Saturday Good Reads

We live in crazy times.

An innocuous email from Yale offends students who need safe space, and the university found itself caught between irate students and an irate reaction on social media. At the University of Missouri, a protest about racism evolved into a bully of a professor being outed – and she may have singlehandedly diverted national attention away. The positive thing about both of these situations is that people are beginning to take a close look at what passes for a university education these days. (Did you know you could major in English Literature at UCLA, with no requirement to take a course in Shakespeare? Details in the video below.)

And still, beautiful photography. And poetry. And reflections on faith. And the story of a Muslim refugee in Amish country.

Photography

What lies within the seed – Susan Jones.

Mist on the Prairie – Tim Good at Arts by Tiwago.

Husbandry in Harvest – Jack Baumgartner at The School of the Transfer of Energy.

Delta Blues – Ari Gabel at Oxford American.

Poetry

Aye of the Beholder – Brendan MacOdrum at Oran’s Well.

Bernard of Clairvaux – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

Encounter – Loren Paulssen at World Narratives.

Law of Averages – Maureen Doallas at Writing Without Paper.

Writing

10 Secrets from the Weird World of Writers – Leslie Leyland Fields.

Why are our favorite detectives so fatally flawed? – Janet Brons at Strand Magazine.

Stuck in the Middle – Ann Kroeker.

Writers' turnoffs: First of all, we don't like to be called "content producers" – Dave Murray at Writing Boots.

Moral Absolutes Are Essential to Good Storytelling – Mike Duran at deCompose.

Life and Culture

A Thin-Skinned Minority is Ruining This Nation – Mike Adams at the University of North Carolina – Wilmington.

The Tyranny of Social Justice Warriors and The Establishment’s ‘Pain’ – Rod Dreher at The American Conservative.

A Muslim Refugee in Amish Country – Miriam’s Story – Shawn Smucker.

Supporting My Mizzou Students – Thom Lambert, University of Missouri Law School.

Faith

The Place in the Woods – Winn Collier.

Committing to Real Progress – Mick Silva.

Bible Out Loud – Monica Sharman at Know-Love-Obey God.

Let Love Prevail over Religion – Amanda Hill and Hill + Pen.

The Labyrinth – Doug Spurling at Spurling Silver.

Who Killed the Liberal Arts?

Photograph: Bridge of Sighs at Cambridge University by Anna Langova via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

"Barbara Hepworth: Sculpture for a Modern World"

It was in June, I believe, when I saw an item posted by Maureen Doallas on her blog, Writing Without Paper. If you know Maureen, she know she is all things art, and this item had to do with an exhibition  at the Tate Britain on the work of sculptor Barbara Hepworth. I checked the link and made a note of it, since we were planning a vacation in London and would be there while the exhibition was still on (it closed on Oct. 25).

I was not familiar with Barbara Hepworth’s work. I wasn’t familiar with 20^th century sculpture. And I wasn’t sure what I thought about the modernist / international style of sculpture. But these are actually good reasons to see an exhibition, and I did add it to the list of “possibles” to see.

Early one morning during the first week we were there, I was power-walking in Pimlico and went right by the Tate Britain. I saw the banner for the Hepworth exhibition, and decided I would try to make time for it. A few days later, I did. (Instead of walking, I took the tube from St. James’s Park to Victoria Station, and from Victoria Station to Pimlico.) Three blocks later, I was at the Tate, paid my admission for Hepworth, and went in.

Barbara Hepworth in 1934 with ‘Mother and Child’ (Getty Images)

Born in 1903 in Yorkshire, Hepworth was interested in art from a young age. By 17, she was studying at the Leeds School of Art, and moved to London shortly after, to study at the Royal College of Art. She fell in love with and eventually lived with sculptor John Skeaping, with whom she had a son. They shared studio space. The relationship lasted until she met and fell in love with Ben Nicholson, with whom she had triplets. In the years leading up to World War II, Hepworth was making a name for herself (along with sculptors like Henry Moore), and working in Modernism and what was called the International Style.

After the war, her reputation grew. She and Nicholson were divorced in 1951. She established her studio in St. Ives in Cornwall, and executed a number of commissions for the United Nations, art centers, sculpture parks and other organizations. She died in a fire in her studio in 1975.

Large and Small Form, 1934; the Piers Art Centre, Orkney.

The show was arranged in six largish rooms, and mostly (but not entirely) in chronological order. The first room was mostly smaller, table-top pieces, carvings in wood and stone. The larger pieces came at the end, but the exhibition was mostly organized by themes – carving, studio, international modernism, equilibrium, staging sculpture, and pavilion. Hepworth also worked in brass, especially for outdoor installations.

Walking from room to room, one could how she developed concepts of form, including the human form. Some of the wooden pieces suggested an African influence, but the spherical shapes she developed were captivating. I couldn’t tell you what they represented, but I was nonetheless captivated by several of the pieces, particularly in the international modernism and equilibrium rooms. And I was struck by the sheer beauty of many of the sculptures she produced. (For an extra cost, which I paid, the Tate had a very helpful audio guide.)

I bought a book about Hepworth, British Artists: Barbara Hepworth by Penelope Curtis, and I wish I had been able to read it before seeing the show. Curtis provides an overview of Hepworth-s life and work, a critical history, and the influence she’s had, all in less than 100 pages but filled with photographs of her sculptures. It’s an excellent introduction to the artist and international modernism.

I’m glad I went. I learned something about a period and its sculpture that I knew precious little about. And the Tate knows how to do an exhibition.

Barbara Hepworth at the Tate Britain

Top photograph: Sculpture with Colour (Deep Blue and Red) by Barbara Hepworth, 1940; Tate Britain.

Michael Slater’s “The Great Charles Dickens Scandal”

In 1858, during the production of a play written by Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, Dckens met the veteran actress Frances Ternan and her two daughters, Maria and Ellen. That same year, he announced that he and his wife Catherine were separating, which was something of a sensation in Victorian Britain, involving as it did the most popular writer in the English language and a man associated with family values.

For the next 12 years, until his death in 1870, Dickens maintained a relationship with young Ellen Ternan. Exactly what that relationship was has never been truly determined, but it spawned a minor research industry that continues through today.

That research industry is the subject of Michael Slater’s The Great Charles Dickens Scandal, and it may tell us more about the generations that followed Dickens than it does about the man himself.

It’s a fascinating book.

Slater, Professor Emeritus of Victorian Literature and Fellow of Birkbeck College at the University of London, is well positioned to tackle the subject. His doctorate at Oxford was on Dickens’ The Chimes. He’s written an acclaimed biography of Dickens. He’s written several books on aspects of Dickens’ life and times, including Dickens on America and Americans (1970), Dickens and Women (1983), The Genius of Dickens (2011), and Douglas Jerrold 1803-1857 (2002). He’s a past president of the International Dickens Fellowship and editor of its journal, The Dickensian. And he’s served as trustee and president of the Charles Dickens Museum in London.

Ellen Ternan

The man knows his Dickens. What he explores in The Great Charles Dickens Scandal, published in 2012), is what can never ultimately be known about Dickens and Ellen Ternan.

For decades after his death, Dickens’ children maintained something of an iron lock on what was written and known about their father. What began to break the story open was a novel published in 1929, entitled This Side Idolatry. It was written by a journalist for the Daily Express, Carl Eric Bechhofer Roberts, and what he tripped over in his research was the possibility, or likelihood, that Ellen Ternan caused the breakdown in Dickens’ marriage.

Michael Slater

Slater moves decade by decade, describing additional investigatory work by biographers, journalists, defenders and prosecutors, involving significant names in Britain’s literary establishment (including G.K. Chesterton, who was a Dickens defender). By the 1970s, Ellen Ternan starting receiving her due, particularly as a result of the growing popularity of feminist studies. Peter Ackroyd, author of a mammoth biography of Dickens, argued that the relationship was platonic, given Dickens’ own attitudes toward young women (and there’s precious little proof to the contrary).

Slater looks at all of the decades of work and research, and concludes that “the smoking gun” to prove Dickens and Ternan were physical lovers will likely never be found.

But, oh, what lengths people have gone to in the attempt to prove one thing or another. 


Related: Finding "The Genius of Dickens' at the Charles Dickens House.

Ed Cyzewski’s “Write Without Crushing Your Soul”

I was 10 when I starting “writing” in the recognizable sense. My father has assembled a bound, unruled paperback book of empty pages, and I began to write a mystery story. In pencil. I don’t remember how far I was able to get in the story, or what happened to the book. But I do remember is had something to do with a secret passage underground entered through a grandfather clock.

Writing stuck. But it only stuck in a professional sense in the summer before my sophomore year in college, when I decided to major in journalism. From then one, my life revolved around words – student newspaper, newspaper copy editor, editor of a company publication, speechwriter, issues manager, novels, non-fiction book, social media.

Words. Writing. Articles. Freelancing. Corporate communications. Speeches (lots of speeches). I’ve been on the freelance and contract sides, and I’ve been on the corporate side. I’ve struggled, as most writers do, with the dreaded marketing. There have been times when I’ve faced having to compromise my faith in the work I’ve done. I’ve said no, every time.

Writing can be a struggle, a punishing kind of business to be in.

Ed Cyzewski knows. He’s a writer. He’s written for himself and others, for companies and organizations, for web sites and for magazines. He’s been there, and done that. And he knows that writing can be a real struggle. It’s never not a struggle. He knows the realities of trying to making financial ends meet, and there’s no work at hand. Or how a flood of work can suddenly evaporate.

He’s distilled that knowledge, and while it applies to all writers, he’s focused that knowledge in what I can only call a gift: Write Without Crushing Your Soul: Sustainable Publishing and Freelancing.

Chapter titles are deceptively simple: “Writing Sustainably;” “Dealing with Adversity;” “Writing That Serves God and Money?;” “Saving Your Soul from Book Publishing;” “Healthy Publicity Practices for Authors;” “The Comparison Trap;” “Maintaining a Sustainable Writing Life;” and “Priorities for Sustainable Writing.” I say “deceptively” simple, because each chapter is packed with practical experience – and practical wisdom. And extremely helpful advice. I’ve been writing professionally for more than 40 years, and I found myself making notes as I read, seeing things I hadn’t considered before, and most of all enjoying the words of a writer who loves what he does – but knows there is always the danger of too much of a good thing.

Ed Cyzewski

The word “sustainable” shows up repeatedly, and for good reasons. Like the need to care for your family, and the need to keep from draining yourself, and the danger of becoming so consumed with “platform,” search engine optimization, and the number of newsletter subscribers that you forget why you’re doing this work in the first place.

Cyzewski has written several works in the area of faith, writing and publishing, including Pray, Write, Grow; First Draft Father;  Hazardous: Committing to the Cost of Following Jesus; Coffeehouse Theology: Reflecting God in Everyday Life; A Christian Survival Guide; The Good News of Revelation (co-author with Larry Helyer); Unfollowers: Unlikely Lessons on Faith from Those Who Doubted Jesus; Creating Space: The Case for Everyday Creativity; Divided We Unite; Why We Run from God’s Love; and A Path to Publishing: What I Learned from Publishing a Nonfiction Book. He blogs at Ed Cyzewski: Freelance Writer. 

If you’re a writer, or considering writing as a career, or even do part-time writing work, read Write Without Crushing Your Soul. It speaks to who we are, from someone who is one of us. And he’s a good man to share this with us.

Related:

My review of First Draft Father.

My review of Pray, Write, Grow.

Top photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

A Month with Keats: Poetry, Religion and Politics

We’re standing on Church Row in Hampstead, in north London. Church Row is the oldest street in Hampstead, a longish block of attached townhomes lining both sides of the street from the shopping area to the Parish Church of St. John at Hampstead.

Portrait of John Keat by William Hilton, National Portrait Gallery, London

Anita Miller, our guide for this Saturday “Keats Walk,” stops our group of 12 in front of one of the homes in the middle of the block. “This has nothing to do with Keats,” she says, “but notice the windows above each of the doors. Each one is different, because before the era of numbered addresses, that’s how you told people to find your house.”

The houses date from the 1700s, as does the church at the end of the street – 1747, to be exact, although there’s been a church on the property here for more than 1,000 years. It’s the church most associated with John Keats, because it contains a bust of the poet donated by an American admirer in the 1890s. Fanny Brawne, the young woman Keats was engaged to at the time of his death in 1821, was baptized here and attended the church with her family. But Keats, apparently, never set foot inside the building. He was an atheist, after all.

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

Photograph: Church Row in Hampstead in north London.

“The Romantic Poets and Their Circle” by Richard Holmes

For most of us, when we read the Romantic poets like Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Byron and Coleridge (“the Big 5”), we read their poetry in the high school or college classroom. We might get a paragraph or two of introduction to the times in which they lived and wrote, but we don’t usually get much beyond that. Unless a gifted teacher, determined to help the class understand, goes into great detail about the Romantic era.

As Richard Holmes reminds us in The Romantic Poets and Their Circle, Romantic poetry didn’t spring from nothing; it had a context, a very broad context, involving the other creative arts, politics, culture, society, war and revolution. What was happening in poetry was important because it both influenced and reflected what was happening in society at large, especially British society.

Holmes, professor of Biographical Studies at the University of East Anglia and a Fellow of the British Academy, has a deep background in the Romantic period. His works include Shelley: The Pursuit (1974), Coleridge: Early Visions (1989), Footsteps (1996), Selected Poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1996), Coleridge: Darker Reflections (1998), Sidetracks: Explorations of a Romantic Biographer (2001), and The Age of Wonder (2010). He’s also the author of Dr. Johnson and Mr. Savage (2011) and Falling Upwards: How We Took to the Air (2014).

This particular work is a comparatively small volume of some 136 pages, written and assembled for Britain’s National Portrait Gallery in London. It features in introductory essay and some 30 short entries on the Romantic poets and the painters, editors, essayists, and writers who formed the literary culture of the period that covers approximately 1770 to 1830.

Richard Holmes

Consider what was happening during that period: the American and French revolutions; the rise and ultimate defeat of Napoleon; the beginning of the Industrial Revolution; the growing demands for universal male suffrage and the first stirrings of the idea that women might have rights, too; scientific breakthroughs; the War of 1812. And Holmes notes that something which arose then that we today find completely familiar was the Romantic notion of genius, or illumination from within, including a marked emphasis on individual feelings.

It was also an age of counterrevolution – Napoleon’s defeat and the restoration of the Bourbons, the Congress of Vienna that ushered in the “Age of Metternich,” the often brutal suppression of worker unrest in Britain. It is. Perhaps, another reason why the Romantic period seems so familiar to us today – it was an age of extremes in politics, society and even personal morality.

As short a volume as it is, The Romantic Poets and Their Circle is a succinct introduction to the people and the period whose influence continues today.

This month at Tweetspeak Poetry, I have a series on the poet John Keats and the Keats Walk I took while recently in London. Last week, I introduced the series with “Keats and a Walk into His Life.” Tomorrow, I look at the religion and politics that influenced his poetry.

Painting (top): Snowstorm: Hannibal and His Army Crossing the Alps,” oil on canvas by J.M.W. Turner (1812). Tate Britain Museum, London.

Am I a wolf

After Acts 20

The man we love

the man who gave us

the word, who spoke of life,

to life, now sits with us

a last time. We will never see

his face again, we will never hear

his voice again, we will never know

his countenance among us again.

And now he warns us of wolves

arising from among our own number,

wolves to devour the sheep and lambs.

Am I a wolf?

Photograph by Karen Arnold via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.