(alias Dusty Springfield)
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Possibly upcoming
- A poem by Jessica Powers
- Haiku by dylanissimus
- Political obiter dicta
- Reflections on the Sacrament of Reconciliation
Stay tuned!
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Bocelli and Bach: Ave Maria
Not only is this musically quite lovely, but the video is also beautifully made.
Friday, January 20, 2012
A preamble, a modern hymn, and a prayer
The singer/guitarist in this video is, I believe, a priest. The hymn is "Cry of the Poor," written by John Foley, SJ in 1978.
There is a preamble where the singer invites us to prayer; the hymn begins at approximately 1 minute, 40 seconds, into the video.
I needed to hear this hymn tonight.
There is a preamble where the singer invites us to prayer; the hymn begins at approximately 1 minute, 40 seconds, into the video.
I needed to hear this hymn tonight.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Notes Toward a Supreme Ghazal
Ms Hacker likes to
write in the ghazal form.
She does something every night in the ghazal form.
I've never attempted this mode of Arabic verse,
But I should try something light in the ghazal form.
It might also be a medium for invective:
Do poets vent their spite in the ghazal form?
It's mystifying to me, really, how anyone
Could seem to take delight in the ghazal form.
The anticlimactic repetition ending each couplet
Makes it difficult to excite in the ghazal form.
Hard to imagine Michael Longley or Seamus Heaney
Remembering the potato blight in the ghazal form.
Even a mind of the caliber of Albert Einstein
Would sound less than bright in the ghazal form.
Yet some American poets can make good verse
About war-torn countries' plight in the ghazal form.
O dylan of darkspeech, fight! Let your words take flight!
Show your poetic might in the ghazal form!
She does something every night in the ghazal form.
I've never attempted this mode of Arabic verse,
But I should try something light in the ghazal form.
It might also be a medium for invective:
Do poets vent their spite in the ghazal form?
It's mystifying to me, really, how anyone
Could seem to take delight in the ghazal form.
The anticlimactic repetition ending each couplet
Makes it difficult to excite in the ghazal form.
Hard to imagine Michael Longley or Seamus Heaney
Remembering the potato blight in the ghazal form.
Even a mind of the caliber of Albert Einstein
Would sound less than bright in the ghazal form.
Yet some American poets can make good verse
About war-torn countries' plight in the ghazal form.
O dylan of darkspeech, fight! Let your words take flight!
Show your poetic might in the ghazal form!
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Bard of Avon Calling
I need to re-purchase a
copy of Hamlet. The Pelican Shakespeare version of the famous play has
these bizarre editorial emendations, "Lamort" instead of "Lamound," "heated visage" instead of "tristful
visage," and so on. It's like reading the New American Bible version of the
Bard of Avon.
Existence or its opposite? That's what I am asking myself.
Whether it be more or less dignified to put up with
The barbs and darts of brash Luck, or to use weapons
Against distress's oceans, to stop them from happening.
Too tired to translate the whole soliloquy into the NAB idiom.
Existence or its opposite? That's what I am asking myself.
Whether it be more or less dignified to put up with
The barbs and darts of brash Luck, or to use weapons
Against distress's oceans, to stop them from happening.
Too tired to translate the whole soliloquy into the NAB idiom.
Heschel III
Prayer is not a stratagem for occasional use, a refuge to resort to now and then. It is rather like an established residence for the innermost self. All things have a home: the bird has a nest, the fox has a hole, the bee has a hive. A soul without prayer is a soul without a home. Weary, sobbing, the soul, after wandering through a world festered with aimlessness, falsehoods and absurdities, seeks a moment in which to gather up its scattered life, in which to divest itself of enforced pretensions and camouflage, in which to simplify complexities, in which to call for help without being a coward. Such a home is prayer. Continuity, perseverance, intimacy, authenticity, earnestness are its attributes. For the soul, home is where prayer is.
Abraham Joshua Heschel, “On Prayer,” from Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays, ed. Susannah Heschel (Farrar Straus Giroux, 1996), p. 258
Abraham Joshua Heschel, “On Prayer,” from Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays, ed. Susannah Heschel (Farrar Straus Giroux, 1996), p. 258
Monday, January 09, 2012
More from Heschel
Wonder rather than doubt is the root of knowledge.
*
When in doubt, we raise questions; when in wonder, we do not even know how to ask a question.
*
There is no answer in the world to man's radical wonder. Under the running sea of our theories and scientific explanations lies the aboriginal abyss of radical amazement.
*
We must keep our own amazement, our own eagerness alive. And if we ever fail in our quest for insight, it is not because it cannot be found, but because we do not know how to live, or how to beware of the mind's narcissistic tendency to fall in love with its own reflection ...
*
What is subtle speculation worth without the pristine insight into the sacredness of life, an insight which we try to translate into philosophy's rational terms, into religion's ways of living, into art's forms and visions?
*
Souls that are focused and do not falter at first sight, falling back on words and ready-made notions with which the memory is replete, can behold the mountains as if they were gestures of exaltation.
*
from Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion, pp. 11-15, passim
*
When in doubt, we raise questions; when in wonder, we do not even know how to ask a question.
*
There is no answer in the world to man's radical wonder. Under the running sea of our theories and scientific explanations lies the aboriginal abyss of radical amazement.
*
We must keep our own amazement, our own eagerness alive. And if we ever fail in our quest for insight, it is not because it cannot be found, but because we do not know how to live, or how to beware of the mind's narcissistic tendency to fall in love with its own reflection ...
*
What is subtle speculation worth without the pristine insight into the sacredness of life, an insight which we try to translate into philosophy's rational terms, into religion's ways of living, into art's forms and visions?
*
Souls that are focused and do not falter at first sight, falling back on words and ready-made notions with which the memory is replete, can behold the mountains as if they were gestures of exaltation.
*
from Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion, pp. 11-15, passim
Wednesday, January 04, 2012
Abraham Joshua Heschel
It is the sense of the sublime that we have to regard as the root of man's creative activities in art, thought and noble living. Just as no flora has ever fully displayed the hidden vitality of the earth, so has no work of art ever brought to expression the depth of the unutterable, in the sight of which the souls of saints, poets and philosophers live.
+ + +
Only those who live on borrowed words believe in their gift of expression. A sensitive person knows that the intrinsic, the most essential, is never expressed.
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[from Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion (Noonday, 1979), p. 4]
+ + +
Only those who live on borrowed words believe in their gift of expression. A sensitive person knows that the intrinsic, the most essential, is never expressed.
+ + +
[from Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion (Noonday, 1979), p. 4]
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