Poem of the day: My Shadow

We were talking about that time Hook stole Peter Pan's shadow, which reminded me of the Robert Louis Stevenson poem about the little boy's shadow. I mentioned it to Meg, and rather to my surprise she wanted to hear it. 

My Shadow by Robert Louis Stevenson
From Child's Garden of Verses

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow--
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,
And he sometimes goes so little that there's none of him at all.

He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play,
And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
He stays so close behind me, he's a coward you can see;
I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!

One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

And she liked it! It made her laugh and everything. Poetry win.

A confusing quote

Also, the other day Meg was chattering to herself in the back of the car when we hear these words coming out of her mouth: "To be or not to be, that is the question."

I swear, I have no idea where that came from. That is, it must have come from a live person she hears, since the VeggieTales version is in the context of playing Battleship and goes "2B?" "Not 2B." But I don't... quote Hamlet. That often. At least I didn't think I did.

Clearly it must be the nursery volunteers at church.

The illustrated Dante

Someone has gone to the trouble of illustrating Dante's Divine Comedy as a manga. You too can now read it as a comic strip with the dialogue of Cary's and Longfellow's translations. It's kind of... helpful, actually. Also odd.

Yummies

I tried this recipe over the weekend, and it was pretty much amazing. It might be more accurate to say I was inspired by it, because I didn't actually follow the recipe so much as re-visualize it as a chicken pot roast using what I had on hand, but the combination of sweet potato, rosemary, and white wine was definitely inspirational. Coming home from an evening of errands, with crusty bread and a stack of fresh library books -- I can highly recommend it. We were sad there weren't any leftovers.

Re-visualized Chicken Pot Roast

2 large frozen chicken breasts
1 cup of green leek tops, chopped
1 medium sweet potato, sliced
1/2 cup sliced mushrooms
1 long sprig fresh rosemary, leaves pulled off
garlic? I can't remember if I actually put any in
1 cup white wine
1-2 cups water
salt, pepper

Put everything in the crock pot and cook on low for six hours. Eat at dusk with crusty bread and your handsome husband. :-)


In other news, I attempted an apple-cranberry pie. Next time, I will use more apples, fewer cranberries, and much more sugar.


This fall I've been slightly haunted by butternut squash. Last fall it was pumpkin; this fall it's squash. Mama B. brought spiced butternut squash soup and brought up this whole concept of sage butter to go with, and I love it. What you do is get two or three tablespoons of butter, and melt it, and saute a few sage leaves until they're a bit crispy and the butter is brown. That's it, but it's enough. Ohh is it good. Tonight I didn't do anything fancy to the butternut squash, just steamed it in the baby-food maker, but with sage butter on top it was wonderful. Meg just barely got her serving of squash tonight, but I was good and left her some. I saw a recipe for butternut squash pasties I think we might need to try.

My colors this fall have been purple and gold. It makes me sound like a marauding Assyrian, doesn't it? Partly that's because those colors have been available a lot this season, but partly they're just gorgeous. I've got a mustard-yellow sweater from my sister that's been perfect and goes with everything.

Even the woods wore gold. It was a little like hiking in Lothlorien, with the beeches standing in for mallorns.

Book reviews

In between work, Meg, housework, and guests, I've been reading lately. Some of the fun new books I've come across:

Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl by N.D. Wilson. I'd heard this recommended, and when Kanary spent the night with us, he was kind enough to bring us a copy. So I devoured it in its entirety within the day. :-) Wilson is a literary heir of C. S. Lewis. You know how at the end of The Last Battle, they get into the new Narnia and the sunlight is brighter, the colors more intense, the peaches more flavorful, than anything in this world? That's what Wilson does for our world. He talks about everything - philosophers, quarks, flamingos (real and artificial), creepy things wasps do, raking leaves, and, of course, Tilt-a-Whirls - and shows us a world spoken by God that can lick your materialist narrative hollow. The book is different, and not precisely comfortable, but it's good.

God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible by Adam Nicolson. This book we found at our church library. I haven't quite finished it, but it's fascinating on its own and in contrast to Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl. Nicolson's premise: The KJV could only have come out of a particular culture like King James, that managed to combine such contraries as Donne's sermons and racy sonnets, the barren sanctuaries and elaborate Inigo Jones mansions, and an entire generation of scholars that channelled all that brilliance and wordcraft and secular and sacred energy into one exuberant tapestry of words: specifically, the Word of God. He calls the KJV the cathedral that Renaissance England never built. I like it. Also, I'm learning a lot from the mini-biographies he sprinkles throughout. At one point he talks about the man that hounded the Pilgrims to go to the new world, and how that man was actually pretty tolerant by Jacobean standards, and rather bored by the whole Scrooby affair.

To jump back a thousand years or so, I read Bloodline by Katy Moran. I picked it up because it looked like decent historical fiction set in early Britain, the warring tribes, Mercia, King Penda, that era. And so it was: well written and researched, a lot like Rosemary Sutcliff. I can recommend it. My main beef with Moran is her anachronistic attitudes. Her character was very modern about disobedience and not wanting to belong to anyone (i.e. no lord). What we get out of the "The Wanderer" poem... doesn't back up that sort of attitude at all. Also, Christianity. I don't mind if characters hate Christianity for the reasons that people back then hated it; people have been hating Christianity for a long time. It's kind of expected. But it did irk me that instead of characterizing it as a dangerous interloping new religion that was going to make their gods angry, she made all the Christians foolish, stupid, or hypocritical. Furthermore, her tribal religion was a comfortable thing that didn't require, say, the occasional man thrown in a bog or burnt alive in a wicker basket. Neither God nor the gods were particularly real to her. Which is a pity. She had a tiresome afterword too, that patronized Bede (!). He was a monk who wrote the first history of England, which had good results, but you know, monks have their perspectives and we don't really have to take them seriously.

In retaliation, I picked back up Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, which I've been working my way back through since about last Thanksgiving. Bede wasn't just a monk. He was pretty much the most brilliant, cosmopolitan scholar Britain had produced to date, and an interesting writer, even in translation. His history did focus on the church in England, rather than a more political history, though there's plenty of politics. Bede did his research, found original documents, and interviewed eyewitnesses, so he's actually quite reliable. But as for "perspective," people don't seem to realize that being a monk entails believing in a God who will get you if you lie, so it behooves monks to tell the truth. Of course, he did think what you believe matters, right down to the date of Easter, so if you find belief a little off-putting, I can see why you'd want to dismiss him as just a monk...

Ogden Nash strikes again

This is one of the more outlandish (and funny) parodies of Marlowe's Passionate Shepherd that I've come across. It was posted here.

Come live with me and be my love

And we will all the pleasures prove

Of a marriage conducted with economy

In the Twentieth Century Anno Donomy.

We’ll live in a dear little walk-up flat

With practically room to swing a cat

And a potted cactus to give it hauteur

And a bathtub equipped with dark brown water.

We’ll eat, without undue discouragement,

Foods low in cost but high in nouragement

And quaff with pleasure, while chatting wittily,

The peculiar wine of Little Italy.

We’ll remind each other it’s smart to be thrifty

And buy our clothes for something-fifty.

We’ll bus for miles on holidays

For seas at depressing matinees,

And every Sunday we’ll have a lark

And take a walk in Central Park.

And one of these days not too remote

You’ll probably up and cut my throat.

Hat tip to Semicolon.

The happy vegetarian

G. K. Chesterton cracks me up.

The Logical Vegetarian
G. K. Chesterton

“Why shouldn’t I have a purely vegetarian drink? Why shouldn’t I take vegetables in their highest form, so to speak? The modest vegetarians ought obviously to stick to wine or beer, plain vegetarian drinks, instead of filling their goblets with the blood of bulls and elephants, as all conventional meat-eaters do, I suppose.” — DALROY.

YOU will find me drinking rum,
Like a sailor in a slum,
You will find me drinking beer like a Bavarian.
You will find me drinking gin
In the lowest kind of inn,
Because I am a rigid Vegetarian.

So I cleared the inn of wine,
And I tried to climb the sign,
And I tried to hail the constable as “Marion.”
But he said I couldn’t speak,
And he bowled me to the Beak
Because I was a Happy Vegetarian.

Oh, I knew a Doctor Gluck,
And his nose it had a hook,
And his attitudes were anything but Aryan;
So I gave him all the pork
That I had, upon a fork;
Because I am myself a Vegetarian.

I am silent in the Club,
I am silent in the pub,
I am silent on a bally peak in Darien;
For I stuff away for life
Shoving peas in with a knife,
Because I am at heart a Vegetarian.

No more the milk of cows
Shall pollute my private house
Than the milk of the wild mares of the Barbarian;
I will stick to port and sherry,
For they are so very, very
So very, very, very Vegetarian.

And, just for fun, this is where he (presumably) got that nonsense about a bally peak in Darien:

On First Looking into Chapman's Homer
John Keats

MUCH have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne:
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific—and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

Speech "recognition"

Tonight Jonathan was training his computer speech recognition program. So far, I'd say it doesn't recognize him very well. Behold how it mangled T. S. Eliot:

Name the end of this sending breaks the error with flame up in candescent terror all of which the time was declarer though one discharge from sin and there were our only hope or else despair lies in the choice of hire or fire to be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then divide is booked for MIPS? Love. Space love is the Amur familiar name behind the hands that will be intolerable sure to play in which human power cannot remove. We only lose only so spire consumed by either fire or fire.

(The real passage from Little Gidding goes as follows:

The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre--
To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.)

I think my favorite part was when it wrote, not "choice of pyre or pyre," but "choice of hire or fire"!

Word games

Jonathan's parents came to visit Meg (and us), and this evening she decided to take a 4 1/2 hour nap. So the rest of us played games. We get pretty intense about Boggle, let me tell you. I won.

Regarding my use of the word "fere", with great disgust: "It's an archaic word. She got it out of a poem." Jonathan

Later:
"You sounded so affronted that I got it out of a poem." Me
"I was." Jonathan
"Kanary sent to me." Me
"And that makes it better?" Jonathan
"Yes!" Me
"Kanary had an Assyrian beard." Jonathan
"Yes, he did." Me
"Red herringed!" Jonathan

Well, despite such dubious provenance, it's still a good poem. I may have posted it on here before; I can't remember. In fact, once Jonathan read it (in a grand Sco'ish accent, nae less), he admitted it was awesome enough I was allowed to get the word from it. :-)

"Fere," incidentally, means companion or spouse. It's connected to "faran," as in to "fare forth" or "fare thee well," so a fere is apparently someone you travel with. It's quite a nice word, really.

So that's what the Dream of the Rood is about

This evening I was catching up a bit on blogs, and came across this one from Brandywine Books talking about, of all things, evangelism methods used for the ancient Vikings. How on earth do you show the humility of Christ to warriors with no use for humility?

“Milk first, then meat” is the old formula. For the Vikings, the humility of Christ was meat that they had to be introduced to over time. ...

Warriors understood very well what it meant to go willingly to death. By emphasizing the courage of Christ in His self-sacrifice, the missionaries presented the Gospel story in a way that their listeners could begin to comprehend. The greatest warriors always die in battle. They fall and lie at their enemies’ feet, as if in submission. Their bodies decompose. What is that but humiliation? And yet they are victorious, celebrated in song, for they did not flee and they did not fail their oaths. In the same way (said the preachers) that which looks like defeat and humiliation in the eyes of our flesh can be true victory, if we turn our backs on our sins and turn our hearts to God, the great King who Himself bowed down to death.

The original post quotes a great passage from the Anglo-Saxon Dream of the Rood talking about the Master of mankind hastening to the Cross (the Rood) for death and great victory. It was very moving. I wonder, now, if we've got a copy of the whole poem.

Spenser the poet

[I]ndeed, the study of Spenser's poetry is the best introduction available to the fascinating problem of what there is about poetry that can can bring more poetry into being, for no man has made so many other men into poets as Spenser has.

...Spenser did not allow himself to be inhibited either by the fear that a universal symbolism founded on sacramentalism might betray him into Catholic poetry or that his own fictive covering might obscure the truths of Scriptural revelation. No one else has so cheerfully and astonishingly combined pagan mythology, Christian symbolism, and personal mythmaking while remaining centrally in a main doctrinal tradition of Christianity.

Spenser had the humanist belief that classical thought and poetic form did not conflict with Christian truth; for him all myths merged, as all mirrored a unity of truth. ...Like Sydney, Spenser believed that a poet shared in the creativity of God, and therefore believed also in the poet's responsibility to bring his creation into a meaningful relationship with the moral order of God's creation.

--Harold Bloom, "Introduction to Edmund Spenser," The Best Poems of the English Language

Wow. Oh that someone might could write that about me! I think I need to go read more Spenser now.

Jordan

By George Herbert.

Who sayes that fictions onely and false hair
Become a verse? Is there in truth no beautie?
Is all good structure in a winding stiar?
May no lines passe, except they do their dutie
Not to a true, but painted chair?

Is it no verse, except enchanted groves
And sudden arbours shadow course-spunne lines?
Must purling streams refresh a lover's loves?
Must all be vail'd, while he that reads divines,
Catching the sense at two removes?

Shepherds are honest people; let them sing:
Riddle who list for me, and pull for Prime:
I envie no man's nightingale or spring;
Nor let them punish me with loss of rime
Who plainly say, My God, My King.

Poem of the day

It's by the 22 Words guy. It's even a sonnet. And it made me laugh. :-)

http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/features/lyrics/2008/sonnets/11.shtml

Good living poets

I haven't gotten through the list yet, but what I've read is pretty good. You might like it. Reading poems always makes me want to write some. We'll see if it takes. :-)

Note: language caution on "America."

My thanks to Challies.com.

Three laments, kind of

First, from "Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog": a lament for Ulrich von Liechtenstein, also known as Sir William Thatcher, also known as Heath Ledger. It'll probably be funnier if you liked "A Knight's Tale." A tip of the hat to Unlocked Wordhoard.


Second, from Wittingshire: the woe of the eel and the seal. (Parenthetically, who says the lament is an obsolete art form??)


Third, from my mother, an email forward. Yes: to such depths I have descended, as to put forwards on my blog. But it fit so well with this post, I couldn't resist. :-)

A Minneapolis couple decided to go to Florida to thaw out during a particularly icy winter. They planned to stay at the same hotel where they spent their honeymoon 20 years before. Because of their hectic schedules, it was difficult to coordinate their travel schedules. So, the husband left Minneapolis and flew to Florida on Friday, and his wife was flying down the following day. The husband checked into the hotel, and unlike years ago, there was a computer in his room, and he decided to send an email to his wife. However, he accidentally left out one letter in her email address, and without noticing his error, sent the email to the wrong address.

Meanwhile... somewhere in Houston, a widow had just returned home from her husband's funeral. He was a Minister who was called home to glory after suffering a heart attack. The widow decided to check her email, expecting messages from relatives and friends. After reading the message, she screamed and then fainted.

The widow's son rushed into the room, found his mother on the floor, and then glanced up and saw the computer screen which read:

To: My Loving Wife
Date: Friday, October 13, 2004
Subject: I have Arrived!

Dearest Love: I know you are surprised to hear from me. They have computers here now, and you are allowed to send emails to your loved ones. I have just arrived and have been checked in. I see that everything has been prepared for your arrival tomorrow, and look forward to seeing you then. Hope your journey is as uneventful as mine was.

PS ....... Sure is hot down here!!

The hunting of the dress: an epic in five fits

Fit the First: Before

A wedding is a beautiful thing
And after finding the eponymous ring
One further task may bring duress:
The hunting of a wedding dress.
My own small town is rather short
On gowns of that particular sort,
So Mom and I called up a store
In Albuquerque's wider shores.
But illness struck, and cancelled flat
Our appointed slot, and that was that.


Fit the Second: Friday

A week went by. Our health restored,
We ventured out to hunt once more.
One Jessica was sweet, but tired,
And draggled was her stock entire.
The dresses there--and elsewhere too--
Came comparatively huge!
I don't consider myself too small,
But they just didn't fit at all.
We partly paused the dresses' slips
By tying up the back with clips,
But plastic clips, and metal clamps,
Make airy spirits rather damp.
We fortified ourselves with lunch
And tried again with Andie's bunch.
Andie too was sweet, but there
The dresses' price was near despair.
My preferred "crustacean" glam
Cost upward of three thousand clams,
While the simple veil in favor
Was hundreds more than I could savor.
The Dress itself did not live there
So we sought some other lair.
We next met Liz, who had a ball
Finding me two dresses small.
But both had iffy workmanship
And a dressing room too small for the slip!
As we neared our house that Friday night
My Olwen started rattling--light
At first, but thicker later, until
Our concern could not stay still.
"Dad," I cried, "Please fix my car!
I'm afraid to take her very far!"
Probably it was just cosmetic,
But it sounded less than copacetic.


Fit the Third: Saturday Morning

Daddy tightened some loose screw
And cured the rattle. We tried anew
To hunt The Dress-the elusive Dress--
And got our coats, when Dad expressed
The need to fill my tires with air.
He went, and we stayed in, and there
Mom computed while I played
With my mousies. Though afraid
I caught my Bing, and then transferred
Attention to Marry, who scurried
From my hand, up on her cage,
And off the back! It seemed an age
As I waited for the whoosh-
The squeak--the smoosh--
Of the mouse who rashly leaped
Down four shelves. But Marry creeped
Into hiding as I emptied
The wrought-iron shelf to locate simply
Dust bunnies and no mouse. The next
Events combine and meld, the vexed
Shutting, pouncing, luring, shining,
Coaxing, missing, and designing,
As still my frantic Maraschino
Eluded like some desperado.
But Dad came back, and caught her under
The shelf that had begun that blunder.
We breathed again, and I and Mom
Left, and salvaged some aplomb.


Fit the Fourth: Saturday afternoon

Darlene's was fine, but didn't have
The Dress I wanted, yes, must have!
And Darlene lectured me on why
I shouldn't want my size to try.
We then dropped by a little shop
Of Celtic things--so I bought
A how-to book on drawing knots
And promptly started sketching lots.


Fit the Fifth: Saturday Late Afternoon

At last we made it to the place
Where our first appointment space
We'd given up. There Madelyn
Gave me a catalog, to begin,
And figured out what styles I like.
We went back to a room to try
Her best suggestions: a dressing room,
Expansive enough I could assume
Those floofy dresses; mirror, chair,
And racks, and table, all were there.
She even had two little samples
For brides like me who aren't so ample.
And best of all, we soon assessed
She had my Dress--the elusive Dress,
With ample floof and details exotic,
Clear proof my hunt was not quixotic!
Its pictured model was pretty scary
But in it I look like a fairy,
So with tears and song we bought the gown
And wrote this poem for its renown.

Sestina in a Time of War

This morning may be early, but the doctor
Arrived here earlier still. Up blinds, on coffee,
And while I wait a civilized hour to call,
I menace the staff with a rubber band
Inaccurately. The good doctor claims
This cheers him up, which makes more fun than sense.

My newer potted plant assents
To the goodness of the day. The doctor
Knew it was a schefflera; it claims
Its name and place by sprouting leaflets. Coffee
Steams beside an idle rubber band,
A still life to a soundtrack of rehearsed calls.

The details vary, but I make a call
With a punchline much the same. “Since
You made this appointment” (note a rubber band
Being loaded by the doctor),
“Will you come?” I cover my coffee;
“Yes,” he says, as it lands, and “Great!” I proclaim.

“Yes,” I tell the patient, “I’ll send your claim
Today; it takes about two weeks. Please call
Me if you don’t hear back in a month.” My coffee
Has grown cold. “Eighty-three and no cents
For today.” He jokes, “No sense, eh?” The doctor
Laughs. I say, “No sense at all,” and hide the rubber band.

The patient safely gone, the rubber band
Comes out. I grin and claim
He’ll never hit me; the doctor
Gets in a rather nice shot. I take a call
And zing him back, and we rescind
All mockery. Ha! I promptly I spill my coffee.

Nothing keeps you mortal like cold coffee.
Paper towels mop off the soggy rubber band
And I blink demurely as a well-sent
Loop hits my ear. Again the phone claims
My attention, as a teary call
Asks to talk to the good doctor.

The doctor turns toward his call
And I aim my rubber band. Peace, you claim,
But this shot looks perfect. The scent wafts up from new-poured coffee.

Poems

Pablo Neruda: "Ode to Salt." I've never read much Neruda, and what I have read generally creeped me out. But this I liked. It's a little surreal, and mournful, mournful. I think Neruda is like Chesterton in his love of things. The poets are not strangely silent on the subject of salt.

Dorothy Parker: "Penelope." Parker's got wit and a point. Her poems remind me of Edna St. Vincent Millay. She may be my favorite new poet (new to me, that is!). I also liked her "Sanctuary."

Elizabeth Bishop: "Sestina." It's a slightly dismal sestina, but sestinas are worth reading anyway. :-)

Poetry

Dana Gioia: poet, director of the National Endowment for the Arts, and sensible man. I just read his 1991 essay on the state of the art (thank you, ThePoint), and thought you all would find it interesting, too.

So: anybody read any poetry lately? What did you think of it, really? We may as well start doing some decent criticism as anyone else: the whole web is at our doorstep. :-)

Beowulf, some more

I found another blog post on Beowulf; not so much the movie, which is looking regrettable, but the epic.

I won't precisely say "It's a Christian poem!!" I like Tolkien's analysis, that it's probably written by a Christian looking back at the ancient ways that have faded: close enough to love their good points, and Christian enough to discern what they are. I love Beowulf. I love the intolerable distance of the narrative, the bright glimpses into a grey world, the loneliness of iron and muscle against a monster with the cursed legacy of Cain, the author's language that has been described as "built" rather than flowing. I don't want to be Beowulf (miserable thought), nor yet marry him, but I love reading about him.

I like Beowulf because it's impressively not a modern work. It follows a lot of narrative rules we still go with, but it comes from an entirely different mindset and so ignores others completely. For instance, the hero does not have an affair with anyone, particularly the queen. In fact, the hero has no love interest whatsoever. It's refreshing.

Do you remember the commentary on the DVD for The Incredibles? The producers were talking about how the villain had to penetrate the Incredibles' very house and kidnap Jack-Jack, because that has a certain zing for the audience that no external attack can imitate. I just noticed that Beowulf starts with Grendel attacking--the hall. It's the king's house, and the symbol of Home for the whole kingdom. (That's another bit of the ancient mindset I like: the country is bound up in the middle, with the king and his capital, rather than by the exact borders he rules.) Beowulf, in a tense moment equal to anything in Bourne Ultimatum, lies awake in the dark waiting for Grendel to bring it on. Life is good.

The link talks about sacrifice so that others may live. Yes. It also talks about braggadocio as a sort of vow. It's very nice, living in a country where monsters don't generally eat you in your sleep; it's also nice that in countries where there are such hazards, they have the opportunity for heroes. There you can see what a man is made of. Beowulf is explicitly contrasted with another guy at the feast who's full of himself, but Beowulf delivers and the other slinks away with his tail between his legs. Beowulf may not be quite Christian enough to appreciate humility, but he is ancient enough to appreciate honor. I like that too.