Poetry meme

Found at Inscapes (a blog Bill Luse likes), after clicking on the label "poetry."

1. The first poem I remember reading/hearing/reacting to was .....

2. I was forced to memorize ..... in school and .....

3. I read/don't read poetry because .....

4. A poem I'm likely to think about when asked about a favorite poem is .....

5. I write/don't write poetry, but .....

6. My experience with reading poetry differs from my experience with reading other types of literature .....

7. I find poetry .....

8. The last time I heard poetry .....

9. I think poetry is like .....

My answers:

1. The first poems were of course the songs I heard on AM radio before the age of three. Then, later: Beatles lyrics, and Robert Frost (age 11, just as I was beginning to write rhymes of my own).

2. Memorably, I was forced to memorize Poe's "Annabel Lee" in school. I was out of school when the assignment was given, to be done by the following day. So that following day I was in class, sweating bullets and frantically hoping the teacher wouldn't call on me before I had the chance to memorize the piece right then and there! In 30 minutes, I managed to memorize enough of the poem to earn a grade of 15 out of 20.

3. I read poetry because for me, it is almost the only kind of literature worth reading!

4. Favorite poems include Dylan Thomas's "Prologue"; Shakespeare's sonnet 18; Catullus's "Odi et amo" (I hate and I love); many poems by Cummings; Theodore Roethke's "I knew a woman, lovely in her bones"; Countee Cullen's "A Song of Praise"; "O Holy Night" in French (Minuit, chrétiens); and a hundred others.

5. I used to write poetry. Nowadays, I perpetrate a feeble kind of light verse every once in a blue moon.

6. See answer to #3!

7. I find poetry where it can be found, which is almost everywhere.

8. The last time I heard poetry was my own viva voce reading of A Child's Christmas In Wales last night. Prose poetry, but poetry nonetheless!

9. I think poetry is like nothing else in the world. (Oh, what am I supposed to say?) I think poetry is loads of fun. And more, I think poetry is necessary, at least for me.

José Garcia Villa

Bring the pigeons watermelons, Abelard.
The order has cool philosophic purity.
This is not largesse but Roman nobility.

Bring the peacocks oranges.
Turn the philosophy to sensuousness.
Pallas Athene is Greek thereby.

But if we bring the watermelons pigeons?
If we bring the oranges peacocks?
Is that very difficult?

This would not be Greek nor Roman,
This would be purity without philosophy.
This would be artistry.

José Garcia Villa, poem #34, in Doveglion: Collected Poems, ed. John Edwin Cowen, intro. Luis H. Francia (Penguin Books, 2008), pp. 21-22.

Prayers

This Christmas evening, it's probably a good idea to pray for the peace of mind of the troubled woman who ran at the Holy Father as the late-night Christmas Mass began, and for the healing of Cardinal Etchegaray who broke a bone (his hip, was it?) during the confusion.

Incarnation

by Dr. Eric Milner-White (1884-1963)

What is man that thou visitest him,
      and the son of man that thou so regardest him?

LORD, let me kneel before thy miracle
      -- an infant in a stable
            on a human mother's breast,
      from all eternity thine only begotten Son,
            thy Word from before beginning,
      God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God,
            of his own choice, of thine own purpose,
                  made mortal man.

What is man that thou visitest him,
      and the son of man that thou so regardest him?

O CHRIST, let me kneel before the wonder of thy Glory
            thus made manifest to all flesh;
      to be made one with thy lowliness,
                  one with thine obedience,
                  one with thy majesty of love,
      in a union, that by thy grace
                  shall know no divorce
                      unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Eric Milner-White, My God, My Glory : Aspirations, Acts, and Prayers on the Desire for God, ed. Joyce Huggett (London : Triangle/SPCK, 1994), p. 57

O come, all ye faithful ...

Adeste, fideles,
laeti triumphantes,
venite, venite in Bethlehem.
Natum videte regem angelorum!
Venite adoremus Dominum!

En, grege relicto,
humiles ad cunas
vocati pastores approperant :
et nos ovanti gradu festinemus!
Venite adoremus Dominum!

A kid's answer to a Santa question

This was on the news around here. A reporter was asking little kids questions about jolly old St. Nick, and one of the questions was, "How fast does Santa's sleigh fly?"

A girl of about six came up with the best answer. She thought about it and said, "Ten seconds per second."

Christmas Eve

A meditation by the distinguished 20th-century Anglican churchman Eric Milner-White.

Take it up to the next level

Do you or some of your co-workers utilize -- I mean, use -- these jargonistic terms?

On a happier note!

Enbrethiliel gives us a characteristically cheery post for her Sacerdotal Sunday: about the Curé of Ars; about "sin detection" and running shoes; about smiling at the thought of returning to dust, and other good things.

And yes, on Ash Wednesday, I wish I could hear the priest say to me, in "sexist" iambic Elizabethan: "Remember, man, that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return."

More unpleasantness

Anti-Christian graffiti mars the site of the Last Supper. Graffiti and so forth.

Via Catholic and Enjoying It!

Trashing Pope Pius XII

The American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League can, and should, shut their faces.

Thomas Merton, great Christian pacifist

The race situation is certainly ugly and out of hand, and I see it as pretty hopeless. But it was to be expected. Too bad it tends to nullify all the good work and all the sacrifice of Martin Luther King and his followers. But if the country insists on practicing terrorism in Viet Nam then it deserves to get a taste of it at home. Only the ones who get it aren't the ones who deserve it.

Thomas Merton to James Laughlin, letter, August 1, 1967. From Thomas Merton and James Laughlin: Selected Letters (W. W. Norton & Co., 1997), p. 326 [italics mine]

GKC on Christmas

At Enchiridion.