Too good for Twitter.

I know I'm going to want to remember the wording of this at some point in the future and I'll never recover it from Twitter:

christ, weakened by scandal and floundering in the political fight of his life, ignores advisors' advice and plays the grace card

-@markleidner

Mark Leidner, if you're wondering, is a poet who's written, among other things, a great little book of aphorisms. I'm not sure if he's just after the "grace" pun or means something more serious. That dissonance of meaning is probably the point, but what do I know.

Richard Wilbur.

Over the long weekend, I spent some time dipping into Richard Wilbur's 2004 Collected Poems. What initially sent me to the library for this volume was an essay about Wilbur in First Things (paywall'd). This essay praised Wilbur's quiet way of writing as a Christian. That's certainly cool, but what I enjoyed most was "Mr. Wilbur's virtuosity in meter and rhyme" and "the springy elegance of his mind," as Richard B. Woodward put it in the Wall Street Journal.

My favorite entry in the "Table of Dates" included in the Penguin Classics edition of Ben Jonson's Complete Poems.

"1618-19: Walks to Scotland and back; meets Drummond in Scotland."

C.S. Lewis's poetry.

For Keats' Sake! has posted a few of C.S. Lewis's poems, with some commentary. If you're interested in Lewis's early dislike of T.S. Eliot, or if you want to know what Lewis thought of gnomes, it's worth reading.

Speaking of Lewis and verse, a family member gave me a copy of Alan Jacobs's biography of Lewis, The Narnian, for Christmas. Jacobs discusses poetry's power over the intellectuals of Lewis's generation; the best illustration of this comes in the context of Lewis's lifelong love for A. E. Housman's The Shropshire Lad:

When [Lewis] was about sixty he and his wife were found—by her son—weeping in the common room of their house. "Nothing's wrong, Doug," Lewis said. "We're reading the poems of A. E. Housman and they always do this to us."

Generally, the best responses my generation can summon for verse are genial admiration and contemplative silence; I only know one or two people who admit to ever having wept over poetry.

“The Hidden Life”

Noah Millman recently linked to an article he wrote for First Things on fatherhood and adoption. It is a beautiful article. Down at the bottom of the page, there was a special treat: a poem that Joseph Bottum wrote for Dana Gioia on the occasion of Gioia's stepping up to the position of chairman of the National Endowment for the arts. Since it's free on the archives, I'm going to post it here.

The Hidden Life
by Joseph Bottum

For the poet Dana Gioia,
upon his taking a public office.

Sometimes on evening walks you hear,
in whispers from old wells
and almost-words that rivers speak,
a quiet voice that tells
of small, secluded things. Like murmured
prayers from churchmen’s stalls
or what the marbled echoes say,
it rises, then it falls.
And you may follow when it calls

or you may think to wait. The green
at dusk seems deeper than
the green at dawn. Beyond the gate
a garden opens on
long shadows overgrown with leaves
and lilac nunneries,
between the gravel paths, where sparrows
seek their tenebraes.
And you may follow, if you please,

or keep to public streets. Against
the bruit of busy day,
the private houses close their eyes.
A few small panes betray
high bookshelves in a firelit room,
a woman sweeping floors,
a glimpse of some unknowing boy
at work at evening chores.
And you may follow, through those doors,

or you may turn aside. In lines
of black between the flames,
a fire writes against its light.
Dry hopes, forgotten fames,
the traceless works of childless men:
All printed there to read.
The cinders spell the deeper night,
dark need inside dark need.
And you may follow where they lead

or you may look away.

Poetry of sheer delight.

I know I have one Canadian reader (and perhaps two), and so here's a relevant epigram from the latest issue of First Things.


A Stern Warning to Canada
A.M. Juster

If you want peace,
withdraw your geese.