Marjorie Maddox Writes Poems about Reading and Writing Poems

Marjorie Maddox has done something rather creative and clever in her new poetry collection. She’s written poems about reading and writing poems. Inside Out is not so much a book that tells how to read a poem or how to write a poem; instead, it shows you. 

And that’s the key – it’s a book that shows rather than tells. This isn’t the teacher standing at the front of the classroom, giving us one more lecture on how to write a poem. This is us, sitting on the floor and surrounding the teacher, as we all add the wings to the airplane while it’s flying.

It’s downright fun, in fact. I can’t remember a time when an instruction manual made me smile, over and over again.  

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

“The Benson Murder Case” by S.S. Van Dine

It’s 1926. It’s the Jazz Age. Calvin Coolidge is in the White House. Prohibition is in full flood, or drought; so is the crime associated with it. Evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson disappears for a time. A hurricane devastates Miami. Greta Garbo makes her American film debut. Rudolph Valentino dies. A.A. Milne publishes Winnie-the-Pooh. The St. Louis Cardinals beat the New York Yankees to win their first World Series title. 

Willard Huntington Wright (1888-1939) was an art critic who had been literary editor of the Los Angeles Times, an editor of The Smart Set, a novelist, an art historian, and art exhibition organizer. A friend of H.L. Mencken and an admirer of the novels of Theodore Dreiser, Wright hated romance and detective fiction with a passion. 

Willard Huntington Wright, aka S.S. Van Dine

But in 1923, recovering officially from a nervous breakdown but actually from a cocaine addiction, Wright began to binge on mystery and detective novels. He talked with an old Harvard classmate, the legendary Max Perkins of Scribner’s, about a book centering on a private detective who was snobbish, erudite, and educated in art and music. Perkins was intrigued, and in 1926, Wright published the first Philo Vance detective story, The Benson Murder Case. 

Too embarrassed to use his own name, he adopted the pen name of S.S. Van Dine. He even made S.S. Van Dine a character in the story – “Van,” an attorney and Philo Vance’s sidekick and chronicler. Vance is close friends with John F.-X. Markham, district attorney for New York County. 

Alvin Benson is a stockbroker and financial advisor. Early one morning, his housekeeper discovers his body in the living room of his apartment on West 48^th Street in New York City. He’s seated in a chair, legs still crossed, a book open in front of him – and a bullet hole through his head. A woman’s handbag and gloves are found on the fireplace mantle. Both the police and the district attorney’s office investigate, and Markham invites his friend Philo Vance along to learn how investigations are done. 

Vance soon realizes that Markham and the police tend to follow circumstantial evidence, ignoring what he calls the “psychology of the crime.” In his breezy, irreverent, and borderline condescending manger, Vance slowly educates his friend on how to consider and investigate the crime.

This first Philo Vance mystery is important for its introduction to how the man thinks and analyzes. Considerable and detailed attention is paid to his methods, his thought processes, and his personality, which can often be as maddening to the reader as it is to Markham and the police. The novel is also filled with descriptions of Jazz Age New York – the clubs, the concerts, the entertainments, and how people of the servant class and upper middle class lived. Almost everyone seems to smoke, and smoke rather elegantly. 

Markham considers suspect after suspect, and then he watches Vance demolish one evidentiary case after another, gradually brining the focus to the one person the killer must be. In the process, we realize that The Benson Murder Casemay be as much a sociology and psychology text as it is a murder mystery. The author has an incredibly detailed eye for people, settings, and the New York City of the period.

Wright would publish 12 Philo Vance mysteries between 1926 and his death in 1939. The books were highly successful and made him a lot of money. As successful as his mysteries were, he camouflaged his name behind the pseudonym; he was too embarrassed to acknowledge his work openly.

Over the next several weeks, I’ll be looking at the Philo Vance mysteries, the author, and what place the stories have in the Golden Age of the Mystery Novel.

Top photograph: New York City in the 1920s.

Can't boast

After Romans 3:21-31

Can’t boast,

can’t take credit,

can’t crow and preen,

can’t show or perform,

can’t demonstrate,

can’t prove anything

on our own. It’s all

gone now, but we didn’t

do it. Someone else did.

All we can do

is claim it, by faith,

claim that white robe,

by faith.

That’s it.

That’s all.

Photograph by Alex Holyoake via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Saturday Good Reads

Newspaper sell, and television news collects viewers, by reporting bad news. It’s always been this way, and the coronavirus has only amplified that. But in this case, the media are either playing “Gotcha!” or speculating about the future (as if anyone has a crystal ball), and doing their best to inform, educate, and generally incite panic. It’s difficult for any politician, at any level, to resist the pressure of screaming reporters. John Horvat at The Imaginative Conservative suggests that, when panic becomes policy, wisdom must step in. 

A side note: while newspapers are gaining new subscribers by the fistfuls, newspaper advertising has collapsed. Many weeklies that depend upon restaurant and entertainment advertising have suspended publication or closed down altogether, and many dailies are furloughing staff.

Whether it’s Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, or the United States, new phrases, and old phrases with new meanings, have entered our vocabularies. Lockdown. Shelter-at-home. Social distancing. Self-isolation. Self-quarantine. Eleanor Parker at A Clerk of Oxford has given these words and phrases a collective title, and writes about at The Long Lent and the History of Quarantine. And Malcolm Guite discovered that a poem of his from three years ago has become a lockdown poem.

And lest you think everything these days is about the coronavirus, Vanessa Smiley at Emerging Revolutionary War Era takes a look at beer drinking in the 18^th century. Colonial Americans believed beer was healthier than water; that it was a good supplement for the entire family’s food; and it was an acceptable way to promote social discourse (as opposed to social distancing). 

More Good Reads

British Stuff

A Very Different London – A London Inheritance.

Writing and Literature 

To Truly Live: Barricade and Blessing in Les Misérables – Annie Nardone at Literary Life.

Old Rowan Oak: William Faulkner’s Conservatism – Carl Rollyson at The Imaginative Conservative.

Poetry

Whisper of Thunder – T.M. Moore at Society of Classical Poets.

In Transit: Part 1 (A Collaboration), Part II, and Part III. – Kelley Belmonte and Tom Darin Liskey at All Nine.

A Sonnet for Palm Sunday – Malcolm Guite via Kingdom Poets.

Day 17 – Sonja Benskin Mesher (Hat Tip: Paul Brookes).

Four Poems – Marly Youmans at A New Decameron. 

American Stuff

“A Power for Good” – The St. Louis Ladies’ Union Aid Society – Kristen Pawlak at Emerging Civil War. 

Spring Fever – Glen Sharp at Front Porch Republic.

Life and Culture

Starbursts and Some Change – Sam Van Eman.

All Your Silver: To My Grandmother – Hannah Hubin at The Rabbit Room.

Until we meet again – Alun Ebenezer at Evangelical Magazine.

Faith

The Severe Mercy of a Stay-at-Home Order – Jared Wilson at The Gospel Coalition.

Art

A breath of fresh paint: A revival in figurative art and the changing face of portraiture - Cindy Polemis at Standpoint Magazine. 

Does Art Matter in a Pandemic? – Samuel D. James at Letter & Liturgy. 

Is He Worthy? – Andrew Peterson

Painting: The News in the Artist’s Studio, oil on canvas by Luigi Bechi (1830-1919).

The light appeared

After Romans 3:21-31

The light appeared, next

to the stone, uncarried,

the weight no one could bear.

The light illuminated

the stone, every shade and smoothness,

every groove and roughness,

the stone a perfection

unattainable, unachievable,

until the light appeared

and shined upon it. 

Photograph by Justin Luebke via Unsplash. Used with permission.

"A Cold Dark Heart" by Stephen Puleston

It looks like a burglary gone wrong. An elderly man, living alone in a retirement community of detached houses, is found dead with a head wound. Police theorize he struggled with a burglar and fell, hitting his head. Valuable books and china have been stolen. Detective Inspector Ian Drake of the North Wales Police Force and his team investigation, patiently tracking down leads, including one from a rare book dealer. 

But it looks like a burglary until two more reports come in, both of elderly men who died in their homes. Both apparently suffered heart attacks. But the coroner is suspicious, and tests to see if his hunch is correct. The two didn’t die of heart attacks; they were injected with enough air to cause heart attacks. A few exhumations are ordered. And now it begins to look like there’s a serial killer loose, targeting the elderly.  

Stephen Puleston

A Cold Dark Heart by Stephen Puleston is the eighth Detective Inspection Ian Drake novel, and it gradually builds toward an on-the-edge-of-your seat conclusion. And Puleston plays Drake not only against a cunning killer but also his own boss, a new superintendent who’s looking for glory and is more obstructive than helpful. Drake still has the habits of his obsessive-compulsive disorder – rearranging post-it notes on his desk, moving picture frames an eighth of an inch, checking the cleanliness of his own car and those of his fellow officers. But it’s much more under control than in the earlier novels.

Puleston publishes two series of Welsh police detective stories. Detective Inspector Ian Drake is with the North Wales Police Service, and Detective Inspector John Marco is with the South Wales Police Service. The author originally trained and practiced as a; solicitor/lawyer. He also attended the University of London. He lives in Wales, very close to where his fictional hero lives and works.

A Cold Dark Heart is another solid entry in the Ian Drake series, with a nail-biting thriller of a conclusion.

Related:

My review of Written in Blood.

My review of A Time to Kill.

My review of Another Good Killing.

My review of Brass in Pocket.

My review of Worse than Dead.

My review of Against the Tide.

My review of Devil’s Kitchen.

My review of Dead Smart.

My review of Speechless.

My review of Nowhere to Hide.

“The Grace of Les Miserables” by Matt Rawle

It’s something that, in our contemporary culture, Christians would recognize almost immediately, while others would not. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo is part of the pantheon of the world’s great literature, and it is also an intensely Christian story. The popular stage production and movie do have wide audience appeal; both are great entertainment, with an resonating story line and wonderful music. And they don’t downplay the themes of grace and redemption; but many people in the audiences might be surprised at the profoundly Christian elements of these themes.

In The Grace of Les Misérables, author Matt Rawle tackles these themes head on. In six relatively short but packed chapters, he considers the grace displayed in the life of Jean Valjean; how grace and justice collide in the life of Inspector Javert; the problem of “the poor are always with you” in the life of Fantine; how the relationship of Marius and Cosette demonstrate the gift of love; how the friends exemplify the idea of building the barricade; and how the scenes of the garden, far from being asides, are critical to understanding the book.

Matt Rawle

What Rawle also helps you understand, if unintentionally, is that while the movie and the stage production are faithful to the book, the book contains much, much more. It is a more nuanced work. For example, the movie and play condense Valjean’s redemption into a few key scenes, while the book makes it clear his redemption happens over a considerable period of time. Christians recognize this as the process of sanctification. And the book does not display Inspector Javert as an evil villain; instead, it shows the ongoing internal conflict the man experiences as he grapples with the ideas of justice and grace. 

Rawle is lead pastor of Asbury United Methodist Church in Bossier City, La. He received his B.A. degree in music from LSU and his Masters of Divinity degree from Duke Divinity School. He is also the author of What Makes a Hero?, The Faith of a Mockingbird, The Redemption of Scrooge, The Gift of the Nutcracker, The Salvation of Doctor Who, Almost Christmas: A Wesleyan Advent Experience, Hollywood Jesus, and The Marks of Hope. 

The Grace of Les Misérables is a wonderful resource for exploring and deepening one’s understanding of the great work by Hugo. And it clearly shows how bedrock Christian teachings and themes underpin the entire story.

Note: The Grace of Les Misérables also has both a group leader guide and a youth study book for discussion in small groups and young adult classes. Both track the chapters in the main book. The leader guide includes a session overview; a list of suggested questions for discussion; appropriate Bible verses; and suggestions for application. The guide is extremely well done, easy to follow, and useful for both live and online group discussions.

Related:

When the Story is Not What You Think It Is – my post at Literary Life.