Bailey, Wetta, Charis...

Scott G. F. Bailey on Charis in the World of Wonders

Here's a clip from a new extended post about Charis in the World of Wonders from novelist Scott G. F. Bailley, author of The Astrologer. I picked this bit because he talks about language, but he has a lot more to say and is always interesting, so please take a look.

This is a beautiful book. Some readers, I have noticed, have difficulty with the poetic nature of Youmans' prose, and to them I say they should become better readers and lovers of language's music. "tilt and spill" "wondrous cascade" "ungrasped length" "bear and vessel what is unearthly and rained down" are wonderful constructions: just listen to the vowels and the rhythms, the moving accents from one sentence to the next. Youmans stretches prose, but never goes too far. Sound and sense, it's all there. I never do any book justice when I write about it, and I keep that tradition with this wee essay. Charis in the World of Wonders deserves lots of readers. Go be one of them, do. 

--novelist Scott G. F. Bailey, review post at Six Words for a Hat, 22 January 2021

And his earlier comment:

Marly Youmans' latest novel, Charis in the World of Wonders, is a great book...a rich tapestry of invention, a lovely long song of many overlapping themes. As with so much of Youmans' work, it is a myth writ on human scale, an instruction manual for discovering beauty and love in this fallen world. I do not exaggerate. 

C--novelist Scott G. F. Bailey, Six Words for a Hat, 31 December 2020

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Fr. Augustine Wetta video on Charis

A Wetta-and-moi video was supposed to be up on youtube, but I can't seem to find it... so HERE is a link to the video on facebook.  If you click, you'll discover me in my dining room being interviewed by author and Benedictine monk Fr. Augustine Wetta (who was a private student of mine at the Antioch Workshops a few years ago. He has since published the novel we discussed (in part) at Antioch:  The Eighth Arrow: Odysseus in the Underworld.) I always cringe at seeing/hearing myself, so I have not watched it, but Fr. Dude (as he is known to his students at the St. Louis Priory school) asked some interesting questions...

Charis at year's end, again...

Art by Clive Hicks-Jenkins

Thank you to Melanie Bettinelli and The Wine-Dark Sea for calling Charis in the World of Wonders "probably my favorite book of the year and the one I am most likely to recommend to anyone looking for a good book to read, and especially for a bookclub." She describes the book as "luminous" and says that she "cannot praise it highly enough." 

If you want to read why she thinks so, jump into The Wine-Dark Sea at this very spot.

I'm glad to see Charis walking onto her 6th year's end list. She's a intrepid traveler. And she's on the list with my friend Sally Thomas's Motherland (at Able Muse, Bookshop.org, Amazon, bn.com, local indies etc.) So pleasant!

Clive's sketchbook for Charis

Clive Hicks-Jenkins and Charis in the World of Wonders: 

A tiny linen-bound sketchbook in which I made all the preparatory work for Marly Youmans’ historic novel, ‘Charis in the World of Wonders’, published last year by Ignatius. 

Note that throughout my sketches I mis-titled it ‘Charis in a World of Wonders’. Luckily I noticed the error before making the finished artwork.

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More Clivean goodness:

Clive's website: 

www.hicks-jenkins.com

Clive's Artlog: 

https://clivehicksjenkins.wordpress.com/

Gray Mare Press: 

https://greymarepress.bigcartel.com/products

Shows, commissions, collections: 

http://www.hicks-jenkins.com/read-me-forte

Clive's fascinating life in ballet, theatre, puppetry, book arts, and painting: 

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_Hicks-Jenkins 

E pluribus unum

Constantino Brumidi, 1808-1880

Wikimedia Commons, public domain

Capitol dome detail: E pluribus Unum

A detail from Auden, right for the hour--

Follow, poet, follow right

To the bottom of the night,

With your unconstraining voice

Still persuade us to rejoice;

With the farming of a verse

Make a vineyard of the curse,

Sing of human unsuccess

In a rapture of distress;

In the deserts of the heart

Let the healing fountain start,

In the prison of his days

Teach the free man how to praise.

                      --a very high call to the poet in hard times,

                        from Auden's great poem, "In Memory of W. B. Yeats"

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Blessed are the peacemakers

Resist divisiveness.

E pluribus unum.