Friday Links
July 12, 2024
T-Wharf, Boston, Massachusetts by Arthur Clifton Goodwin
The Mind of the Maker and the Art of Liturgy: A Poet’s Eye View
“The Path” by Alfred Nicol
Working the Soil in American Literature: A Review of Ethan Mannon’s Georgic Mode
Joseph M. Hassett: Imperishable Song
The Rose Fire from Paul Pastor
New Verse Review Is Open For Submissions
The Mind of the Maker and the Art of Liturgy: A Poet’s Eye View
Marly Youmans on the “poet’s eye view”:
Made in the image of the Maker, we’re all makers, whether we’re baking or roofing or turning a pot on the wheel. We have the urge to make, to use some Ars, some art, skill, or craft: this is the inner call to imagination, to bodying forth some new thing, some sub-creation. Those of us who want to paint or sculpt or compose or dance or make stories and poems have often—perhaps not so much lately, and certainly not among the institutionalized “avant-garde”—been the wandering pursuers of the great transcendentals inherited from the classical world. Beauty, truth, and goodness would probably be regarded as excessive demands for most making, but perhaps not for, say, a poet pouring his energies into the uncompromising shape of a traditional sonnet. The poet is not thinking about beauty or truth, though he is attempting to capture something—to catch it in a net of words, or as Yeats would say, “a mouthful of air.”
“The Path” by Alfred Nicol
A poem by Alfred Nicol in Plough on that path that “takes you back to where you are.”
Working the Soil in American Literature: A Review of Ethan Mannon’s Georgic Mode
From Lucas Nossaman in Front Porch Republic:
An essential step in becoming a perceptive reader of nature writing is to learn the difference between pastoral and georgic. The distinction often comes as a revelation. Whereas pastoral derives from the shepherding tradition of Virgil’s Eclogues and emphasizes the idyllic life of nature, georgic gets its name from Virgil’s titular poem concerned with the painstaking labor, environmental and seasonal conditions, and soil conservation and animal husbandry of actual farming. So, for example, when some call out Wendell Berry for idealizing rural life, the sophisticated reader is prepared to defend his work as decisively more georgic than pastoral.
Joseph M. Hassett: Imperishable Song
Heaney’s letter-writing practice runs counter to Harold Bloom’s theory that emerging writers are so beset by anxiety about the influence of their predecessors that they misread or distort the predecessor in order to protect their own claim to originality. Heaney’s easy use of Yeats’s phrases and diction bespeaks an underlying confidence that enabled him to embrace his predecessor. Heaney was doing exactly what Eavan Boland suggested in answer to a question about the difficulty of writing in Yeats’s shadow: ‘Why not try writing in his light?’
The Rose Fire from Paul Pastor
Paul has a new Substack where he
draw[s] our eye to ideas, images, and individuals worthy of attention. The goal is to recover “beauty in defense of the soul,” in order to mount a joyful, common, and potent stand against the degradation, inhumanity, and tedium of contemporary life. Untamed nature, rich culture, honest conversation, and the best of the Christian tradition will meet you here, with wild-eyed wisdom, good humor, and a dose of childlike wonder.
I promise you, it is very good!
New Verse Review Is Open For Submissions
Our friends over at New Verse Review are open for poetry submissions this month. Guidelines for submitting are available at the link.
