I’ve received an e-mail from the father of a nineteen-year-old boy who is in a Catholic discussion group. The father asked me for a list of poems, which would be good topics for discussion for such a group. Here is my response:
The two great and indispensable modern poems, in my judgement, are “The Wreck of The Deutschland” by Hopkins and Eliot’s “Waste Land”. I do not think that they would be suitable for your son’s discussion group, however, because both need a classroom scenario to unravel them properly. Putting these great poems to one side, these would be my suggestions:
- Four great Old English poems (in modern translation): The Ruin; The Wanderer; The Seafarer; and The Dream of the Rood.
- The passage about the good Parson from the General Prologue of the Canterbury Tales (if the Middle English is considered too challenging for the group, a modern translation could be substituted).
- Upon the Image of Death by St. Robert Southwell
- The Pilgrim Queen by Blessed John Henry Newman
- The Sign of the Cross by Blessed John Henry Newman
- The Toys by Coventry Patmore
- My Garden by Thomas Edward Brown
- God’s Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins (This poem could be connected with Thomas Brown’s poem to launch the discussion.)
- Hanacker Mill by Hilaire Belloc
- Tarantella by Hilaire Belloc
- Lines to a Don by Hilaire Belloc
- The Strange Music by Chesterton (It’s fun to discuss what exactly is the “strange music” in this enigmatic poem.)
- Lepanto by Chesterton – obviously!
- The Secret People by Chesterton
- The Serf by Roy Campbell (It’s good to connect this poem for discussion purposes with Belloc’s Hanacker Mill)
- The Zulu Girl by Roy Campbell
- Mythopoeia by Tolkien
- I Am the Great Sun by Charles Causley
In addition to the poems I mentioned in my post, I’d like to suggest two other poems, which I think would be ideal for discussion amongst young men. The first is “The Charge of the Light Brigade” by Tennyson, the second is “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen. If these two poems were combined with GKC’s “Lepanto” it would furnish a great discussion of war glorified and war demonized. When is it licit to glorify war, and death in war, and when is it licit to protest against the senselessness of war? If GKC and Tennyson are right, is Owen wrong, or vice versa; or are there grounds for arguing that all three positions are licit, and, if so, why?
And one more: “Litany of the Lost” by Siegfried Sassoon, a brilliantly succinct and skeptical view of world politics in 1945.
As the father in question here, I’d like to give my public thanks to Joseph for putting together this list. I can say with complete confidence that the world would be a saner, more joyful, and more peaceful place if more people were reading (aloud!) the right poems. Joseph’s list is a bigger help to humanity than all the legislation of all the legislatures in our troubled, erstwhile republic.
.That Gilbert quote demonstrates how deep semetntnialism has sunk into our culture. As Dr. Seuss would reply to him, “a life is a life no matter how small.”I would nuance one of your statements, though:”It is a given, people upload their personality into the internet, but I really don’t think the seperation of the personality from your body is the issue!Why? Because facebook is frequently used to encourage physical activity.”I would say that Facebook *can* be used to encourage physical interaction–and maybe even *often is* used to promote this–but the more I use Facebook the more I consider that a cop-out ponied by most media-enthusiasts. Being in the military, you’re in a unique situation; you use Facebook differently than most, I’m sure, because of your context. But in suburban America, I use Facebook to coordinate physical meetings with less than 1% of the people I interact with on Facebook. And that’s a generous estimate.Most people use social media to have relationships devoid of physicality because physicality brings it with it so many other demands: the sacrifice of meeting at someone somewhere, the awkwardness of body language, the demystifying of physical appearance, etc.Though some claim that social media encourage physical interaction–and again, I think it *can*, especially when it comes to gathering large groups–I think overall it stands firm against physical relationships, and more so against all things physical.Your brother,Brandon