Book Review: Faith, Hope, and Poetry by Malcolm Guite

Years ago I read Break Blow Burn by Camille Paglia, and I think it's taken about a decade to find a book like that, and even better. Malcolm Guite has the same strategy as Paglia: step through history reading excerpts from poems. But Guite's findings are more meaningful to me (and I don't have to put up with things like Paglia pushing Revenge of the Sith as an incredible artistic vision). Also, Guite introduced me to poets I never heard of but who nonetheless spoke to me as if they were living around the corner from me. John Davies is the best surprise, who may eventually become one of my favorite poets. Of course, the Coleridge chapter is fantastic and somehow as illuminating as Guite's full-length work on the Rime. Finally, Guite brings it into the present day by bringing a depth to Seamus Heaney I never knew, and introducing me to Geoffrey Hill's Lachrimae Amantis, a poem that immediately sank deep into my heart. So, yeah, this is a perfect book for the Christian who wants to know more about poetry.

Book Review: The Figure of Beatrice by Charles Williams

One story recounted in The Fellowship is that Dorothy Sayers was inspired to translate the Divine Comedy (into a really good translation) by the enthusiasm of Charles Williams, the weirdest Inkling. I was intrigued by this and looked up Williams's The Figure of Beatrice -- and I sensed the same inspiration.

Before, I was a typical Dante reader: I made it through the Inferno easily, then gave up on the first terrace of Purgatorio. I didn't get it, and I'd heard that Paradiso was even more obscure. In The Figure of Beatrice, Williams is able to lose himself so much in Dante that through him I saw the beauty and practicality of Dante's final two volumes. To get there, Williams takes you through Dante's works in order. I still don't get Convivio or De Monarchia the same way that I "get" Vita or the Divine Comedy, so a few parts of Williams' book were hard going (and a few passages are ethically knotty), but the reward is enormous. There is treasure laid up in heaven here.

The other thing that surprised me about this book is how personally practical is was to me. This was a healing book that I've needed for more than a year now. It allowed Dante to speak through the centuries, and what he has to say is intensely relevant, especially as translated by Williams. I actually found myself thinking when reading social media that Dante's perspective would help bring "peace and direction," in Williams' words.

The point of this book is not just to be able to read this book, but to be able to read all the books from one of the greatest writers in history. So you can see that in the next few months there will be posted reviews for Purgatorio and Paradiso!

Book Review: Brand New Ancients by Kate Tempest

This is one long poem by Kate Tempest based on modern gods in general rather than what she did in Hold Your Own,  where many poems focused on one figure in specific, Tiresias. I followed her directions this time and read it aloud to myself, which brought out the colors of Tempest's internal rhymes and unexpected rhythms. Tempest's language is musical and even Homeric.

As for what she's really saying with her language, the closest thematic analogue I can think of is Neil Gaiman's American Gods, which is one of my favorites of Gaiman's. The reason why Tempest writes what she writes intrigues me in the same way as American Gods did. This seems to be like what Owen Barfield called "putting things back together" but from a standpoint of polytheism and ancient Empire rather than from a standpoint of monotheism and ancient community in rebellion against Empire. Although I come from the latter standpoint, I'm fascinated and want to see what Tempest will continue to build with her words, because her poems are as tangible and feel as lasting as bricks and mortar.

I would build differently -- but I can't wait to see where she goes with this bringing mythology into the heart of modern life. It feels like a grand beginning to a brilliant career.

Book Review: Hold Your Own by Kate Tempest

Now this is poetry. Vivid, fast-moving, rhyming effectively (until not-rhyming effectively), allusive and grounded in ancient mythology, in this case the blind seer Tiresias. You can tell that this is poetry that respects the spoken word and is written without pretension -- both muscular and heartfelt. There's only a few missteps and easy outs throughout, but for the most part this does what I always felt (deep down) poetry should do. It lives.

Book Review: My Bright Abyss by Christian Wiman

The book My Bright Abyss is subtitled Meditation of a Modern Believer, but the believer of the subtitle (Christian Wiman) is a poet who deconstructs and inverts the very word belief. It's not for nothing that someone else called Wiman the "atheist Christian." He's fond of apophatic language (describing God, not by what God is like, but by what God is not like), paradox, and the search for meaning in silence despite a loud, modern world set against anything quiet. But this is not Chesteron's sometimes-too-triumphant paradox, it is a true puzzle that no one knows. What shapes Wiman's whole perspective is a seven-year struggle with a rare cancer and the intense intimacy with pain and struggle that comes with that. Wiman also believes that Christ is God and that God was crucified (he also quotes Jurgen Moltmann on this) -- that God was somehow calling out to Godself when he cried "Why have you forsaken me?"

Overall, this book is billed as modern, and Wiman is thoroughly modern, but his perspective on suffering and the cross feels old, like a medieval saint's reflections, with shades of Kierkegaard. This book is hard going at times, just like life is, but it is dense and rewarding. There are a few head-scratching moments, like when Wiman mistakes Isaiah for Elijah, and I would like to know more about what Wiman thinks about scripture's poetry, the stories we share as Christians, although there are frequent enough allusions to it. I'd like to know more. Hopefully there will be a next book, the Gilead to this book's Housekeeping (to continue the Robinson references). I think sometimes Wiman tilts too far toward the question when there is a partial, through-a-glass-darkly answer to ponder. I occasionally found this book frustrating and slow but in a good way, like a hard poem. Wiman's voice is a unique creation and well worth hearing in the harmony of the believers.

Book Review: History in English Words

I wish I had read this book earlier. Throughout all my reading of Owen Barfield, I wanted to know more about the philology that shaped his thoughts. I got a taste of that in Poetic Diction, but that was more about how poets use words than the words themselves. He always asserted that we could trace history through words but I only got glimpses of exactly how. History in English Words, then, shows how. It is a story of how words have changed, sometimes even flipping their meanings, and Barfield has an idea or two as to why they changed in that way.

Like most of Barfield, it has its pedantic or frustratingly obtuse moments but is at least five-sixths brilliant. This may be the best book to start on for someone looking to get into his work (perhaps this is for the historians, while Poetic Diction is for the poets?). There's one chapter in which he goes on about the stifling early church authorities in a manner that shows why C.S. Lewis and Barfield had their tiffs. Lewis would never take the Gnostic gospels as seriously as Barfield. Then there's the last chapter which sounds almost exactly like Tolkien's famous Fairy Stories writings at points. Tolkien fans, make sure to stick around for that last chapter.

If nothing else, this shows what you can do with an Oxford English Dictionary and a passion for words. Now that we have the technology to test some of these assertions about how, when, and why words changed to a degree unthinkable in Barfield's time, I think this little book could provide several theses's worth of hypotheses that Google lit searches could illuminate. I would like to see where Barfield's wrong, mostly because I have a hunch that more often than not he's right, and if so, then he's onto something. I'd like to trust but verify, and this book is about the original data Barfield's working from, so this has inside it a way to reproduce his assertions. Do words really internalize over time, swtiching from us being worked upon to us doing the working? Are Roman words really as external/concrete as Greek words are internal/abstract? What kind of shifts in meaning did the Septuagint's translation of Hebrew scriptures into Greek force upon the Second-Temple thought and theology? So many questions, so little time.

The limiting reagent for me is the time. And the knowledge. And the background. And ... let's stop there before I delete this post in despair.

At any rate, this book will let you see depths and layers of meaning in most every word you see (and choose to use). If sitting in a Philology class taught by Barfield sounds like a good idea to you, don't wait for the MOOC. Read the book.

A Mystery of Re-Purposed Trees

Imagine a quiet library day. You're studying away amongst the stacks, with only the occasional figure browsing in your peripheral vision. Then you look up at the next table over, which had been empty just a minute ago, and you see this:

No author's signature or credit taken, just a paper sculpture and a Twitter address. Soon other miniature sculptures are popping up, perpetrators unseen, in other places around the city, all made from books, all exquisitely detailed, and all part of a large mystery of who would do this and why. Ten sculptures waiting to be found.

Read the whole story here. And then part II here. Like they say, almost impossible to imagine this happening in America (and without someone making money off it as a viral campaign for an energy drink or something). Clandestine art as gratitude. A still small voice.

So keep your eyes open -- you never know when this might happen to you.

Dante + Scientific Fraud = Peer-Reviewed Amusement

Midway upon the journey of our life // I found myself in a forest dark // Oh, and I was a scientist too ...

Science blogger Neuroskeptic has come up with a spot-on version of Dante's inferno translated into the realm of scientific fraud. The picture give you a general feel for the shenanigans but to really enjoy it you should read the short, pithy, and peer-reviewed article found here.

My favorite thing about it may be the way Neuroskeptic makes the punishment fit the crime in exactly the same way Dante did. Each level just fits the universal sense of justice that we all share. And it makes me wonder if Dante intended us to take his tale only semi-literally, like Neuroskeptic does. There's value in this kind of semi-literalism to be sure.

Book Review: Reading Isaiah: Poetry and Vision

Reading Isaiah: Poetry and Vision by Peter D. Quinn-Miscall is my "textbook" in a way. My university is reading Isaiah together during the Fall Quarter and I took a day-long class in Isaiah (given by my theology department colleague) about a week ago. I've always been fascinated by this sprawling, vivid and even contradictory book, and Quinn-Miscall's "textbook" is a good introduction.

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Quinn-Miscall translates big bunches of text himself anew and resists the temptation to split up Isaiah into parts, instead looking at how different images are used throughout the book. This ties the book together rather than forcing it apart, and it's how I choose to look at it, too. The juxtaposition of the different images and parts of Isaiah is one of the powerful things about the book. I have the meta-image of a large stained glass window, with jagged chunks of glass, some blood-red, some sky blue, and some the green of a new tree; some faces from history painted in there; and the sun blazing behind it turning them to jewels and painting the reader with colored light. The fractal pattern of judgement-desolation-return is a useful pattern to see at all levels of Isaiah.

Quinn-Miscall's insistence on focusing on the poetry and only the poetry leads him to not even speculate about the speaker or referent at some points when I think he could go more out on a limb, so I think he could have loosened his own rules a bit for the benefit of people who want to know, "but what do you think?". But perhaps the whole point is that Quinn-Miscall himself fades away and when all's said and done, you're left with the vision of Isaiah itself. That's a good thing. This book helps you see it.

Reponding to Barfield, Part 3.5: A Poetic Interlude

[Back to Part 3]

This is about the halfway point for the Barfield series, and at this point in the book he includes a poem that summarizes his philosophy. I liked the poem and so I think it's appropriate to post it here as a summary looking back and looking forward.



REFLECTION by George Rostrevor Hamilton (1952)
When hill, tree, cloud, those shadowy forms
Ascending heaven are seen,
Their mindless beauty I from far
Admire, a gulf between;

Yet in the untroubled river when
Their true ideas I find,
That river, joined in trance with me,
Becomes my second mind.



The river is like Barfield's "participation."


[Forward to Part 4]

Book Review: Great Poems of the Bible

What is fascinating about this book is what I was reading it alongside: Chaim Potok's In the Beginning, a novel in which is formed the kind of Torah scholarship directly evinced in Great Poems of the Bible. In fact, I looked up info on James Kugel to see if he could have inspired Potok in any way, or vice versa, but it's possible the parallels come from both authors simply reflecting reality. Kugel vividly describes the "different way of seeing" offered by the Hebrew Bible and gives his own translation of many poetic passages. I cannot judge the academic quality of these translations but, especially in the cases of Ecclesiastes and Deborah's Song from Judges, the translations make sense of phrases that have previously felt wrong, so I'm inclined to trust his work and keep this book on hand for translation reference. It also gives a clear picture of just what it means to be a faithful Jewish scholar in the late twentieth century, and it's valuable just for that.

In particular, Kugel brings out the A-B sentence form of Biblical poetry, and brings out some of the signficance of this particular form. This surprised me in that it has deep ramifications even for the natural theology that's always on the back burner in my reading. Also, I never realized just how deep "wisdom" literature is, which also has impacts on my writing ideas. So, I'll just say "more to come."

Washington DC Thoughts

If the last post was about "I must decrease, He must increase," this post is about a town where the opposite's true, where power hangs in the sky like smog and scandal is a matter not of "if" but of "when."

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Washington DC is a city of new gods. In places it's almost exactly what a Greek citizen would see in Athens, what Paul gestured to on Mars Hill. The random larger-than-life statues of liberators and generals that cars speed past all look the same except to historians. And I was wondering, now that the WWII memorial is complete, will we ever be able to build white marble monuments again, or will every new war monument have to be like the Vietnam and Korean War Memorials, black and reflective?

As an aside about the WWII memorial, it is incoherent and jumbled, but I think that just makes the architecture of the moment more suitable for a truly global conflict. I don't think it throws off the emptiness of the Mall. The Mall's still really big. (Rule for DC: Always allow 15 extra minutes for walking anywhere.)

Perhaps it was the original Washington Monument on display in the Museum of American History that sums up this visit to DC. My first reaction is that it was a statue of Zeus, but when I got around to the front, it was George himself looking back at me. At first I'd had enough of all the neo-classical new empire symbolism, but then looking closer, the way he holds his lightning bolt, er, sword, stood out. The sword is backwards, Washington stepping down and handing power back to the people after two terms. I can get behind that (actually, that was my first viewpoint!).

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And then there's the Lincoln memorial, perhaps the most like a Greek temple in style and form but the least like one inside. I mean on the inside walls, not the Zeus-like statue of Lincoln. On the walls are two of the most sublime collections of words in the English language: the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural Address. I am going to make a tradition now, anytime I'm in DC, of stopping by the Lincoln Memorial and reading the Second Inaugural aloud (under my breath, I'm not THAT kind of tourist). It is an amazing political document and poem. As a theological document, the basic idea is the kind any follower of Jesus should adopt after immersing oneself in the Gospels. But the truly theologically amazing part of it is how it puts that solid theology into practice in few enough words to fit on a wall. Not since MENE MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN has the writing on the wall been so significant and succinct. Everyone should read it.

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So in this city of white marble and sharp-edged grassy fields trampled and wilted, there are monuments to empire, as in every empire's capital. But some of those monuments are to something more, to handing back power and to the humility of forgiving even the worst of human nature after the worst of wars. Those make me proud of my country.

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[Reference song: "Our Song" by Joe Henry off the Citizens album.]

Book Review: The Best American Spiritual Writing 2006

Yes, this is one of those anthologies, but I think of it as having a friend who reads a lot of magazines tell you which articles she liked best. Somewhere since 2000 they changed the adjective from "Christian" to "Spiritual," but 75% of the writing is still Christian or general theistic. A few short essays deal with Buddhism or the Norse Gods, and one detailed story describes a traveler in present-day Afghanstan going to the place where the two huge Buddhas were destroyed by the Taliban in March 2001. Malcolm Gladwell describes Rick Warren's Saddleback Church. John Updike has a haunting poem about the Cathedral at Rheims. I got a few pages here and there to use in my Weter Lecture, and a list of rules given to those who paint icons for "how" to paint. I'm going to put that up next to my desk for when I write.

Book Review: Tolkien's The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/04/AR2009050403462.html

I was wondering a few things as I sat watching the 18 or so hours of The Ring Cycle recently. I was wondering what the source material was for these stories of heroes, dragons, fallen goddess brides, and betrayals, what Wagner had changed from it, and what someone else with a different worldview would make of that. Especially someone with a passion for Norse legends and a knack for storytelling, say, J.R.R. Tolkien. I'd love to have some of Tolkien's lectures on these stories. Maybe even a translation where he puts everything together.

As I was wondering that, this book was sitting on my shelf. I knew it was some of these things, but in actuality it was all of them.

It was also very dense reading. You have to see it to believe it. Most lines on the page only have four words, and so each page is a column of text with white space on either side. Don't be fooled: every word counts, more so than anything I have ever read. This writing is the neutron star of density. Tolkien follows the Old Norse poetic style of matching up the beginnings of words rather than their ending and is very good at following it.

I liked Seamus Heaney's Beowulf. But I think I actually like these poems more. Tolkien describes the source poetry as "flashes of lightning" and I think he captures lightning in a bottle here.

Just like the Ring Cycle, it's not easy going, but it's very rich and rewarding.

Book Review: Gawain, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo

These translations of three medieval poems by J.R.R. Tolkien give a sense of what it must have been like to be his student. I know he would start his course on Beowulf by walking in and shouting out a loud "Hwaet!" (the first word of the poem, loosely, "Listen up!"). Although there's no Tolkien translation of Beowulf, we do have these three works. All I can say is, I recently read the highly acclaimed Seamus Heaney translation of Beowulf and I think Tolkien is a better translator than Heaney. I can't put my finger on exactly why; after all, I'm not a medieval scholar and am reading for pleasure. But the vitality of Tolkien's translation, his sense of exactly how to alliterate, enough but not too much, his occasional "hard word" that nonetheless fits perfectly, everything about these translations is just right. And the content is great too. Gawain is a complex morality tale with some exciting action, and Pearl is both sad and deeply theological. (Sir Orfeo is the least of the bunch in length and in quality.) This isn't a side project for Tolkien: this was his academic and pedagogical bread and butter. It was well worth it to sit in this class with Professor Tolkien. I just wish I could find his Beowulf!