From “This Morning,” by Charles Simic

I’m just sitting here mulling over

What to do this dark, overcast day?

It was a night of the radio turned down low,

Fitful sleep, vague, troubling dreams.

I woke up lovesick and confused.

I thought I heard Estella in the garden singing

And some bird answering her,

But it was the rain. . . .

Taken from “This Morning,” by

The Nation’s Poet for 2007

We have a new poet laureate. “He’s very hard to describe, and that’s a great tribute to him. His poems have a sequence that you encounter in dreams, and therefore they have a reality that does not correspond to the reality that we perceive with our eyes and ears,” James H. Billington, the Librarian of Congress, said of . Not a native of the States, Simic was born on May 9, 1938, in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. He has lived stateside since 1954, and he is an American poet. Today, he won the 2007 Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets for “outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry.”

The New York Times reports:

Mr. Simic said his chief poetic preoccupation has been history. “I’m sort of the product of history; Hitler and Stalin were my travel agents,” he said. “If they weren’t around, I probably would have stayed on the same street where I was born. My family, like millions of others, had to pack up and go, so that has always interested me tremendously: human tragedy and human vileness and stupidity.”

Yet he balks at questions about the role of poetry in culture. “That reminds me so much of the way the young Communists in the days of Stalin at big party congresses would ask, ‘What is the role of the writer?’ ” he said.

Mr. Simic said he preferred to think of the point of poetry in the way a student at a school in El Paso put it when he visited in 1972: “to remind people of their own humanity.”

Spoiler

The headmistress of St John’s C of E School in Midsomer Norton, Somerset, decided to send away her students with a “seasonal” farewell, as it were. She read them from the close of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, effectively spoiling the end. The Daily Mail reports:

Another mother, who declined to be named, said: “It’s appalling. My son was going to read a book instead of playing on his computer and I was going to have some peace and quiet. Now that’s ruined. What was she thinking of?”

My wife thinks it’s funny.

Pressure to Become Jane

Anne Hathaway almost quit her starring role as Jane Austen in Becoming Jane over stress, according to Reuters.

“A lot of people put pressure on me. I put a lot of pressure on myself,” Hathaway said. “There was a time when I considered stepping away from the project because I really didn’t want to fail.”

Not affected, but burned out anyway

The further we get into this bridge collapse story, the more far-fetched my insistence on terrorism appears. Witness the expert articles here and here, from Popular Mechanics (courtesy of James Lileks at www.buzz.mn). Right now we’re all just blue sky speculating. Perhaps we’re dealing with some kind of perfect architectural storm here (to overburden an already stressed metaphorical bridge).

I went through a time, when I was a kid, when I was afraid of bridges. I’ve never entirely gotten over it, though it’s pretty well suppressed. I suppose the suppression will be less effective for a while now.

My own complaints seem (and seem because they are) trivial today. A little after the tragedy last night, a thunderstorm hit here (it was a mercy of God that it only grazed the neighborhood of the bridge failure), and a lightning strike close by messed up a couple things in the house. The monitor I’m working on now lost some brightness (the degaussing utility fixed that) and my TV got all messed up, with arcs of primary color adorning the top and bottom, and green faces on all the people. According to what I read on the internet, my set ought to degauss itself, in a gradual fashion, a little bit each time I turn it on.

Also the Ground Fault Protection outlet in my bathroom went poof and stopped working. It’s the kind that doesn’t have a re-set button, so I guess I’ll have to call an electrician for that.

Joe Carter at The Evangelical Outpost re-posted this essay today. I consider it well worth your attention.

I find that I just don’t have the stomach for those old arguments anymore. I’m still willing to discuss doctrinal differences. But now I’m less sure that I’m standing on the right side of scripture. Is the view heretical or likely to lead someone away from salvation? Then I’ll fight it tooth-and-nail. If not, then I’ll probably just sit this one out. I no longer have an interest in being what Anthony Bradley calls a “wife beater”:

And I’ll leave you with that tonight.

In which I say nothing helpful about the disaster

It’s almost obligatory for anybody in this community to say, “I just drove over that bridge yesterday.” Or “last week.” Or “I drive it all the time.”

I think I must be the only person in Minneapolis who almost never goes that way. I’ve been trying to conjure up a memory of that particular stretch of 35W, and for the life of me I can’t. I live in the northwest suburbs, so I always angle off before downtown, and if I’m going north I angle off northeast. So I’m much less spooked than your average Twin Cities blogger today.

I’m very sad though.

And I still can’t get terrorism out of my mind. The whole thing just doesn’t add up. Somebody’s holding something back, I suspect, to prevent panic.

I’m all right

In case you were worried, I wasn’t anywhere near the 35W bridge when it collapsed tonight. It’s a terrible thing, and aside from the suffering (one confirmed dead at this time) it will cripple local commerce and transportation for a long time. This was the major artery of our community.

They say there’s no reason to suspect terrorism. I’ll go out on a limb and say that, personally, I do suspect it.

Beowulf, suffering servant

“Thus Beowulf showed himself brave, a man known in battles, of good deeds, bore himself according to discretion. Drunk, he slew no hearth-companions.”

I re-read Beowulf over the weekend, in response to our discussion about the movie trailer for the upcoming film.

My conclusion is that I enjoyed it, and I’m reasonably certain that no movie based on the poem (I believe yet another is in the works after this one) will get to the heart of the thing.

Beowulf is often described as a heathen tale overlaid with a thin veneer of Christianity (it’s a Dark Age story, probably based on events that happened [if they happened] in Denmark and Sweden sometime around 500 AD. But the poem as we have it was clearly re-worked by Christian scribes, based on an oral original). And that’s essentially true.

Nevertheless, I think I may understand why monks would have considered it worth preserving. Because they understood the poem in a way that moviemakers today never will. They understood that Beowulf’s actions are not based only on personal pride, on showing off, on “macho.” They are based, at bottom, on sacrifice.

It has often been noted how boastful Beowulf is, and how there is no hint of humility or reserve in his account of his great deeds at Hrothgar’s feast.

But the editor of the edition I read (an adaptation of F. Klaeber’s translation, in Vol. 1 of The Norton Anthology of English Literature) notes, “…his boast becomes a vow; the hero has put himself in a position from which he cannot withdraw.”

When you’re living in terror, when you’re afraid that not only your prosperity but your very life and the lives of your children will soon be lost, there’s nothing you want more than somebody big and strong and competent who’ll swagger in and say, “Trolls? I eat trolls for breakfast! I’ll moider da bum.”

You can sense Hrothgar’s blood pressure dropping as he listens to Beowulf’s self-promotion.

For all his braggadocio, there really isn’t much in the whole business for Beowulf personally. He risks his life with Grendel, then has to repeat the performance with Grendel’s mother. He receives honor and gifts, which are nice, but he almost always fights alone. His is essentially a lonely fate.

There’s an elegiac quality to the poem, too. If Beowulf ever married or had children, we aren’t told of it. After he becomes the king of his own people, the Geats, he rules successfully, but essentially leaves nothing behind, not even an heir. It’s hinted plainly that his people will be conquered and driven from their homes after his death. This, I suspect, is why the poem ended up in England. It probably crossed the sea with the refugees.

So Beowulf is essentially the story of a warrior who gives up his own life for his people, and for his allies. His is the story of every soldier, even in our own time, to a lesser or greater degree. In return for the sense of duty fulfilled, and fleeting glory, they give up their very lives. They become servants, and their pay is never enough.

Anglican Archbishop to Preach to Presbyterian Congregation

Rev. Henry Luke Orombi, archbishop of Uganda, is scheduled to speak to a Tennessee Valley Presbytery worship service at my home church, Covenant Presbyterian (PCA), in Chattanooga, Tennessee on September 23. If you’re in the area, you may–may–want to drop in around 6:00 that Sunday. It should be glorious. I’m starting to wonder if there will be room to breathe within the sound of Rev. Orombi’s voice. I hope they pipe audio into the hallways.

The archbishop writes about in the current issue of First Things, in which you can see his heart for the word of God and advance of His Kingdom. You can read excerpts, as well as my pastor’s enthusiasm for this service, on Covenant’s website.

I ketchup on the weekend

Today is my birthday. I’m ** years old.

Thanks to Uncle Orv and Aunt Rachel, along with our reader Omie, who sent cards (Omie also sent a gift. I approve of this. Gifts to bloggers are always in order. Especially on their birthdays. Especially when they’re crotchety old bachelors).

I took myself out to Baker’s Square for supper tonight, to celebrate. I don’t go there often, not because I don’t like the food (I think it’s been getting better over the years) but because at my age, and following the reflux surgery I had, I have a hard time consuming a meal and a having a piece of French Silk pie on top of it. And skipping the French Silk is not to be thought of. Better to skip the meal.

I ordered from the Light Menu, but I’m still pretty stuffed. Nevertheless, I will not have it said that I did nothing to celebrate. Almost nothing, yes, but not nothing.

I’m still pretty beat from a weekend of almost constant social interaction (oh, the humanity!). We gathered at Brother Moloch’s home in Iowa for a double celebration (or observation. Or something). There was the baptism of their former exchange student, a young woman from Germany who is back temporarily for some medical training. “What?” you ask. “An adult baptism in a Lutheran church?” Yes, we do do them, in certain circumstances. This young woman was born in East Germany under Communism and has never been baptized. She’s been making up her mind on the matter for several years, under the influence of Moloch and his family. Now she’s decided that she wants to enter the church. Her parents and maternal grandparents came over for the event too. Her parents speak English but the grandparents don’t, but we all got along excellently. We spent most of our time sitting outdoors, which the Germans seemed to prefer. Fortunately the weather was mild, and it’s been a dry year so there weren’t many mosquitoes. We made conversation (or sat pretty much silent in my case) and watched the fireflies and listened to the cicadas.

There was also a commissioning for my Youngest Niece, whom we put on a plane for China about 6:30 a.m. Monday. She’ll be teaching English there for two years, under the same program her sister attempted a couple years back, but had to abandon due to ill health. There was much weeping and gnashing of teeth, but we’re all proud of her.

We also spent some time fooling around with an ultralight plane Brother Moloch bought and hopes to re-sell. He never got it off the ground, and didn’t really try to. He just wanted to figure out how the controls responded. My personal impression is that the thing was designed by Terry Gilliam and Dr. Kevorkian, but those who tooled it around like a go-cart had a good time, and they only tore up a small portion of the cornfields that surround the air strip.

For my birthday, my brothers took me out for a hamburger. The symbolism suffered, however, in that the local diner did not have Heinz ketchup for my Heinz birthday. But I choose to believe that they’re boycotting Heinz in disgust at Teresa Heinz Kerry, and I can get behind that.

It’s my birthday. Humor me.