Friday Links
Denise Trull on The Inestimable Value of Genuine Praise
Madison Notes Podcast with Julia Yost
Grace Hamman on Sister Penelope in Expectation
Advent Carol Service: St John’s College Cambridge 1981 (George Guest)
Dana Gioia on why Words Matter
Denise Trull on The Inestimable Value of Genuine Praise
Denise Trull’s Substack, The Inscapist, is truly wonderful. She has an uncanny knack for finding the buried story or anecdote that opens up a fresh understanding of beauty, poetry, how to live, and so much more.
To any poet or writer those words would have been flattering enough, but to this middle-aged man who probably assumed his books of poetry had not been read for years, it was balm, and kindness, and a renewed enthusiasm for beauty. I bet he did a little dance around his room, gave an extra dose of Port to the retriever, went to his bookshelves and dusted off his poetry books. Someone had KNOWN him through his writing. Love of poetry had given Gerard the courage to write and gave Dixon a real happiness. That moves me to the very core!
Madison Notes Podcast with Julia Yost
Julia Yost discusses her fantastic monograph Jane Austen’s Darkness (from Wiseblood Essays in Contemporary Culture series). If you haven’t heard Julia share her thoughts on Jane Austen, I highly recommend you listen to this episode of Madison Notes. Julia is witty and smart and really funny and has a lot to say about Austen and the world she lived in and created.
Grace Hamman on Sister Penelope in Expectation
Grace Hamman on the translator, St. Penelope, known as “A Religious of CSMV.”
Sister Penelope preferred another metaphor: she often returned to the old cliché that we can struggle to “see the wood for the trees.” The trees of our present-day Christianity, for Sister Penelope, include our attempts to read and understand confusing scriptural passages in isolation, and our cultural and political quarrels – sometimes silly and sometimes, when they ferment into hatred, devastating.
Advent Carol Service: St John’s College Cambridge 1981 (George Guest)
Thanks to Joseph Bottum for the tip on this video of a live Advent Carol Service that was broadcast on BBC radio from the chapel of St John’s College Cambridge, 29 November 1981.
Dana Gioia on why Words Matter
The challenge for the composer of operas today is to find a collaborator with the skills necessary to create a compelling libretto. Two hundred years ago, there were poets who specialized in writing theatrical verse, especially for the prestigious medium of opera. Today, there is no living literary tradition of writing libretti. Nor is there much expertise among managers of opera companies in evaluating texts beyond checking that they deliver the bare theatrical essentials.
