The Small Rain by Madeleine L’Engle

Apr19

I’ve been working on several projects this year: my Newbery project, my TBR list, and my Madeleine L’Engle project. I want, over the course of the next year or two, to read or re-read all of Ms. L’Engle’s books —or as many of them as I can find. I started with A Winter’s Love, published in 1957, my birth year. Here’s what I wrote about that book. I then read Camilla, one of her first novels published in 1951 and then re-published in 1965 after A Wrinkle in Time won the Newbery and made Ms. L’Engle famous. I wrote about Camilla here.

During my blogging break in March, I re-read Ms. L’Engle’s first published novel, A Small Rain. It’s the story of Katherine Forrester, the daughter of two famous musicians. her mother is a celebrated concert pianist, and her father is an eccentric, but talented, composer. The novel follows Katherine through her lonely and difficult adolescence and ends with her plan to return to study with her beloved piano teacher, Justin, in Paris on the eve of what turns out to be World War II.

After reading A Small Rain, I had to skip ahead chronologically in Ms. L’Engle’s oeuvre and read A Severed Wasp, probably my second favorite of all Ms. L’Engle’s novels. She wrote A Severed Wasp (1982) as a sort of sequel to A Small Rain (1945) some thirty-seven years later. In this book, Madame Forrester Vigneras is an elderly woman beginning the task of looking back on her life and evaluating, forgiving, and coming to terms with the people and events that made her who she is. She has settled in New York City after a career as concert pianist travelling all over the world. The book contains multiple insights about love, marriage, forgiveness, aging gracefully, and simple grace, and it demonstrates maturity, wisdom, and craft gained by the author over many years of writing.

I highly recommend both books, read together if possible.

“. . . there was nothing Felix Bodeway couldn’t talk about, nothing he couldn’t put into words as facile as they were intense. And maybe that was good . . . maybe that was a way of exorcising things that worry you. For when you put something into words, it becomes an affair of the intellect as well as of the emotions, and therefore loses some of its fearsome power.” —A Small Rain

Words are useful for entrapping emotions and experiences and confining them to manageble proportions. It’s part of why I blog. I like using words and sentences to define my thoughts and feelings about a book or an issue or an everyday occurrence or even an episode of a TV show. Then, I can remember and re-examine and take out whatever is illogical or immoral or unreal, just leaving the true and the lovely essence of whatever it is I’m writing about.

At least, Truth is the goal. And truth, if one can get to it with words, even approximate it, does minimize, sometimes eliminate, fear.

Next L’Engle book to read: And Both Were Young, published in 1949.

What do you think about the covers of these 1980’s paperback editions? I’m not much of a design critic, but I think they’re odd with their pieces of face.

All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren

Apr10

Once upon a time, about twenty-five years ago, I read a biography of Huey “Kingfish” Long, and I only remember the highlights: Huey ran Louisiana in the 1930’s, was a populist to end all populists, had a proposed program called “Share the Wealth,” and was assassinated by some guy who was in turn shot by Long’s bodyguard(s). Robert Penn Warren’s 1947 Pulitzer prize winning fictional account of the life and times of Willie Stark, popular governor of an unnamed Southern state, pretty much follows the general outline of what I remember of Long’s career. However, it’s been a long time, so I can’t vouch for the details.

The book is much more than Huey Long renamed and fictionalized, however. It’s an exploration of how power corrupts, of how we’re all, as Willie says, “conceived in sin and born in corruption.” The novel is misnamed. It’s either about Willie and one of his men, the narrator, Jack Burden. Or it’s about all the King’s women —his long-suffering wife, Lucy, his mistress, Sadie, and his upper class lover, Anne. For a Southern novel it’s strangely silent on the subject of race and race relations. It seems that in the Louisiana of Willie Stark, black people are to be seldom seen and definitely not heard. It’s the white voters who count, and Willie has a gift for making the poor white hicks of rural Louisiana feel as if they’re an important part of the power structure. He’s one of them, he says, a hick, too, raised up by God to lead them on to good roads, decent sanitation, free education, and universal health care. And he’ll pay for it all by taxing the rich. Gee, haven’t we all heard that speech before? Maybe old Huey/Willie has been reincarnated several times since the 1930’s.

“For what reason, barring Original Sin, is a man most likely to step over the line?
Ambition, love, fear, money.”

All the King’s Men explores all of these motivations for sin and corruption. The novel’s characters display the consequences of action and of inaction in a world in which the choices are between using evil means to create some possible (corrupt) good or remaining pure by not participating in the world, particularly the world of politics, at all. I think there is a Third Way, as Bill Clinton and Tony Blair would say, but perhaps I am mistaken. Or perhaps in Louisiana there are only two possibilities: become corrupted by the process or stand back and let the corrupt men rule the state.

It seems to me that all this should relate to New Orleans post-Katrina, but I’m not sure how it does.

Resurrection Reading: Night by Elie Wiesel

Apr7

No, I’ve never read this account of Mr. Wiesel’s experiences during the final days of World War II as he is enslaved in first Birkenau, then Auschwitz, then Buna, and finally Buchenwald, not until this week. It’s not a long book, only a little over a hundred pages, but it’s about the most powerful indictment of the evil that lies deep inside every man that I’ve ever read. If you don’t believe in “original sin,” Night will change your mind. It’s a very, very dark story, and the fact that it’s true and told in a quite factual manner makes it even more disturbing. The Nazi persecution and near-extermination of the Jews happened; it’s depressing, but unavoidable. And as Mr. Wiesel shows in his book, even those who were enslaved and murdered were not able to remain pure; he tells over and over again of how son turned against father, how friends fought each other for a scrap of bread, and of how he found himself doing and thinking things that would have been unthinkable before his captivity.

So why is this “Resurrection Reading”? Well, despite the “night” that pervades this book and despite the death that is its constant theme, the book points me, as a Christian, to resurrection. Jesus said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.” By extension, only the dead need a resurrection, and only he who is aquainted with both the depravity of man and the evil that is within his own being is aware of his need of a saviour.

As the book ends, Mr. Wiesel has been liberated from Buchenwald, but he looks into the mirror and sees a corpse. Only a resurrection can help this particular patient.

Night is definitely appropriate and powerful reading for a Holy Saturday of darkness.

Marty

Feb13

Someone on a blog somewhere suggested the movie Marty, and we borrowed it from Blockbuster and watched it last Friday afternoon. It’s a light, sort of romantic, movie, perfect for Valentine’s Day, but at the same time the themes and some of the scenes are jarringly tragic and almost painful to watch.

Marty was made back in 1955, and it won four Oscars that year, including Best Picture. Ernest Borgnine (Oscar for Best Actor) stars as a 35 year old Italian butcher who’s still not married in spite of the fact that all his younger brothers and sisters have already tied the knot. His very Italian mother and all of his customers and friends wonder, loudly and persistently, why Marty doesn’t have a girl. In fact, they all say, with their thick Italian accents, “Marty, you should be ‘shamed of yourself. Why aren’t you married yet?”

Marty, however, isn’t married for the very good reason that he hasn’t found a girl who’s interested. “Ma,” he says, “sooner or later, there comes a point in a man’s life when he’s gotta face some facts. And one fact I gotta face is that, whatever it is that women like, I ain’t got it.”

Marty also calls himself “a fat, ugly man,” and it’s obvious from the beginning of the movie that Marty is a man whose self-esteem has suffered a series of blows from heartless girls and interfering friends and family members. His mother, essentially good-hearted but worried about her son and his future, convinces Marty to make one more trip to the Stardust Ballroom in hopes of meeting a girl. And, wonder of wonders, he does! Unfortunately, for Marty and for his girl Clara, everyone in Marty’s life, including Marty himself, is more used to Marty the Lonely Bachelor, than Marty in Love. Change is threatening, and Marty’s best friend is jealous of the time Marty spends with Clara. His mother, who so much wanted him to marry and have a family, is now afraid that a daughter-in-law might push her out into the cold. (Marty lives with his mother in an old 40’s style house, with a porch!, in New York City.)

Will Marty call Clara for another date as he promised he would? Will he continue to see Clara even though his friends and family disapprove? Or will he listen to those bad advisors and end up hanging out with the guys, asking that eternal question: “Whatd’ya wanna do tonight?” “I dunno. Whatd’you feel like doin’?”

This movie was such a challenge to Hollywood stereotypes: a movie about a nearly middle-aged butcher and an awkward chemistry teacher. And the “ugly ducklings” never turn into swans, either. They find a meaningful relationship without becoming something other than what they are. The leading man in this movie isn’t tall, dark, or handsome, nor is he witty, suave or debonaire. The girl (Betsy Blair) isn’t such a “dog” as some in the movie call her, but she is sweet and shy and rather unassuming. My urchins, who hate Napoleon Dynamite, will cringe to hear me say so, but the movie reminded me of a kinder, gentler Napoleon Dynamite.

It’s good to see a movie in which Hollywood celebrates ordinary, average guys and gals who live simple lives and still want love and marriage and all that implies.

The story and the screenplay for Marty were written by playwright Paddy Chayefsky, who, according to Wikipedia, has been compared to Arthur Miller. I was going to write that Marty also reminded me a bit of Miller’s salesman, Willy Loman, but again much kinder and gentler and much less tragic than Mr. Loman. I thought this story about Mr. Chayefsky, also from Wikipedia, showed a a good picture of his character:

He is known for his comments during the 1978 Oscar telecast after Vanessa Redgrave made a controversial speech denouncing Zionism while accepting her award for Best Supporting Actress in Julia. Chayefsky made a comment during the program immediately after hers stating that he was upset by her using the event to make an irrelevant political viewpoint during a film award program. He said, “I would like to suggest to Miss Redgrave that her winning an Academy Award is not a pivotal moment in history, does not require a proclamation and a simple ‘Thank you’ would have sufficed.” He received thunderous applause for his riposte to Redgrave.

Marty was a good movie, and I really liked the porch.

Newbery Project: The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles by Padraic Colum

Feb4

In 1922, the first year that the Newbery Medal was awarded, one of the “runners-up” later called “honor books,” was The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles by an Irish storyteller named Padraic Colum. Mr. Colum was a poet and a playwright and a friend of James Joyce, but his retelling of myths, legends, and folklore for children came to be his most enduring work. Padraic Colum won the Regina Medal in 1961 for his “distinguished contribution to children’s literature.” Some of his other books include The Children’s Homer, The Children of Odin, The Arabian Nights, and The King of Ireland’s Son. Padraic Colum was born December 8, 1881, and he died on January 12, 1972.

“In transferring a story of the kind I heard then to the pages of a collection, elements are lost, many elements —the quietness of the surroundings, the shadows on the smoke-browned walls, the crickets chirping in the ashes, the corncrake in the near meadow, or the more distant crying of a snipe or curlew, and (for a youngster) the directness of statement, or, simply the evocation of wonder.” ~Padraic Colum

Padraic Colum grew up listening to stories told by the fire or in the meadow, and The Golden Fleece is written in the voice of a storyteller; it’s meant to be read aloud and to evoke wonder. The syntax and writing style are poetic and begging to be read to listening ears. In addition to the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece, Colum blended into his narrative many of the older Greek myths: Persephone, Pandora’s Box, Theseus and the Minotaur, and the Labors of Hercules, just to name a few. I’m planning a year of ancient history and literature next school year, and I think The Golden Fleece will be our first read aloud as we study Greek history and literature.

Willy Pogany, the illustrator for this compilation, is one of my favorites. In some of the other books I have that are illlustrated by Pogany, his illustrations are full-color paintings, but the illustrations in The Golden Fleece are black and white line drawings reminiscent of the pictures on Greek vases. I can envision having my urchins copy one of the pictures in the book as an art project, then maybe make their own drawing in the same style.

Although The Golden Fleece would be perfect for read aloud time, I also think that all those kids who can’t get enough of Rick Riordan’s The Lightning Thief might want to go to the source, so to speak, and I can’t think of a better source for Greek mythology than Colum’s The Golden Fleece. So, as I begin my Newbery Project, Padraic Colum’s Newbery Honor Book wins a Newbery renewal for its beautiful use of language and powerful storytelling voice. This one stands the test of time, maybe because the stories themselves are timeless, but also because the storyteller, like Orpheus the Singer, knew how to tell a tale.

“Many were the minstrels who, in the early days, went through the world, telling to men the stories of the gods, telling of their wars and of their births. Of all these minstrels non was so famous as Orpheus who had gone with the argonauts; none could tell truer things about the gods, for he himself was half divine.

Orpheus sang to his lyre. Orpheus, the minstrel, who knew the ways and the stories of the gods; out in the open sea on the first morning of the voyage Orpheus sang to them of the beginning of things.”

The Newbery Award: 1923 and 1924

Feb1

In 1923 and 1924, the second and third years that the Newbery Medal for Distinguished Children’s Literature was awarded, only one book was named for the award, no honor books or runners up as they were called at first.

1923 Medal Winner: The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting (Stokes)

1924 Medal Winner: The Dark Frigate by Charles Hawes (Little, Brown)

Since I’ve already read The Voyages of Doctor Doolittle (it was OK, not my favorite kind of story), I thought I’d try to find a copy of The Dark Frigate by Charles Hawes. I looked it up, and it’s available from several libraries in my area. But the most interesting thing I found was the subtitle. Get a load of this subtitle: wherein is told the story of Philip Marsham who lived in the time of King Charles and was bred a sailor but came home to England after many hazards by sea and land and fought for the King at Newbury and lost a great inheritance and departed for Barbados in the same ship, by curious chance, in which he had long before adventured with the pirates.

King Charles I? What was Newbury?

I read a book recently (From Cover to Cover: Evaluating and Reviewing Children’s Books by Kathleen T. Horning) that gave this information about the early history of the Newbery Award:

The proponents and producers of formula series books launched a verbal attack on children’s librarians, claiming that since they were mere women (and spinsters at that), they had no right to judge what was fit reading for red-blooded American boys. Librarians, in alliance with the Boy Scouts of America, countered by emphasizing “good books for boys” in their early recommendations, thus advancing the notion of gender-specific reading tastes.

The first several winners of the Newbery Medal are a case in point. They are for the most part titles that would be touted as books for boys.
p. 151, From Cover to Cover by K.T. Horning.

So I’m thinking that Colum’s tales of ancient Greece, and Dr. Doolittle, and the adventure tales of Mr. Hawes are all books that were chosen to appeal to those red-blooded American boys who would otherwise have been reading Tom Swift or Horatio Alger’s stories or . . . what? What series were those spinster librarians trying to outclass in the early to mid-1920’s? Do the Newbery award committee members still try to choose books that will apppeal to boys or has the pendulum swung in other direction, to choosing books that will appeal to feminist girls? Or is gender appeal something that award committees should not discuss or consider?

Attitudes about “fit reading” have changed since the 1920’s. Most librarians (and parents) that I know of are perfectly content to not only allow, but positively encourage, boys and girls to read series books that are of very little literary value. I mean by this rather slippery term “literary” that the books that aren’t literary are books that won’t even make children laugh fifty years from now, much less make them think. They still don’t award the Newbery to Captain Underpants or to Garfield Takes the Cake, but nowadays, as long as they’re reading something . . .

Do you think children should be encouraged to read whatever attracts their interest, or should they be required to read books that will make them think, books that have literary value? Or is it a false dichotomy? Should they be allowed/encouraged/required to read both?

So, anyway, next week I’ll be reading The Dark Frigate, and on Sunday I’ll tell you how I liked Padraic Colum’s The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles.

The Newbery Award: 1922

Jan25

1922 Medal Winner: The Story of Mankind by Hendrik Willem van Loon (Liveright)
Honor Books:
The Great Quest by Charles Hawes (Little, Brown)
Cedric the Forester by Bernard Marshall (Appleton)
The Old Tobacco Shop: A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure by William Bowen (Macmillan)
The Golden Fleece and The Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles by Padraic Colum (Macmillan)
The Windy Hill by Cornelia Meigs (Macmillan)

I searched for all these books using the handy WorldCat search box in the sidebar. The only ones that are readily available are the award winner for 1922, van Loon’s The Story of Mankind and The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles by Padraic Colum. I’m not going to bother with The Story of Mankind. I’ve looked at it before, back in library school, and it’s an outdated evolutionary tract. (“Then one day the great wonder happened. What had been dead, gave birth to life. The first living cell floated upon the waters of the sea.”) You can read it here if you’d like.

As for the other easily obtainable book, The Golden Fleece, I actually have a copy on my groaning bookshelves. You can also read it online here, with illustrations by Willy Pogany, the same artist who illustrated my favorite poetry book, by the way. So the Newbery Honor book I’ll be reading for the week of January 28-February 3 is The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles by Padraic Colum. I’l be trying to answer these questions as I read:

Is the language too archaic or difficult for children of 2007?

Would Karate Kid (age 9) enjoy reading this book with his dad? He and Engineer Husband are already reading King Arthur, but they’re about to finish that book.

Are there more modern versions of the Greek hero stories that would be better, or is Colum’s book the gold standard?

Why did the committee that chose the first Newbery Award winner also name Colum’s book as a runner-up? Would librarians choose this book for a Newbery Honor if it were published in 2007?
Until the 1970’s the Newbery committe named an award book and sometimes several “runners-up.” In 1971 the term “runners-up” was changed to “honor books,” and all the runners-up from previous years were also changed to honor books.

If you already know the answers to any of these questions, or if you have read Colum’s book and have comments, or if you’d like to read with me, leave a comment so I’ll know who’s interested.

For those who didn’t read my previous post, I’m going on a journey starting this week through the annals of the Newbery Award and Honor books for Distinguished Children’s Literature. I’m planning to read a Newbery Award or Honor book each week this year. You’re welcome to play along if you’d like. I’ll post my reactions and thoughts on Sunday night, February 4th.

Camilla by Madeleine L’Engle

Jan23

This book is the second book I’ve read in my plan to read or re-read all of Ms. L’Engle’s books this year. The first one I read was A Winter’s Love, published in 1957. Camilla, published several years earlier in 1951, deals with the same themes of the later book: marital compatibility and infidelity and the effect of marital problems on young adult children forced to confront their parents’ imperfections. I think A Winter’s Love shows some growth and maturity in the author’s ability to confront these issues, but Camilla is a very “young adult” sort of book, full of teen angst and idealism and some progress toward maturity on the part of the young protagonist.

Camilla is fifteen years old, but as a child of the 1940’s and a child of wealthy parents, she’s led a sheltered life. She acts more like a twelve or thirteen year old in our day and time, which I think is a sad commentary on the way we encourage our children to grow up faster and sooner nowadays. That aside, Camilla begins with the line: “I knew as soon as I got home Wednesday that Jacques was there with my mother.

And so Camilla must grow up and deal with the fact that her mother is having an affair and her father is unable to express his love for Camilla’s mother in a way that will keep her from pursuing another man. Throughout the novel, Camilla tries to hide from the truth of her parent’s failings, longs to crawl back into some safe place where her mother and father take care of her instead of betraying her trust, but it’s not possible. She finds safety and comfort for a while in her budding romantic friendship with her best friend’s older brother, but that relationsip, too, is imperfect and impermanent.

Finally, facts and science and her ambition to become an astronomer give at least a place of retreat and stability in a world that has become dreadfully unpredictable. Camilla’s plight mirrors the plight of the world at large in the late forties/early fifties, just recovering from a world war and fairly sure that another war is inevitable. David, one of the characters in the novel, says as much, “Always another war . . Always has been, always will be. Frank will go off to it and he’ll come back looking like me, or he’ll come back blind, or without hands, or arms. Or not at all. Or perhaps I am being optmistic. Maybe there won’t be anything to come back to.”

Camilla’s facing life and choosing life even though her parents can no longer be her protectors is likened to the intelligentsia facing the facts about life in the modern world where war destroys and maims and kills. The idea is that people are powerless to stop the madness of war and evil, but individuals are able to choose to respond to life with perseverance and spirit. It’s a kind of a “do not go gentle into that good night” attitude that serves the main characters in the novel as a philosophy of life.

Camilla and her boyfriend, Frank, discuss God quite a bit, but they talk more about the kind of God they don’t believe in than the one they do. Both profess a belief in God, but they’re obviously confused about His place in the universe and the about the whole question of how and why God allows evil to continue. They say they don’t believe it’s God’s will for “bad things to happen to good people,” but they haven’t figured out how God does work in the world. (Neither have I totally figured that one out, for that matter.) Frank has a theory that resembles reincarnation, but involves people being reborn on other planets “until at last we’d finally know and understand everything—absolutely everything—and then maybe we’d be ready for heaven.”

I don’t think that Ms. L’Engle really became committed to any sort of orthodox Christian worldview until after this novel was written, so it’s not surprising that the characters in the novel are torn between a belief in some kind of God and a desire for a doctrine that enables human to somehow perfect themselves. In later novels, this religious dead end drops away, and L’Engle’s characters are much more drawn to a specifically Christian outlook on the world. However, her novels never do become preachy nor her characters even completely orthodox in their theology. People are still people in L’Engle’s novels, and that’s a good thing in view of the discussion about “contrived fiction” that we had a few posts ago.

Camilla was L’Engle’s fourth novel, and it reads like an early effort. It was republished in 1965. How much changed, I don’t know. Nevertheless, the novel is well worth the reading for fans of Ms. L’Engle’s fiction. Camilla Dickinson, the character, reappears as an elderly astronomer in the 1996 novel A Live Coal in the Sea.

Abide With Me by Elizabeth Strout

Jan14

I first saw this book recommended at the Breakpoint website. Then, I think I read this recommendation at MarysLibrary. So I finally got the book from the library and read it.

It was very good. Ms. Strout apparently knows something about small town life and about being a pastor or a pastor’s wife, even though the blurb says she lives in New York City. Abide With Me tells the story of Pastor Tyler Caskey who is serving in his first pastorate in the community of West Annett, Maine. The novel is set in the late 1950’s, about the same time I was born. Lots of period details give life to the story and make it seem real. People are worried about Khruschev and the Communist threat, building bomb shelters, how to survive a nuclear attack. Then, there are the more immediate concerns of the village, such as a new wife for Pastor Caskey whose wife Lauren died a year ago and what’s to be done about the pastor’s five year old daughter Katherine who’s misbehaving in church and in kindergarten. Tyler Caskey has his own thoughts and worries: should he support the church organist’s bid for a new organ and how can he please his congregation, his mother, and everyone else, including God? And will he ever experience The Feeling, that indefineable sense of God’s presence and blessing, again?

Abide With Me is novel about grief and about maturity. Tyler Caskey is a protagonist who reminds me of Engineer Husband; he wants everyone to be happy. Sometimes, if things are not right, he wants to pretend that they are. He’s not a man to make waves, to disturb the universe. Unfortunately, life doesn’t cooperate; suffering comes; and Tyler finds himself finally unable to cope with the trials of his congregants, the needs of his family, and his own grief and guilt over the death of his wife. Things come to a crisis on a Sunday morning, as Tyler is supposed to be preaching, and the inhabitants of West Annett receive an opportunity to give grace and mercy to the pastor who has tried to give them the Word of God in spite of his own brokenness.

Elizabeth Strout’s second novel reminds me a bit of Marilynne Robinson’s second novel Gilead. There’s the same gently descriptive writing, the same delight in the natural world and the dailyness of life, the same sort of pastoral protagonist, although Tyler Caskey is much younger than Robinson’s Reverend Ames. Both men are humble servant/leaders, reluctant to claim that they have all the answers or know the mind of God. If you liked Gilead, if you are a pastor or a pastor’s wife, if you are interested in an account of living a Christian, but imperfect, life, you should like Abide With Me. It’s the best book I’ve read this year so far.

From a sermon by Tyler Caskey (never delivered):

“Do you think that because we have learned the sun does not go down, that in fact we are going around at a dizzying speed, that the sun is not the only star in the heavens —do you think this means that we are any less important than we thought we were? Oh, we are far less important than we thought we were, and we are far, far more important than we think we are. Do you imagine that the scientist and the poet are not united? Do you assume you can answer the question of who we are and why we are here by rational thought alone? It is your job, your honor, your birthright, to bear the burden of this mystery. And it is your job to ask, in every thought, word and deed: How can love best be served?

God is not served when you speak with relish of rumors about those who are poor in spirit and cannot be defended; God is not served when you ignore the poverty of spirit within yourselves.”

Tyler says in the book that this sermon excerpt breaks one of the cardinal rules of homiletics. Do you know what rule he breaks? (I didn’t even know there was such a rule; I’m going to be listening carefully to my pastor’s sermon next Sunday to see if he ever breaks The Rule.)

Poetry Friday: Setting the Table

Jan12

We’ve been reading a poem or two each morning from the book, My Poetry Book: an anthology of modern verse for boys and girls, selected and arranged by Grace Thompson Huffard and Laura Mae Carlisle in collaboration with Helen Ferris, illustrated by Willy Pogany. This book is the one I remember my mother reading poetry from when I was a kid of a girl.

This morning, however, I read a poem, and very mature 17-year old Dancer Daughter said, “I don’t like these kiddie poems.”

To be perfectly honest, a lot of the poetry in the book is rather sweet and sentimental, and the illustrations are, too. The collection was first copyrighted in 1934, and republished in 1956. I like it, but it may not “speak” to the young adults in the crowd. I found this one a few pages over by Dorothy Aldis, and I think everyone liked it.

Setting the Table

Evenings
When the house is quiet
I delight
To spread the white
Smooth cloth and put the flowers on the table.

I place the knives and forks around
Without a sound.
I light the candles.

I love to see
Their small reflected torches shine
Against the greenness of the vine
And garden.

Is that the mignonette, I wonder,
Smells so sweet?

And then I call them in to eat.

Delight in the quotidian. I wish my table looked like that. I wish my house were quiet, ever. We’re open 24 hours here. Oh, well, I can dream.

I’ve decided, by the way, to combine Fine Art Friday with Poetry Friday and give you a poem and a picture each Friday. This photographic print is called “Sunlight Beams onto a Table Set for Dinner” by Joel Sartore, and it’s available for purchase at allposters.com.

The Poetry Friday round-up is at Big A little a.

Semicolon

Books we must have though we lack bread.

Archives