Friday Links

St. Hilda of Whitby

November 17, 2023

Mary, Queen of Angels

Daniel Cooper in Light: “Petrarch On (Not) Reading Dante”

James Matthew Wilson on Michigan

W. H. Auden’s syllabus for English 135, “Fate and the Individual in European Literature.”

Jackson Arn: The Sphere and Our Immersion Complex

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Mary, Queen of Angels

Our next issue should be arriving in mailboxes soon. This lovely issue features the winners of the Søren Kierkegaard Prize for Poetry, fiction from 2022 J.F. Powers Prize finalists Nathan Alling Long and Violet Piper, visual art from Matilde Olivera, Lesley Clinton’s review of Timothy Bartel’s most recent collection of verse, A Crown for Abba Moses, and Joan Bauer’s review of Daniel McInerny’s, The Good Death of Kate Montclair, and more. You can also order vintage issues of Dappled Things here.

Daniel Cooper in Light: “Petrarch On (Not) Reading Dante”

Oh, this is so fun! Well done, Daniel!

I’m not the kind of guy who likes to read
that cheugy stuff the masses talk about.
His popularity gets on my nerves.
The Comedy was his big thing, and no,
I haven’t read it, well not all of it.
I skimmed a few lines and was not impressed,
but I have heard enough performances
to last an afterlife—talk about Hell!

James Matthew Wilson on Michigan

In case you didn’t already know, James Matthew Wilson really loves his home state of Michigan, that place of lakes and weed dispensaries (in fairness, the weed dispensaries are cropping up everywhere, not just Michigan). This is a beautiful essay on love and piety, on loving what you’ve been given, which includes the past, tradition, history, place:

One of the clichés of our presentist age is the opprobrious phrase, “nostalgia for a time that never was.” This formulation attempts to dismiss as fantasy what is in fact recollection, the possession within the heart, of what has been lost in the world. Yes, nostalgia gilds a memory and in this sense falsifies, but it also reminds. Nostalgia cherishes and longs to return to goods that are justly held precious—precious not because they are universally great but because they are particularly ours.

Read the whole thing. It’s great.

W. H. Auden’s syllabus for English 135, “Fate and the Individual in European Literature.”

Since we’re already “in” Michigan we may as well discuss Auden’s syllabus for English 135, a two credit course, 6000+ pages of reading. It’s amazing.

Jackson Arn: The Sphere and Our Immersion Complex

A few of my friends have attended concerts at the Sphere, “the new “entertainment venue"“ in Vegas. It looks weird and seems like an awful place to see a concert, movie, or show, but then I think Vegas seems awful. The whole “immersive” art experience thing also seems awful to me. As with so many other things, just because we have the technology doesn’t mean we should use it.

All art makes some initial pitch for attention. In immersive art, sustaining attention isn’t the means; it’s the point, the work’s way of justifying itself. As such, the pitch is almost always the hard sell—intense, elemental sensation, immediately delivered. Sometimes the method of immersion is scale; often, it’s eye-wrecking color, or some all-out assault on the visual field. This sounds vaguely tyrannical, but immersion, as an ethos, is sweetly democratic. It treats all of us the same and requires the same thing from each of us—usually, nothing.

Put your phone away and go for a hike. Then come home, hang out and chat, make dinner, have a drink, read a book, say your prayers, go to sleep.