« September 24, 2006 - September 30, 2006 | Main | October 8, 2006 - October 14, 2006 »
October 1, 2006
Linked Verse
I want to encourage everyone to continue to contribute. We've had several really nice additions to the "brightness" thread over the past few days from people who very modestly say "We're not poets." The reality is that every person is a poet from birth--we just have it drummed out of us as we study the mind-numbing nonsense that most people consider literature classes. We won't all produce world-class poetry, but as children of that greatest Poet, we each have our own voice and charms. The constrained form of the linked verse also helps in versifying--it gives strong rules that help to guide the writing in distinct ways. So all you not-poets out there, abandon your inhibitions, drop your protections, and give us some linkages to our verse. So far, Autumn Brightness is a pretty good read, and give a nice sense of the diversity of Autumn around the country.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 10:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 2, 2006
St Teresa and Middlemarch
Yesterday, being a Sunday, one of the great Carmelite Saints rightfully surrendered her place at the table to her big Brother and Lord and so got mere mention within the Eucharistic Prayer. And I'm certain she was delighted at the honor of being able to surrender place to the One Whom she loved more than all else.
But one other great Teresa is celebrated this month, and I've long meant to comment upon this introductory passage to Middlemarch. I am reminded because I chose Middlemarch as my Daily LIt selection. Thanks to MamaT and TSO for bring it to my attention and then reinforcing the marvelous idea. To sink for five or ten minute a day into a classic--everyone can do it, and, in the case of lengthy books, it may be the only way to get completely through them.
from Middlemarch "Introduction"
George EliotWho that cares much to know the history of man, and how the mysterious
mixture behaves under the varying experiments of Time, has not dwelt,
at least briefly, on the life of Saint Theresa, has not smiled with some
gentleness at the thought of the little girl walking forth one morning
hand-in-hand with her still smaller brother, to go and seek martyrdom
in the country of the Moors? Out they toddled from rugged Avila,
wide-eyed and helpless-looking as two fawns, but with human hearts, already
beating to a national idea; until domestic reality met them in the shape
of uncles, and turned them back from their great resolve. That
child-pilgrimage was a fit beginning.Theresa's passionate, ideal nature demanded an epic life: what were
many-volumed romances of chivalry and the social conquests of a brilliant
girl to her? Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel; and, fed
from within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction, some object which
would never justify weariness, which would reconcile self-despair with
the rapturous consciousness of life beyond self. She found her epos in
the reform of a religious order.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 2:12 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Views of Books
I'm only about 30 pages into Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale and know that it is one of those books wherein I will want to call in sick and nestle down in bed all day to finish it. Probably won't do that, but will definitely spend some time this evening, perhaps a lot of time this evening, enjoying the book. The prose is clean and clear and the voice just right. More than that it is already a little eerie and it is a lot respectful of those whose lives are deeply and marvelously enriched by books and reading.
I'll report more when I finish, but I expect this to be one of those books that simply wows me, leaving me nothing to say except--get it, read it.
Just an enticing sample:
from The Thirteenth Tale
Diane SetterfieldMiss Winter's house lay between two slow rises in the darkness, almost-hills that seemed to merge into each other and that revealed the presence of a valley and a house only at the last turn of the drive. The sky by now was blooming shades of purple, indigo and gunpowder, and the house beneath it crouched long and low and very dark. The driver opened the car door for me, and I stepped out to see that he had already unloaded my case and was ready to pull away, leaving me alone in front of an unlit porch. Barred shutters blacked out the windows and there was not a single sign of human habitation. Closed in upon itself, the place seemed to shun visitors.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 3:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 3, 2006
Shrines: Images of Italian Worship
(Book available October 17 ) With photographs by Steven Rothfeld and text by Frances Mayes, this is one of those slender and lovely gift books that you give to people who liked Under the Tuscan Sun or whose blogs feature devotional art or pictures of Italy.
The small fragments of text by Frances Mayes (after the introduction) neither help nor harm the momentum of the book. Her name is there to capitalize on the Italian (particularly Tuscan) connection, and her thoughts about the subject of the photographs are neither deep nor stirring. However, the photographs are fascinating and lovely. The one gripe I have is that they are not better identified on the page. I'd like more information--where in Italy, Instead in the back, we get thumbnails of the photographs with a location like "Tuscany." I guess I can understand that in a way, because you wouldn't necessarily want to encourage increased traffic along some of the lanes and road you see pictured.
The theme of the book is "shrines" in the lower-case meaning of the word--personal, small devotional sites, intimate spiritual places made public so that in some small way you share your devotion with others. There are about 100 images of shrines of all sorts--from frescoes or murals on the walls of what look like apartment buildings, to little boxes that look like those information pamphlet boxes you can find at the entrances to some state and national parks where there are not a lot of facilities, to small holes in the brickwork, to constructed house-front decorations.
Two photographs I found particularly interesting and moving. One of them shows a close-up of what looks like a cranny in brickwork. Within this small space are four figures--a small crucifix, tilted to the back so the upper beam is resting on the brickwork in the back, and to its right, a small figurine of Mary and two containers of slightly different size of Lourdes water--now empty. All three images of Mary came from the shrine at Lourdes. This small grotto, remembering the larger grotto, is just a little insight into the necessity of devotion among the people who made it. A shrine composed of three cheap, plastic images of Mary in a grotto the size of one brick is somehow a moving testimony to the love shown to the Blessed Virgin, the impulse to adore.
The image that most caught my eye, because of my past associations and my love of Mary, Star of the Sea, was a small shrine that decorates the front of a townhoouse, store, or apartment building. It consists of a small altar formed of a kind of coquina with enormous Triton and Strombus shells. Above it is something that looks like an abalone shell, topped in turn by an image of an anchor formed of cockles or oyster shells. This anchor is flanked by two encased panels that are filled with what appear to be images of the Most Pure Heart of Mary--the Immaculate Heart. Above these, the main image, housed in an ornate frame of scallops and cockles--a small alabaster, or marble image of Mother and child, recessed in a light blue grotto. It's so completely out of place in this small alley or street, and so wonderfully conceived that it really captured my eye and my imagination. This is the kind of grotto I would like to dedicate to the Blessed Mother, were I in the business of doing so.
And this last thought brings out one of the poignant touches of the book--these are a commonplace in Italy. Perhaps not everywhere, but they can be encountered with some frequency. Except in the more Hispanic neighborhoods near me, there is nothing like this in the American Way of devotion. In fact, most of the little shrines pictured in this book would likely be removed as eyesores or nuisances in most communities in the U.S., and I include heavily Catholic communities in that description. We are almost embarrassed by our devotions, it seems. And we have lost the good sense of Chesterton--"if it's worth doing, it's worth doing badly."
A recommended gift-book for the right recipient. Lovely pictures, unobtrusive text. I would like to note that editors might want to consider adding descriptions if this goes into a second printing.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 4, 2006
Bible Translations (One More Time)
The best advice for one seeking a translation of the Bible to study or to pray from is to use the one that motivates you to read.
TSO finds motivation in a translation that can be quite beautiful. It goes to show how different sets of words reach different people and there is utility in translating again and again, even though the Bible has been translated a great many times. Who knows who might be brought into the fold by a new translation?
Posted by Steven Riddle at 9:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 5, 2006
Humor in Middlemarch
One doesn't often see comment on the vein of rich and ironic humor that pervades much of the early part of Middlemarch, just as, again, humor is not much of a discussion in the work of Hawthorne. And that is a shame, because while this humor, in both cases, is not of the laugh-out-loud variety, it provides a certain warmth and atmosphere that makes reading the books pleasurable.
from Middlemarch
George EliotAnd how should Dorothea not marry?--a girl so handsome and with such
prospects? Nothing could hinder it but her love of extremes, and her
insistence on regulating life according to notions which might cause a
wary man to hesitate before he made her an offer, or even might lead her
at last to refuse all offers. A young lady of some birth and fortune,
who knelt suddenly down on a brick floor by the side of a sick laborer
and prayed fervidly as if she thought herself living in the time of the
Apostles--who had strange whims of fasting like a Papist, and of
sitting up at night to read old theological books! Such a wife might awaken
you some fine morning with a new scheme for the application of her
income which would interfere with political economy and the keeping of
saddle-horses: a man would naturally think twice before he risked himself
in such fellowship.Women were expected to have weak opinions; but the great safeguard of
society and of domestic life was, that opinions were not acted on. Sane
people did what their neighbors did, so that if any lunatics were at
large, one might know and avoid them.
The last sentences of each of these two paragraphs have a certain humor, admittedly somewhat bitter, but not actually biting, that can engage the reader fortunate enough to find the strain and continue.
Humor, and a sense that an author has some knowledge of the matter, are prerequisites in fiction. No work of fiction can be entirely successful without some sense of humor. Even Dante showed it, although maliciously, in some of the people and punishments in Hell and Purgatory. In fact, it is the absence of this strain that tends to make Heaven such a ghastly bore in comparison to the other two works. The author is so overwhelmed by his experiences that, while he continues to compose amazing poetry, he simply isn't engaging at the same level as he is in the other parts of his masterpiece.
Humor stems from a sense of displacement, it is, in a sense, an ultimately Christian virtue. Humor often results from the juxtaposition of impossible events, from the use of a word in two or more ways, from the sudden and unexpected. These are the deep seams of humor, the understanding that things are not as they seem, that we are not what we seem, and that ultimately we are not really where we belong. The recognition that where we belong is infinitely better gives rise to deep strains of humor.
It may also give rise to deep strains of sadness or despair of the human condition. By far a less "likeable" result of the realization. And sometimes, to the untrained eye, they are nearly indistinguishable. I think particularly here of the works of Flannery O'Connor and Walker Percy--both fundamentally humorous and joyous, but if one were to read only "The River" for instance, one might be left wondering whether or not Flannery O'Connor had any faith whatsoever. And I am witness to the fact that the hilarity of Love in the Ruins bypasses the majority of readers, who see instead the darkness that the humor masks. The inability to apprehend an author's humor can make of reading an unbearable toil. Probably the reason I find most nonfiction reading neither illuminating nor particularly informative. Most political books inspire me the way Chilton's manuals do. Most works of science are long, dry treatises with nothing of appeal to anyone seeking the imagination behind them. This is the particular skill of the popularizers, and the particular pitfall. They bring into sharp life and relief the humanity and the reality behind the discoveries. For a prime example of their effectiveness compare Gleick's Chaos: Making a New Science with the prose of Peitgen and Richter's The Beauty of Fractals . (I just looked that one up on Amazon and was astounded at its price-tag--$84.00--I'm certain I paid nothing like that for it--I bought it as a grad student and wouldn't think of spending that kind of money on a book at the time.)
Humor then, a Christian virtue stemming from the recognition of the anomalies resulting from our pilgrim status, is one essential for readable fiction. In the case of Eliot, it is subdued and distinctly bitter. In Hawthorne's case, similarly, subdued, but more ironic than bitter, and sometime laugh-out-loud funny if you are paying attention. Like the "clown scenes" in Shakespeare's tragedies, the humor need not be pervasive, merely present. It is ultimately inviting and welcoming to the reader.
Humor, in literature, as in life, is an essential ingredient for success.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 9:05 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 6, 2006
The Terrors of Fiction
It is probably different for other writers, but where I feel most vulnerable, most at stake, and most exposed in writing is in fiction. A step I took recently just brought home how true this is for me.
Poetry is almost all artifice. It is so highly stylized and smoothly polished that the personal element is nearly thoroughly disguised. What the reader is exposed to is sheet artifice, verbal fireworks, or highly compressed verbal energy. The poem may explode, it may inflate, it may do any number of things--it may reveal personal moments, but they have been sharply curtailed by the point and purpose. My poetry exposes me to almost no risk. Does anyone really think that Alan Ginsburg is one tenth as interesting and lively as his poem "Howl" would have one think? And what of Keats and Blake? Even Sylvia Plath, whose poetry was intensely personal manages to set the personal at a great ironic distance most of the time (read "Lady Lazarus" or "Daddy." The poet is not on display there--the language is.)
Non-fiction poses few hazards because you pick and choose what you write about in such a way that you reveal what you care to reveal, which means, in essence, you reveal nothing at all. The intimate memoirs, the auto-biographies, the telling personal exposes--all tell you exactly what the authors would have you know about themselves.
Fiction, on the other hand, is dangerous. You pick and choose your stories. You write your story lines. But there is always the danger that the story will get away from you--that you will stand exposed because you have pressed yourself out of it the way you do in a poem. Fiction is a case of "give 'em enough rope." Nearly every author stands exposed in his or her fiction. The interesting fact is that they do not stand exposed in the way most people think they do. The narrator or events is almost never the author. But there are undercurrents, little things that even in the fourth, fifth, and sixth drafts of a work the author doesn't notice--but these tell-tale signs are there for any astute reader to observe and decipher. Or so it seems. The likelihood that anyone will intrude upon the correct understanding of a personal symbology is infinitesimal. But because fiction is the telling of tales, and the details of the tale almost dictate themselves, and because there is refinement, but not refinement of the type that goes into poetry, and because there is selection of detail, but not of the same type that goes into nonfiction prose, each chose lays bare something of the author who penned the work.
Or so it seems to me. But then, that may be the result of the fact that fiction has led me far closer to the truth than either nonfiction or poetry have ever done. Poetry has brought me into the halls of beauty and nonfiction into the realm of sheer skepticism; but fiction gets in under the radar and I find myself "surprised by joy" and awakened to the reality that lies under the event. And this happens whether or not the author intended for it--I see a small glimpse of eternal Truth in every well-crafted piece of fiction. And, perhaps circularly, this may be because of the sacrifice the artist makes in laying him or herself bare in such a way. The defenses are still locked in place, but like a fence now, their outlines are observable and a fence can be scaled, pulled down, or dug under.
Whatever may be the case, my fiction is one place where I feel terribly exposed. And that, for the most part, is why none of it shows up here, nor is ever likely to. Eventually, I hope it will make it into print, securely bound behind the paper covers of an anonymous book--a entity I formed, but which now has a separate life. But all of that is about courage.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 9:06 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
October 7, 2006
Three Strains of Autumn--Linked Verse Continued
Be sure to check below this first post for additional posts. This is being kept high up on the list so that people will continue to add and admire the works of others. Autumn Brightness is really taking off, and we've even had an adidition to "Autumn? What Autumn?" thanks to Mrs. Darwin.
While it is more usual to assemble linked verse one contribution at a time, because so much good was offered and so much that will work together, I have assembled the following offerings.
The next step is to choose a strain (please indicate in your contribution) and add the next link in the verse.
To be faithful to the authors--I removed additional indications of break as they are not usual part of the linking. In one case I made a plausible edit, in another requested an author's permission to add to the contribution.
Now I present my compilation and ask for the next contributions. The fun of linked verse is to wrench the poem out of the direction it was going and give it a new heading that still makes sense. I hope these do that so far.
Autumn Brightness
Fall fell in one night
cold crept in, painting the sky,
summer's cessationThe calendar page rustles
Smoke in the rain wind wakes meOne last cricket song
Train whistles while gutters drip
Dark night but cheerfulNow grass is dry from summer
Heat lingers on golden hillsAs our summer ends
We wait for the winter rain
But first the wild firesfires that burn in falling leaves
in leaves in swirls underfootCool in the nostrils
Running loose on the wet grass
Fall remembers meThe sounds of dried leaves crunching
The smell of hot dogs cookingCheers from the home crowd,
On a crisp fall afternoon:
Football has returned!Winter grey-brown sea begins
to limn the shoreline--salt frostBirds return, ibis
once again strut and pluck lawns--
bold October looms.Seeking porchlights, out past dark
Muffled laughter, running feetTennis-shoed pirates,
Princesses, ninjas and ghosts;
Ding-dong: Trick or Treat!Blue Angels each October,
While the ocean turns cooler.Fog in the morning
Near the sea, sunny afternoons,
November fireplaces.Autumn. Poor Souls Purgatory
Reminds us of death decay.But my Spirit rises
As I see resurrection
In luminous leaves.dewdrop on red leaf fallen
in the early autumn grasscolor surprises
morning's brightness magnified
with a trace of chill
Autumn Bleakness
Fall fell in one night
cold crept in, painting the sky,
summer's cessationI am her friend and lover
waking to her misty dawnprayers spill from mouths --
cloudy little pools of hope
lost as the day warmsLike grey leaves, our lives grow dim.
Will we see the winter's birth?Drive, work, a pay stub:
These define life's borderlines.
Happiness eludes.To be found again in sweat
Spent for love without reward.O little bold squirrel,
You cross the road fearlessly,
But brother lies dead
Autumn? What Autumn?
Fall fell in one night
cold crept in, painting the sky,
summer's cessationBut not all is quiet,
with the children who are working together
to create a puzzle picture
while Mama writes a poem.Images alive become
Images living in words.Happy laughter rings.
Mama pauses, wishes she
Could find the camera.
Note this last strain is a more avant-garde form in which the more or less thirty-one syllables are used at the poet's command. A much more challenging linkage.
Remember, to add on--2 7-syllable lines, and a 5-7-5. So, overall you have: 7-7-5-7-5--thirty-one delectable little syllables to share autumn where you are.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 9:51 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack