The River of the Immaculate Conception by James Matthew Wilson
Wiseblood Books, 2019; 30 pp, $10.00

Review by Katy Carl

In classic American letters, a permafrost of Puritanism seems to underlie much discourse around religious faith, the supernatural, and the life beyond this one, even in poetry. Poe succumbs to its chill in the despair of “The Raven;” Dickinson hints at it, sometimes in despondency, sometimes in defiance; the Transcendentalists stand staring at it in quiet desperation, whether they admit this or not. Whitman reacts heavily against it, at times to the point of throwing sense as well as sound out the window in his desperate flight from it. More than a half century after Whitman—by the time Frost is writing “The Gift Outright” and reciting it at Kennedy’s inauguration—the Puritan spirit has been shouldered aside in American life by its polar opposites, materialism and neo-Pelagianism, but not without leaving traces behind.

In the universe of Frost’s poem the Puritan work ethic, if not the Puritan supernaturalism, is alive and well. In the poem it is through human efforts, through “many deeds of war,” that Americans (meaning, here, European immigrants to America) become the masters of the land—and always only ever its masters, its overlords. A life beyond the land, a context for its conquest, is not thought of—or, if thought of, not expressed. Nor, in the poem, is the land itself treated as other than the locus of human striving—in itself the country is “unstoried, artless, unenhanced;” plastic, malleable; matter, not form. The gap between what our bodies do and what our souls can apprehend is, for Frost here, manageable by human means. We ourselves are possessors and, as such, also “possessed” as a consequence of self-gift not to God but to his creation. For Frost our “salvation,” if any, is material, and lies in “surrender” to the material, to matter, to the land that is nothing until form is imposed on it by human activism in manifest destiny “vaguely realizing westward.” Only under the hands of humanity does the place, America, gain its (her) character: “such as she was, such as she would become.” The gift of the land is not truly gift but must be purchased at a cost: namely that of the human soul, “ourselves,” precisely that which it profits us nothing to lose.

This is all necessary preface to understanding another, warmer narrative that flows beneath the ice: in the words of poet James Matthew Wilson, “another history than the one we’re used to.” This narrative is the current into which Wilson’s newly released chapbook The River of the Immaculate Conception taps. The book consists of a song cycle divided into seven related but formally divergent parts. Each part highlights a different episode in the story of Catholic faith in America. The whole is both an echo of the structure of the Mass itself and, more specifically, a response to the music of Frank La Rocca’s Mass of the Americas. Those interested in more detail about the relationship of the poetry to the music can read Roseanne Sullivan’s interview with Wilson at the start of this issue of Dappled Things; however, the poetry stands on its own.

Here are familiar stories, given fresh life in verse: the roses in the tilma of Juan Diego; the journeys and sufferings of Junipero Serra, Rose of Lima, Isaac Jogues, Martin de Porres, Pere Marquette; the sorrows and joys of Elizabeth Seton. Alongside them, in a Eucharistic simultaneity, Wilson juxtaposes moments from the present day: sacraments taking place in a cathedral for “brides and mourners;” childhood lessons and liturgies in a “lakeside chapel / Modest and plain, shaped like a wooden boat;” Wilson’s visit with his wife and young daughter to the California missions. These contemporary moments act as a counterpoise to ground us in familiar, lived reality: to place the life of sainthood not impossibly out of reach but close, local, within our scope and ambit.

Of particular excellence is Part V, “Gloriosa dicta sunt de te,” which can be read as an inversion of or development upon Frost’s “The Gift Outright.” In the vision of Wilson’s “Gloriosa,” which is both small- and large-C Catholic, the wellsprings of craft and of belief are united, not divorced. The land exists prior to its inhabitants and brings its own character to the works of creating a life and of creating art—a character to be learned and respected, not merely superimposed upon, by people. We are to think of the land of the Americas

Not as the stuff lain idle to be grabbed,
But as a stage, a platform where we stand. Not empty, for upon it we depend;
Not arbitrary, for it’s all been formed
So long before our dawning that we sense
A hundred histories have gone to dust
Deepening the hillsides, carving out its rivers.

The land, for Wilson, is not ours but God’s. Any gift of self or of creation is predicated on, a development of, God’s original giving. Our continents (for the story here is of the Church in the western hemisphere) have their own stories, meanings. They bring their enhancements to our work, rather than being mere “unenhanced” surroundings. This is visible above all in the central image of the river, which pre-exists our conceptions of it, which has its own shape, its own path, a path we must follow and that is not required to follow us. Under this framework, the naming of places is not an act of conquest but a recognition of what is already present and an act of hope, an aspiration to what could be:

. . . naming is a kind of grace not deed.
It clarifies what was not understood,
Such that what outwardly remains the same Becomes itself more fully and more truly,
Transformed within by the articulate light.

Part IV, “The Agnus Dei of Jacques Marquette,” may pose a challenge for some readers, as it did for me. It is possible to read the gallop of the alexandrine meter as a journey over rough terrain, analogous to its subject matter, the struggle and danger of mission. The scenes of Marquette’s passion and death are set with a skill and an eye for telling detail that a fiction writer can envy. This detail serves to ground in observable experience the events of the unobservable inner life taking place: one possible working definition of literary sacramentality.

At the conclusion and high point of the cycle, in the hymnodic smoothness of Part VII, “Hasten to Aid Thy People,” form and matter are in total harmony. The cycle concludes with a poem that both describes and invites an interpolation of nature and grace directly related to, and dependent upon, the act of transubstantiation in the Eucharist. What this final poem seeks to encompass—and, marvelously, for a breathtaking moment, succeeds—is not “the gift outright” but, as Wilson has it, “the gift that leaves behind all thought of price:” God’s gift outright to humanity, the incarnate Word, Jesus Himself. Higher praise is impossible. Yet, still more marvelously, the poem, like the Mass, presents Christ and not itself for our praise; like the Mass, it then turns the focus on its readers, on our actions. The poem ends by locating itself—in history, in America, among its readers, in Catholic life today—with a double reference to the “ruined choirs” both of old England and of our fragmented postconciliar life. In this context, given and not chosen, what will we in turn give? What will we gain? What will we choose to make, and to restore?

Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity by Charles L. Marohn, Jr.
Wiley, 2019; 240 pp., $25.00

Review by Barbara Gonzalez

When the Stranger says: “What is the meaning of this city?
Do you huddle close together because you love each other?”
What will you answer? “We all dwell together
To make money from each other”? or “This is a community”?
Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger,
Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.

These lines are from T.S. Eliot’s Choruses from The Rock, but the Stranger who knows how to ask questions could very well be Charles Marohn, author of Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity, someone who knows how to ask very tough questions about our cities and especially about their fiscal management. In fact, he begins with probably the biggest question of the book: does our current pattern of development, based on the automobile, truly represent progress? A leading thinker in a movement known for its somewhat ambiguous term “New Urbanism,” Marohn begins his book not by offering a “new” proposition at all, but by considering the wisdom of ancient cities. This humility is characteristic of his approach throughout.

In the first few chapters, Marohn considers the complexity of ancient cities and how they grew in incremental stages. By observing one small example—the remains of a home in Pompeii that he visited in the early years of his career—he sets the stage for considering these cities as a whole and what made them not perfect utopias, but resilient, complex systems designed for human flourishing. This first example is typical of the book’s approach of using one specific case to reach multiple conclusions across various disciplines. This approach comes straight from the godmother of urban planning, Jane Jacobs, but it strategically makes the book imminently readable to the layperson without any formal training in urban planning. It also gives the book a sense of immediacy and urgency; although he will deal with urban finances and data, each example draws from ordinary life. The book is ultimately about how ordinary people can design the places in which we live and how ordinary people can be empowered to change them.

The ancient cities, he states, were complex systems. Shared walls were normal and meant shared expenses and more efficient heating and cooling. The cities were also full of shared spaces. The street was a place where people could gather, talk, and share parenting duties. Buildings were simple but could be added to if the family business did well. Buildings were collected in rows that were pleasing to the eye, symmetrical, and just close enough together to make pedestrians feel safe. He cites the book Cognitive Architecture by Ann Sussman and Justin B. Hollander who have found that symmetry and pareidolia, the propensity for humans to find faces in objects, are two of the most pleasing architectural qualities in a city. Ancient cities utilized these frequently, and they were found in abundance in Pompeii’s streets. Thus, he paints a picture of a vibrant, though not perfect, city in which people did not have to work against the design of their surroundings to make a living and find community and beauty.

In the next few chapters, Marohn describes various assumptions that underlie our current development patterns in the United States and why these patterns have resulted in the opposite, in which we often have to work against the design of our cities in order to meet some of our basic needs. He discusses our need to build everything all at once, to completion, which he argues is simply not how complex systems really develop; they ought to grow incrementally. Incremental growth is the key to understanding Marohn’s argument. The most stable growth, he argues, comes when we allow it to come from the bottom up rather than top-down, and when it comes slowly and gradually, as a series of “small bets,” as he calls them, rather than all at once. Projects built all at once tend to fail all at once. Furthermore, we often assume that cities should not run a profit, as if that is somehow only the realm of for-profit businesses, which means that we do not expect that there should be a clear return on investment and often allow cities to use debt to cover up insolvency.

These chapters are also full of data as Marohn breaks down how cities calculate their finances and how some of their assumptions end up favoring the current development pattern— and how many of these assumptions are dangerously inaccurate. One of the most riveting chapters is called “The Infrastructure Cult,” in which he breaks down the assumption—often cited on both sides of the aisle—that Americans must invest billions of dollars into building new infrastructure. Cities currently calculate infrastructure as an asset; this is simply the status quo. Marohn questions this, asking: in what tangible way is infrastructure anything other than a liability? Rather than an asset, he says, the constant maintenance costs of roads and infrastructure are really a liability to cities, and when we build them all at once, to completion, we can expect that they will all begin to fail and require maintenance at the same time. In another chapter, he offers alternatives to some of the conventional thinking around development. Rather than thinking “Build it and they will come,” we ought to begin thinking, “Get them to come so that you can afford to build it.” Instead of thinking, “[m]ajor projects are a catalyst for growth,” we should be thinking, “[m]ajor projects are made possible by productive growth.”

Marohn is honest about what he thinks can be solved and what will simply run its course. Inasmuch as he offers a solution, it is not really a policy solution as much as it is an individual, step-by-step conversion process:

1. Humbly observe your surroundings and where people struggle.
2. Identify one small thing that can be done immediately to improve that situation.
3. Do it immediately.
4. Repeat.

The final chapter is called “An Intentional Life,” and it will likely be the chapter of most interest to readers of Dappled Things. In fact, if all of the above is starting to sound a little like someone who is calling for our cities to be run on the principle of subsidiarity, then this chapter will feel like the revelation of a great secret: Marohn is Catholic and is influenced by the Catholic Social Teaching principle of subsidiarity, which he names. In this chapter, Marohn asks one of his most difficult questions yet: do we really design our cities and spaces to promote the human need to find meaning, most especially through connection with others such as our neighbors or family members? When we reflect on a pattern of development which encourages us to live separately and spread apart over many miles and in which many of us spend hours in our cars commuting alone each day, it is easy to see that we must frequently work against the design of our surroundings in order to find real meaning.

Marohn makes no mention of Nowa Huta in Poland, but his questions in this chapter may remind Catholic readers of this Communist city, designed to be the “city without God.” The city was designed to keep people isolated from one another and working for many hours of the day in order to isolate people from their own families and to prevent them from gathering as communities. It was famous for being built in contrast to medieval cities, with no church at the center. Indeed, reading Marohn, one wonders if our modern cities have not also accomplished many of these objectives and have functionally become “cities without God” as well.

If some of the financial portions of certain chapters leave you a little confused, no matter. In this chapter, the reader begins to realize that in Marohn’s approach to urban development, there is something for everyone. Interested in public health? Why not consider how walkable and bike-friendly streets might not only be the more fiscally responsible alternative to building more infrastructure, but also the possible answer to our obesity epidemic? Interested in mental health? Consider for a moment how our development patterns are leading to an epidemic of isolation and correlated mental health illnesses such as depression. Perhaps you are interested in the sociological ramifications of planning. Marohn discusses here how his “bottom-up” revolution goes counter to the current sway of forces that push people with similar lifestyles and beliefs to socialize and interact only with others who are like themselves, and how complex cities where people get to know their neighbors who are different from them are the only real solution to this.

Marohn avoids writing with the hubris that is often characteristic of “thought leaders” who might identify a trendy problem and perhaps a policy suggestion. Instead, you finish reading the book with a sober awareness of how city finances work but also with an encouraging call to action—to the “next smallest” incremental action that you can do to improve the place you live, starting with the messy, inconvenient, and often humbling business of getting to know our neighbors. Ultimately, Marohn calls us to a humility that is constantly seeking to serve, one small action at a time: not just because it is the only way to solve these problems but because it is the only virtue that will enable us to make long-term sacrifices for future generations. This call to virtue that forms a real, complex community, not just a utopia and not just a group of people who gather to make money, is the real secret of what makes Strong Towns such a compelling read.

Yvonne

Gray stone spires and brave frail leaves
Rise above flat tar roofs.
Higher still—on a train platform—I stand.
Early May. Bullied by a mean wind.

Habit or heart never fails to search
For the dome of childhood’s church
Tucked between the past and eternity.
We children swirled around like blown confetti

In white and deep blue. Every May such
Airy grace! Traffic stopped. Parents hushed
Their tongues of fire. Our twinkling hymns
Carried on the wind like Olympic flames.

* St. Francis de Sales Roman Catholic Church, founded in 1890 in what is now University City of West Philadelphia, is a rare example of Byzantine architecture modeled after the domed Hagia Sophia of Istanbul (Constantinople). The church was one of seven, their parish schools with large enrollments, situated between Market Street and Woodland Avenue: St. James, St. Francis de Sales, Transfiguration of Our Lord, St. Carthage, Most Blessed Sacrament, Good Shepherd, and St. Clement. By the year 2010, because of declining congregations, all were closed or consolidated (with a few name changes) with neighboring parishes.

Yvonne

First Friday Mass done, we children broke
Our twelve-hour fast with a home trek
For trendy Maypo or classic oatmeal
Unless mom’s absent beatific smile
Had soured with poverty or divorce;
Then we pushed for a seat at Pop’s or worse
Stood for grown-up ham, cheese, and scrambled eggs
With real men (like mom) working the dregs.

After lunch at Pop’s Baltimore Trolley stop,
We girls, the small parish frontier group,
Paused the noon hour back to school
At the Catholic gift shop of Billy Boyle
Where we spilled our shallow pocket cents
On holy cards. The one coveted most
Brandished Mary crushing the serpent Satan
On her elevator moon to heaven.

Mother never bought Christmas cards boxed.
But one by one, for fuzzy kin and just plain folks,
She vetted charming Billy’s merchandise
Like the only bee in Paradise.
I drifted, still faithful by her side,
To sacred stuff—would patience provide?
Rosaries of pearls or twinkling crystal,
And St. Joseph’s Daily (bilingual) Missal.

From the apartment on Kingsessing
With a shopping bag of season’s greetings
We took the Baltimore Trolley, then bus
To the dark Market Street post office,
A cathedral of the unblessed sort,
Long gone like Woolworth’s, Horn & Hardart,
The old brown woman selling sassafras,
A root Mother often drank for grace.

Steven Peterson

He’d sit in his old army surplus jeep,
parked up a rise so he might hear the Cubs
broadcast on radio from Chicago
three hundred thirty miles directly south,
as we picked raspberries in the summer sun
of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

We grandkids had to fill our metal pails
with just the plumpest, reddest berries judged
acceptable—swatting bugs, getting bit—
before allowed to climb back in his jeep
to catch the final innings of the game
if, with any luck, the airwaves reached that day.

Once my brother Tom packed his berry pail
with ferns, thin-layering the fruit on top,
and proudly claimed his work was done that day.
It fooled our grandpa; Tom heard all the game
as we picked and sweat and scratched and swatted
down in the berry patch all that afternoon.

That evening, Grandpa went to boil the berries
into jam. He found the boy’s deception
yet didn’t say a word. When morning came,
he let his grandkids sit up on his lap
and let us steer the jeep to town in turns,
except when Tom’s turn came he was denied.

We thought that only fair. But then we saw that
Christmas what our grandpa gave to Tom:
a case of jam close-packed in Mason jars,
a summer’s worth of berry-picking work,
a sweet reminder that forgiveness reaches
out like raspberries, free upon the bush.

Steven Peterson

When Bradford came, our friend’s autistic boy,
We put him in our guest room with his mom.
He doesn’t talk. He watches. That’s his joy.
Sometimes he gets upset; most times he’s calm.
The second day he wandered off alone
Up narrow stairs to where I keep my den.
We heard him there—a floorboard creak, a moan.
His mother said he’s fine; we talked again.
That night I saw what Bradford did: my books
Had all been taken down from shelves and piled
In patterns, somehow based upon their looks.
I stood awhile deciphering, then smiled
At perfect order—color, shape, and size—
For he made things, like God, through gloried eyes.

Steven Peterson

Not peak I like but just a little past
Is best for autumn days I’ve always found,
When colors fade, leaves fall to gold the ground,
And edge the roads and lanes where they’ve amassed.
Like how one maple always is the last
To shed its red to bare trees circled ‘round.
Or how the woods are silent till a sound
Strikes when a deer is flushed and bolts off fast.
For at their peak, fall colors prove us fools
By tempting thought that things will never change.
Of course they do, they die. And so it’s wise
To live along the downward slope, where rules
Are set in time we cannot rearrange.
Like leaves we fall, believing we will rise.

Jeffrey Essmann

Fourteen or so, one autumn afternoon,
my homework done and supper hours away,
I scuffed along on sodden paths bestrewn
with yellowed leaves in woods where I’d once played.
Perhaps it was the setting sun that grayed
the air, perhaps a sudden chill just then,
but something in my soul began to weigh
the thought I’d never be a boy again.
And now as I move through the world of men,
live by my wits and somewhat by my strength,
there nonetheless still comes the time at length,
late afternoon inside my office when
I of a sudden catch the subtle musk:
the sour smell of oak leaves in the dusk.

Jeffrey Essmann

The world has known more threadbare days than these,
I’m sure, with history’s edges rubbed so raw
that time and truth were chafed and ill at ease,
and humans failed both spirit and the law.
So while we find our troubled times unique,
we’re never really out of Egypt, out
of Babylon, still crying out and weak
in Sinai’s desert, plagued with doubt.
And God won’t turn the TV off or stop
the news or make the bad man go away.
He’ll help us, though, our desert madness drop
and guide us back to grace’s simple sway.
He’ll bring us back to mornings free of fear,
when birds alone can bring a soul to tears.