Quarantine Holy Week, with interviews, excerpts, poems, and Charis

Charis in the World of Wonders 

and poems: updatery!

Anak Krakatoa erupted on Good Friday, locusts afflict Africa, the pandemic rages everywhere, Etobicoke Creek ran as red as blood: maybe you had better get started on your quarantine reading of Charis in the World of Wonders...

"Q and A with Marly Youmans, Author of Charis In The World Of Wonders" - interview at Women Writer, Women's Books  11 April 2020

Excerpt (the first appearance of Hortus) from Charis in the World of Wonders at Women Writers, Women's Books  3 April 2020

"Mystic Journey," "Jane Eyre in the Red Room," "The Plum Oak Pot," and "The Hand" (audio and text) at Pete Candler's pandemic project, A New Decameron. The first and last poems are blank verse; the other two are part of a sequence of poems influenced by Hebrew parallelism and Yoruban praise traditions: art has always been a Silk Road. Thanks to Pete for a request.

"Plague-spell" and "Death of a Singer" at The Living Church (Episcopal/Anglican Communion) 19 April 2020 issue. Thanks to editor Fr. Mark Michael for his request.

Upcoming

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"The Homunculus" from The Book of the Red King (video) 

at The Ballsians on youtube.

Update: It is up! Go here.

Poetry videos and text from The Book of the Red King 

at the Cathedral Arts blog from Albany, New York

"Night Blooming Cereus" at A New Decameron, read by Paul Digby

Excerpt (audio/text) of Charis in the World of Wonders at A New Decameron

Podcast at NAA

and more

A bold 19th century #GoodFriday depiction:
"As Seen from the Cross," James Tissot, c. 1886-94,
public domain via Wikipedia.

THIS NEW NOVEL is unlike anything I’ve ever read—
and the best novel I’ve read in ages. 
It’s set in Puritan New England In the late 17th century 
and uses gorgeous language to tell a gentle but riveting story. 
I stayed up until 3:30 this morning to finish it. 
If you’re tired of all the “The Girl Who—-“ novels 
floating out there, cleanse your palate with this.
--poet Jane Ullrich Greer, April 8

from A New Decameron

"Orcadian Painting (Good Friday)" by painter
and my occasional penpal/collaborator, Graham Ward. Acrylics, 2019.

Barbara Tuchman, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century: In Siena, where more than half the inhabitants died of the plague, work was abandoned on the great cathedral, planned to be the largest in the world, and never resumed, owing to loss of workers and master masons and “the melancholy and grief” of the survivors. The cathedral’s truncated transept still stands in permanent witness to the sweep of death’s scythe. Agnolo di Tura, a chronicler of Siena, recorded the fear of contagion that froze every other instinct. 'Father abandoned child, wife husband, one brother another,' he wrote, 'for this plague seemed to strike through the breath and sight. And so they died. And no one could be found to bury the dead for money or friendship.… And I, Angolo di Tura, called the Fat, buried my five children with my own hands, and so did many others likewise.
[Siena Cathedral dome photograph by Livio Andronico 2013
Creative Commons license Wikipedia]

A Causley poem for Holy Week

Composer Jussi Chydenius's 

setting of "I Am the Great Sun" by Charles Causley,

a poem inspired by a seventeenth-century Normandy crucifix.

Hofstra Chamber Choir

David Fryling, Conductor

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          I AM THE GREAT SUN

          I am the great sun, but you do not see me,
          I am your husband, but you turn away.
          I am the captive, but you do not free me,
          I am the captain you will not obey.

          I am the truth, but you will not believe me,
          I am the city where you will not stay,
          I am your wife, your child, but you will leave me,
          I am that God to whom you will not pray.

          I am your counsel, but you do not hear me,
          I am the lover whom you will betray.
          I am the victor, but you do not cheer me,
          I am the holy dove whom you will slay.

          I am your life, but if you will not name me,
          Seal up your soul with tears, and never blame me.

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Thanks to a years-back recommendation from editor John Wilson, I've long been fond of Cornish poet Charles Causley--loved and admired in his lifetime by Ted Hughes and Philip Larkin--and this poem is one of my favorites. The sonnet is simple and profound, using a parallelism that invokes the Hebrew poetry of the Bible, particularly the beautiful language of the King James version, but also grasps at the idea of God as "the great I AM." 

Its Elizabethan-sonnet rhyme scheme is curious, eight of its lines depending on final identical rhyme that again invokes God. The six remaining lines add only one more final rhyme sound, so Causley gives us only two sets of end-word rhymes, both ending the lines on long vowels. Each line is a full, complete thought, framed by "I am" and one of those two long-vowel rhymes. 

Looking closer, we see that Causley has chosen to expand the scheme by rhyming the words that precede "me," the identical rhyme sound of eight lines. So we meet internal rhymes "see/free," "believe/leave," "hear/cheer," and "name/blame." The accent falls strongly on those penultimate words. Identical sounds also occur inside quatrains; particularly noticeable is the repetition of "do not" and "you will not" and "you will," reinforcing the idea of human free will, choice, and the swerving away from God that marks and informs the poem. 

The tightness of the rhyme scheme makes the couplet feel especially surprising because it breaks the shape of prior lines, completing the thought in two lines, and tying up the poem with another two-word rhyme-plus-identical-rhyme in "name me" and "blame me." In those last lines, the poem enters--just barely, and not with confidence--into a realm where another path is possible.

On the other hand, "if you will not name me" is an interesting thing to say in the final turn of thought. Recalling that "I AM" is one of the names of God, the reader may well think that he or she has indeed been naming God, though in fact naming God and admitting the rejection of God at once.

If you don't perceive why this is a remarkable poem, I suggest that you try reading it aloud three times. (Remember that you are speaking in the voice of God. As the poem was inspired by crucifix-and-inscription, you can even imagine that you speak the words from the cross.) And then if you don't feel in your bones that the poem is good, well, I guess it is not for you. Or as we might say, "I am your poem, but you do not know me."

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Donation site for The Friends of Notre Dame: 

http://www.notredamedeparis.fr/friends/donate/