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.
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:
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.
Dylan Thomas wrote about the seasons washing over the Welsh Glamorgan county–the summer so beautiful, the winter barren. Time repeatedly rides up from the coast, bringing nothing unusual, nothing but change. Here’s the sound of a winter thaw.
And now the horns of England, in the sound of shape, Summon your snowy horsemen, and the four-stringed hill, Over the sea-gut loudening, sets a rock alive; Hurdles and guns and railings, as the boulders heave, Crack like a spring in vice, bone breaking April, Spill the lank folly’s hunter and the hard-held hope.
