“Verse in Adversity” – what a fine punning title for this issue!
And what a fine issue, even finer than usual on a poetic approach to Creation
Cf. My own book, “A Poetic Approach to Ecology” (Sapientia Press 2004)
Editorial by Joe Pearce, outstanding for alliteration
- The vacuous vortex of social media, Reflected and refracted glories,
Contemplation and dilation of the mind, A fast food diet of trash and trivia,
The fantasy of virtual reality, the gift of veritable reality, Gadgets… godgets,
Barren and bereft of life, Eliot who embodies the embattled soul
We live in an anti-poetic age – how true, even of what passes for “poetry”
The need to stop in the midst of a busy day – in a moment of time
Much is here made of The Waste Land, but far greater is Four Quartets
On VA Arntz, Man is disconnected from nature – yes, since the 17th century
On M Kalpagkian, excellent on Robert Frost – poet and philosopher
Cf. my friend Peter J Stanlis’ book with that title (ISI Books Delaware 2007)
When persons learn to be still, cf. Eliot, “Teach us to sit still”
To see and hear an eloquent, expressive world
A doe that returns their look – cf. my experience of a squirrel in Baltimore
A love that fills all of creation from the heart of reality
Wisdom grasps paradoxes that information does not comprehend
The hidden wonder and underlying mystery
On David Craig “Stealth Catholicism” – what a wonderful idea!
That is precisely true of WS, the way his Church simply must shine through
Look at GM Hopkins his great overtly Catholic poetry – too little in this issue
What we often end up is a prize-seeking religious mediocrity – how true!
“Pity the night/ The stars lose their shine”
I profess myself a fan of Angela Alaimo O’Donnell and her “hip-hop”
On Kevin Bezner (C Lux) praise of tea – cf the Japanese Way of Tea
Even when we don’t realize it, God is present in our lives
We’re hard-headed,,, but this begin to soften my heart
God is always with us, we’re not always with God
When I left Montana, I felt I was being expelled from Paradise
On A Livingston Sadly, I have never been a fan of David Jones
His constant insistence that truth is layered – how true of WS!
On N Fenollera a dazzling mystery, fascinating, beautiful and profound
The small details in the novel, all but glints, as clues
The first one who made children a model was God himself – yes, and
I would add baby Wisdom in Proverbs viii (in one translation)
I could not imagine a world without horses – or donkeys
We know what God can do with weakness – cf I Corinthians i
On D Longenecker Lewis and Eliot – different Anglicans, low and high
Eliot to the Harvard manor born/ More English than the English
Lewis as a “ruddy faced butcher” – exactly my first impression of him
Both men on the modern side of what Lewis calls “the Great Divide”
Cf. my book on Christendom v. Empire (BookWay 2012)
I applaud the versified poems of Lewis, over the modern ones of Eliot
The overpowering secularism that swept the world after WW2,
Yes, but there was a wave of religious vocations from 1945-55
On D De Marco I ventured to write to Pope JP2 on Evangelium Vitae
“If you want readers, don’t write such long encyclicals”
Strictly speaking, the Greek words of the Sibyl are, “I want to die”
On K O’Brien “The darkling plain” is another echo by Arnold of WS
The Fool in KL i.4, “And we were left darkling”
On his blasted heath Lear speaks both with nature and against nature
In two speeches divided by the witless utterances of the Fool
As he identifies himself both with God and with the Man of Sorrows
It is by means of Lear’s madness that WS can criticize his Elizabethan age
On R Dreher How to tell the difference between lust and love?
The answer is given by WS in his Venus and Adonis 799-804
Dante teaches us about sin, about God, about, well, everything
Cf. my book, Much Ado About Everything (FastPencil 2012)
On David Craig (on Marjorie Maddox) Here we read through our misplaced
fascination with mass media and large-scale destruction into a more
personal stealthily Catholic version of what passes
I am fascinated by her Shakespearean poem starting with O –
I think there could be a whole anthology of such poems beginning with O
On M Martin Martin’s verses are laced with haunting, delirious freedom.
Here the veil between grace and nature is very thin – sacramental
Cf. De Caussade on The Sacrament of the Present Moment
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