“T.S. Eliot: Culture and Anarchy” by James Matthew Wilson

From the beginning of his poetry and writing career, T.S. Eliot was considered of a similar mind as the poet and cultural critic Matthew Arnold (1822-1888). One of Arnold’s best-known works was Culture and Anarchy (1869), in which he presented culture (and poetry) as the replacement for religion as the bulwark against anarchy.  

However associated they may have been, Eliot spent a great deal of time and effort correcting what he saw as Arnold’s misunderstandings, especially about religion and the idea of culture substituting for it. The poet wasn’t so much in the business of substitution as he or she was in recovering the idea that it wasn’t only the natural that composed the world; it was also the supernatural, and it was the supernatural that had been lost.

 

In the 46-page essay (with 16 pages of notes) T.S. Eliot: Culture and Anarchy, poet and professor James Matthew Wilson explores the similarities and differences between Arnold and Eliot, explains where Eliot sought to correct what he saw as Arnold’s errors, and in the process provides an excellent introduction to Eliot, his poetry, and the thought that lies behind it. Wilson focuses on Eliot’s major poems – The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, the poem that made Eliot famous; The Waste Land, which solidified his poetic reputation; The Hollow Men; and Four Quartets, which likely played a major role in Eliot being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

 

James Matthew Wilson

Wilson, the Cullen Foundation chair in English Literature and the founding director of the MFA program at University of St. Thomas in Houston, is both a poet and a poetry critic. His poems and articles are published in such magazines and journals as The New Criterion, Front Porch Republic, Hudson Review, Raintown Review, The Weekly Standard, Dappled Things, and other literary and political publications. Her serves as poet-in-residence of the Benedict XVI Institute, scholar-in-residence of Aquinas College, editor of Colosseum Books, and poetry editor of Modern Age Magazine. 

He’s published 14 books, including his first full-length poetry collection, Some Permanent Things; The Catholic Imagination in Modern American Poetry (2014); The Fortunes of Poetry in an Age of Unmaking (2015); and The Vision of the Soul: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty in the Western Tradition (2017). The Hanging God: Poems was published in 2018. 

The publisher of Wilson’s monograph, Wiseblood Books, has published several of these essays in affordable editions. The essays cover a variety of authors and topics under the general heading of faith, culture, and literature.

Related:

James Matthew Wilson and The Hanging God.

 

James Matthew Wilson and Some Permanent Things.

 

James Matthew Wilson and The Strangeness of the Good.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

It Didn’t End with Lee’s Surrender at Appomattox, Part 1 and Part II – Tonya McQuade at Emerging Civil War.

 

George Ticknor: The autocrat of Park Street – Michael Connolly at The Imaginative Conservative. 

 

Bookish Diversions: The Puzzle of Publishing – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

Things Worth Remembering: Allan Bloom on the “Charmed Years of College” – Douglas Murray at The Free Press.

 

The London Data Store – A London Inheritance.

“Christianity and Poetry” by Dana Gioia

Does poetry matter to your faith? 

Most Christians would likely be puzzled at the question even being asked. 

 

Poet Dana Gioia says it should matter. A lot.

 

In the essay “Christianity and Poetry,” first published 10 years ago, Gioia goes a lot further than saying it should matter. “It is an essential, inextricable, and necessary aspect of religious faith and practice.” It doesn’t matter that most Christians would find that statement absurd, he says, because it’s true. 

 

And then he considers the evidence. How did David pray to God? In poetry called psalms. How did Ruth respond to Naomi’s plea to go back home? In Poetry. The books of Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes are all poetry. So are the Song of Solomon and Lamentations (and the Psalms, of course). While he doesn’t specifically mention it, what is chapter one of Genesis but an oral poem of creation; God speaks the physical world into existence.

 

The gospels and epistles of the New Testament bear the imprint of poetry. The book of Revelation is a prose poem, he says. The Beatitudes are shaped by prophetic verse. Mary’s announcement of the Incarnation in Luke is a poem. Some scholars believe the Aramaic of the Lord’s Prayer is a poem. “When Jesus preached,” Gioia says, “he told stories, spoke poems, and offered proverbs.

 

Dana Gioia

Both Protestants, via modern translations of the Bible, and Catholics, via Vatican II, ground poetry out of Scriptures. The music and the mystery were deemphasized in favor of the strictly rational. And in the process, we forget, or deny, a key aspect of God.

 

Yes, it’s a startling essay, and it goes on for 32 pages. But the man makes a solid argument. To ignore the poetical nature of the Bible is to miss fully understanding it.

 

I came to poetry late. Yes, I was exposed to the poetry we all were in middle and high school, with a strong infusion of British poetry in college. But it wasn’t until I began writing speeches as a central part of my career that I began to take poetry seriously, as something that mattered.

 

And what I began to notice, because I was a church-attending Christian who read and studied on his own as well, was that the Bible was one of the most poetic books I’d ever encountered. It’s almost as if poetry is the language of God.

 

Gioia has published six poetry collections, several works about poetry, and a number of translations, including the recent The Madness of Hercules. He is a former poet laureate of California and former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. He’s written four opera libretti and collaborated on many musical compositions. His awards include the American Book Award, the Poet’s Prize, Notre Dame’s Laetare Medal, the Aiken Taylor Award in Modern Poetry, and the Walt Whitman Champion of Liberty Prize, among others. 

 

Related: 

 

Dana Gioia and Meet Me at the Lighthouse: Poems.

 

Rediscovering Seneca: Dana Gioia Translates The Madness of Hercules.

 

Dana Gioia’s Pity the Beautiful: Poems.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

A paper manifesto – Elizabeth Stice at Current Magazine.

 

Editing: Scratch That, Try This Instead – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review. 

 

10° – artwork by Sonja Benskin Mesher. 

 

Churches at the City Boundaries: St. Andrew’s, Holborn – A London Inheritance.

 

The Great Beast – artwork by Jack Baumgartner at The School of the Transfer of Energy.

“On Real: A Brush Stroke Essay” by Paul Hughes

It’s something of a romp through reality, or about reality. 

Writer Paul Hughes describes his long essay / short book On Real as a brush stroke. In fact, he used “Brush Stroke” as a brand for this first of what is planned to be a number of essays. As the name implies, Hughes doesn’t take a deep dive into a particular point or aspect of the real. Instead, he lightly covers an extended territory of ideas, published works, quotations, and observations. 

 

It’s something of a rollercoaster ride, and like all good rollercoaster rides, when it’s over, you want to do it again. In the case of On Real, you want to read it again.

 

And where else do you start considering the real or the true than with fiction. It’s a contradiction: something made-up can be more truthful, or more real, than a statement of fact or the reality that is staring you in the face this morning. And, as Hughes points out, “mythological” doesn’t mean false, even if the myth is non-factual. 

 

G.K. Chesterton (or Paul Hughes?)

That’s how his brush stroke starts. And the brush moves at breakneck speed across art, literature, life, anecdotes, God, and more. Hughes draws from The Brothers Karamazov, The Velveteen Rabbit. Don Quixote, and Eugene Vodolazkin (a Ukrainian / Russian writer whose works I’ve come to deeply admire). He quotes Willy Wonka and Tom T. Hall. He sees Christopher Hitchens as one who “often saw to the core of things,” but didn’t do the right thing with what he saw. And Hughes quotes T.S. Eliot, of course (why did I say “of course”?). 

 

On Real is a wide-ranging discussion that will often take you down a rabbit hole (we’re all Alices in Wonderland at times). But when you come out again, you see and understand things you didn’t before. And you understand something deeper about how what is real and what is unreal, and how the unreal often contains the truth lacking in the factual. 

 

A good example is the photo I’ve included with this post. It’s the one Hughes uses on his blog, Poet and Priest. He acknowledges that the photo isn’t of him (it’s G.K. Chesterton). But that photo will tell you more about Hughes that the typical blog bio will. The only other (factual) thing I know about him is that he’s a writer who lives in the West. That could be the western United States, or it might be “West” as in
“Western civilization.” Either way, it fits.

 

Some Related Readings 

 

The Man Who Invented Fiction: How Cervantes Ushered in the Modern World by William Egginton.

 

The Velveteen Rabbit, or How Toys Become Real by Margery Williams.

 

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

 

Julian Barnes: ‘Flaubert could have written a great book about contemporary America – Rachel Cooke at The Guardian. 

 

All Marketers Are Liars by Seth Godin.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Portland Sobers Up: After years of disorder and misgovernance, the City of Roses is taking steps to reverse its decline – Michael Totten at City Journal. 

 

Up from “Parenting” – Glenn Arbery at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

The Earned Smugness of Ulysses Readers – Mark Solomons at The Spectator.

Poetry Prompt: Monarch Butterfly's Wildflower -- Callie Faye at Tweetspeak Poetry.

“The Tragedy of the Republic” by Pierre Manent

Wiseblood Books has been publishing a series of lengthy essays about contemporary culture. These include Duty, the Soul of Beauty: Henry James on the Beautiful Life by R.R. Reno; How to Think Like a Poet by Ryan Wilson; Poetry as Enchantment and The Catholic Writer Today by Dana Gioia; The Fortunes of Poetry in an Age of Unmaking by James Matthew Wilson; and several others. 

A recent publication is The Tragedy of the Republic by Pierre Manent, with an introduction by Patrick Deneen. The essay, originally a lecture at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, considers a question about republics. Do the constituents of republics elect leaders to represent their interests, or do they elect leaders to represent the common good.?

 

Manent answers the question by examining two plays of Shakespeare, Coriolanus and Julius Caesar, with a special focus on the speeches and actions of three characters – Coriolanus, Brutus, and Cassius. 

 

Shakespeare borrowed the story of Coriolanus from Plutarch’s Lives, as he did for several of plays. Plutarch described him as a Roman general who was successful in quashing several rebellions against the Roman government, sought political office, was believed to be overreaching, and was exiled. He joins with one of Rome’s enemies and is eventually killed. Many historians doubt his existence. 

 

Pierre Manent

In Julius Caesar, (and in historical fact), Brutus and Cassius were key players in the successful assassination of Caesar. They were allies in the conspiracy, but their motivations were entirely different, as presented by Plutarch and Shakespeare. Brutus sought to remove what he saw as a dire threat to the republic; Cassius was a bit more self-interested but needed the cover of Brutus’s noble reputation.

 

Manent is professor emeritus of political philosophy at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Sciences Sociales. His nurmous published works include Toqueville and the Nature of Democracy, The City of Man, and A World Beyond Politics?, among many others. He is known for being a classic liberal and a Euroskeptic. 

 

The Tragedy of the Republic seems an especially apt discussion in the current American political environment. But Manent, perhaps unintentionally, also demonstrates something else, and that is the value of the traditional Western canon of literature in creating an understanding of vital contemporary events. 

Heart of Darkness: All This Stuff Happens in the Middle

Someone forgot to tell Joseph Conrad. 

When you write fiction, you’re supposed follow the rule of thirds. The first third is the introduction of the characters and the development of the conflict. The second third is the development of the narrative, providing a deeper understanding of the characters and conflict. And the last third is the heightened pace of action leading to the climax and resolution of the conflict.

In Heart of Darkness, after the first third of the short novel, Conrad threw the rule book out the window. All this stuff happens in the second third, offering no respite for the reader.

To Continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

The Sacredness of the Ordinary

I’m reading Vintage Saints and Sinners: 25 Christians Who Transformed My Faith by Karen Wright Marsh, and I’m struck by how ordinary all these famous Christians actually were. I ponder the thought that perhaps it’s our celebrity culture than permeates my thinking about people known as heroes and heroines of the faith. 

Consider Christians like Mother Teresa, one of the most famous saints in our own lifetimes. She was a woman who dedicated her life to God, and then wondered why God had stopped speaking to her. For decades. She lived with constant doubt, because, as she often said, God doesn’t call us to success; He only calls us to faithfulness.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life.

The Road is Long and the Call is Loud

The road ahead was not a literal road. But it felt like one. A very long one.

My organization had just done what organizations are famous for doing: internal politics. A spectacularly successful initiative had been rewarded by the wrong person getting a promotion, someone not even involved in the success. The team went from celebration to devastation in 24 hours. I spent a few days considering what to do. I’d poured life and soul into what became a success, and I’d been slapped, hard. Overnight, gold had become rust and tarnish. I decided to leave. Go to another part of the company.

I accepted a job that had been turned down by five people, including two people on the outside. It was considered the worst communications job in the company, dealing with all the dirty stuff, like pollution, spills, accidents, emissions, waste sites, and more. No one looked for gold here. And it was facing a huge challenge – a new law requiring public reporting of all toxic emissions. It was if I’d boarded the Titanic knowing there were icebergs ahead.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life. 

"The Art of the Essay" by Charity Singleton Craig

Writers read a lot of books on writing. I’ve learned that books on writing fall into three loose groups. One group, by far the largest, focuses on the craft, similar to lectures by English composition teachers. A second group is by authors who’ve worked very hard to sound wise and profound; I call this group the self-recognized oracles. And the third and smallest group is by authors who genuinely want to help other writers because they love writing and they know how hard it can be.

Most writers of books in that second group will claim their work is actually in the third group. I call that self-deception of self-recognized oracles. 

The Art of the Essay: From Ordinary Life to Extraordinary Words by Charity Singleton Craigf alls squarely, and without pretense, in that third group. This is a narrative that’s written to me as a writer from a writer who loves what she does and wants other writers to love what they do.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

The Contradiction of Guilt

The deeper I get into The Scarlet Letter, the more I wonder who the novel is really about. It may be less about Hester Prynne and more about the drama unfolding with Roger Chillingworth, the wronged husband on his quest for vengeance, and Arthur Dimmesdale, the minister who’s fathered Hester’s, out-of-wedlock baby.

Chillingworth, in the guise of the trusted doctor, is gradually pushing Dimmesdale toward a crisis or breakdown. He occupies an interesting position in the story – associated with neither the Puritan church and culture nor the Romanticism of Hester and her daughter Pearl. He interacts with both but acts more like a free agent, outside church and conscience.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life.

Image of Dimmesdale, Hester, and Pearl on the platform is from the 1878 edition of The Scarlet Letter.

Darrell Vesterfelt’s “Unblogger”

Darrell Vesterfelt, editor of the online magazine Prodigal, has a story to tell. And it’s his story, a story that he will tell you he was called to bear.

Darrell is a writer. Like most writers today, he did what every publisher on the planet will tell you to do – and that is to build a platform. What publishers mean by that is having enough people who follow you on social media, read you blog, and engage with you that they will buy your book and recommend it to others. Publishers want the assurance that your book will sell, and you have to build a platform to demonstrate that

Millions of writers are out there, dutifully building their platforms. They do everything they’re supposed to do – follow people on Twitter and retweet the important ones, find the cool people on Facebook, and watch their blog statistics like a hawk.

Vesterfelt was one of them, until he unblogged. Having built a successful blog (and platform), he unblogged – pulled the plug and walked away.

His reason was simple. He felt himself in danger of losing himself for the sake of his platform.

He describes what he did and why in a short book (or long essay) with the title of Unblogger: Discovering the Power of Story in a ‘How-To’ World.

What he did, and why, and what happened, is the story he tells. He discovered that an unblogger is first and foremost a person, a human being. The unblogger writes from experience, sharing good stories with people. And an unblogger “lives a story worth telling,…a life of meaning, and then just happens to write about it.”

And goes on and says “we’re called to bear a story, our story.” And we are a character, perhaps the main character in the story. And that’s the story we bear, and the story we write.

This idea of story and character is a post-modern one. An individual like me who is, on an average day, decidedly modernist has to consider the ideas of story and character carefully, that is, consider the idea that he or she is a character in a story. It works if you write the story you live. That doesn’t mean everything you write is demonstrably autobiographical, but is does mean you write from your experience.

I liked this little book (or long essay). Vesterfelt has much to say. And he’s actually doing what he says to do, and is writing his story from experience, as a character in his own story.

He unblogged.

Photograph by Larisa Koshkina via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.