors and visions and witchcraft, and fictional characters he himself invented who take on alarming lives of their own.

And yet, this book full of wonders is oddly not very wonderful. The magic and miracles Anthony observes prove to be ultimately pointless, as are his dreams and adventures. The ultimate message I carried away from Wonders Will Never Cease was that, even if you saw lots of marvels, it wouldn’t make your life marvelous.

To repeat myself, I just couldn’t make up my mind about this book. It’s an interesting read, but ultimately flat, like a shaggy dog story. But that may have been the author’s intention.

Cautions for language, mature subject matter, and the occasional bit of blasphemy.

Poetry

No richer gift has Autumn poured From out her lavish horn!

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Quaker, poet, and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier wrote “The Corn Song” in 1850, and it became one of the things elementary teachers recommended to students to read every Thanksgiving. He was one of our most popular poets at one point, but perhaps you haven’t seen this one.

Heap high the farmer’s wintry hoard!
Heap high the golden corn!
No richer gift has Autumn poured
From out her lavish horn!
Let other lands, exulting, glean
The apple from the pine,
The orange from its glossy green,
The cluster from the vine;

We better love the hardy gift
Our rugged vales bestow,
To cheer us when the storm shall drift
Our harvest-fields with snow.

Through vales of grass and meads of flowers
Our ploughs their furrows made,
While on the hills the sun and showers
Of changeful April played.

We dropped the seed o’er hill and plain
Beneath the sun of May,
And frightened from our sprouting grain
The robber crows away.

All through the long, bright days of June
Its leaves grew green and fair,
And waved in hot midsummer’s noon
Its soft and yellow hair.

And now, with autumn’s moonlit eves,
Its harvest-time has come,
We pluck away the frosted leaves,
And bear the treasure home.

There, richer than the fabled gift
Apollo showered of old,
Fair hands the broken grain shall sift,
And knead its meal of gold.

Let vapid idlers loll in silk
Around their costly board;
Give us the bowl of samp and milk,
By homespun beauty poured!

Where’er the wide old kitchen hearth
Sends up its smoky curls,
Who will not thank the kindly earth
And bless our farmer girls?

Then shame on all the proud and vain,
Whose folly laughs to scorn
The blessing of our hardy grain,
Our wealth of golden corn!

Let earth withhold her goodly root,
Let mildew blight the rye,
Give to the worm the orchard’s fruit,
The wheat-field to the fly:

But let the good old crop adorn
The hills our fathers trod;
Still let us, for His golden corn,
Send up our thanks to God!

(Image: Whittier’s Birthplace by Boston Public Library)

Non-fiction

Maybe It’s Not True, but It Feels True

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Shelby Steele of the Hoover Institution at Stanford offers a profound concept in his new documentary about what happened in Ferguson, MO, called What Killed Michael Brown? It’s the term “poetic truth.”

“People believe cultural myths, he says, not because they have examined evidence and found it credible but because they align with narratives they’ve already bought into. They feel true,” Megan Basham writes for World News Group.

This ideas touches all groups. I would say most of us feel something is true and are willing to defend it before we know the facts. That’s pretty much how life works. We can’t research everything. There’s too much information in general. The most practical solution is for us trust certain sources to tell us the truth, a trust we form largely by feel.

I suppose that means not only the righteous live by faith.

Uncategorized

Fishing in Lofoten

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I have a lot of translating work to do (a good thing for me), and I spent about an hour already tonight trying to post something that didn’t work. So here’s a short clip of a from the 1950s, Norwegian fishermen at work in the Lofoten Islands. I think it’s herring, but I’m a landlubber.

Have a good weekend,

and watch your health.

Music

John Kanaka

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Apologies for not posting last night. I had a technical problem with Word Press, which has now been solved. Or worked around, anyway.

I can only post in haste just now; a big translation job fluttered in, to dominate my time for a few days. So, music.

The other day I reviewed the movie, Fisherman’s Friends, about the famed sea shanty group from Cornwall. The clip above is the real group (not the guys in the movie), singing a song that’s also in the film, John Kanaka.

No doubt the lyrics conceal some obscene meaning of which I am unaware. If so, don’t tell me about it. If I’m corrupting you, I’d rather not know about it.