Irish Theater, Music and Dance

For those, who like me, love Irish folk music and dance, the local Irish Seattle new, which John Keane so faithful emails to me, had a great little notice. 

According to the Seattle Irish Clubs newsletter, Saturday, November 20th, it will be Irish night at the local Seattle Rep.  At Tony award winning play, Dancing at Lugnasa by Brian Friel will be shown, starting at 6Pm.  It will run until December 5th at Seattle Repertory Theatre.   But Saturdays event is special, starting with Irish Dance lessons, a live band, a potato bar, and whiskey tastings. The play is loosely based on the lives of Friel's relatives in the Glenties on the rural west coast of Donegal and set in 1936. It shows a beautiful fragement of five women's lives during a romantic summer.

More on the play at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_at_Lughnasa 

Thanks to:SEATTLE-NEWS@IRISHCLUB.ORG

Catholicism and Poetry #6: Samuel Menashe: A Jewish Poet a Catholic Should Love

Can a Jewish Poet write poetry a Catholic should love?  Did not St. Paul say we were spiritual Jews?  Our Bible begins with the Hebrew story and continues onto our unique beliefs and our Catholic poetry is rooted in the bible.

A Jewish poet who has labored in relative obscurity for years, Samuel Menashe, won Poetry Foundations Neglected Masters Award in 2006 and since he has become the darling of a New York literary scene that once snub him.  He writes terse, even taut poems with Zen like clarity and pointedness, but they are often on biblical or other Jewish themes.  He rhymes his short little poems, something now unconventional, and yet in many other ways his poems are completely modern.  Modern in language and influenced by existentialism, yet they touch the ancient additudes of the Hebrew people.

My favorite poem is  Adam Means Earth.    Are we not all born of the earth?  Menache plays on the fact that in the ancient semetic tounges Adama was earth, while Adam meant man.

The poem can be found at:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=181927

In this poem he draws out the essential humility of the human condition, when we chose to embrace it.  When he  speaks of "the man  whose name is mud" is am reminded of the scene in Francesco where Mickey Rourke, playing St. Francis, rubs his face in the mud and says "I am so low, I am lower than the dirt."
Menache says "dust Adam became" aluding to our death, and yet also speaking ou our life, what we are made of.  He asks "Was he his name" which perhaps we should all ask of ourselves.  Have I lived up to my humble origins?


In august of 2006 NPR carried a wonderful audio story on Menasche, below.



Here is a wonderful u-tube of Menashe talking and reading



Here is a brief biography:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Menashe

And great little interview recored on a blog.

http://www.myjewishlearning.com/blog/culture/a-visit-with-samuel-menashe/

And some more poems of Menashe.

http://www.archipelago.org/vol8-4/menashe.htm

Hounds at Bay About to Play

Acoustic Music fans there is a special treat coming up--Hounds at Bay is playing and there is an ad for it.   Go if you can.   I have also posted a U-Tube of these guys playing, Great stuff.

EGAN's Ballard Jam House Thursday November 18th   7-8:30 PM doors 6:30PM  Egan's Ballard Jam House  (206) 789-1621 (Reservations recommended) 1707 Northwest Market Street, Seattle, WA The food is great and this band is too ! $7 cover Hounds@Bay is:  Larry Baumgartner, Jim Nason & Steve Peterson Help us celebrate our 1 year anniversary "Leaving our mark on Ballard" LET'S PACK THE PLACE Photo by Ron Dalton

This announcement sent to you by  Larry Baumgartner and Lynette Hensley 3009 NE 135th St. Seattle, Washington 98125 206 291-4117

Houndsatbay -- Parchman Farm James Nason Hounds At Bay

Social Justice Film Picks

I have started a new blog on my unemployment and on the problems of all those marginalized in America.  I put some social justice film picks on it, and  rather than cross post right away I thought I would just give my arts readers a link.
http://roominhouseblues.blogspot.com/2010/11/social-justice-film-picks.html
Please give this new blog a read and comment a little so I know what your thoughts are.

The Dark Arts of Halloween VII

Film has it's magic and in the early days it was a silent magic. Alister Crowley, the famous black magician of England claimed film for the anti-Christ, although many of are not willing to cede that claim.  But it's okay to have a little fun with the darker side of film.  I have decided to seduce you into a world of dark desire and flying in the night from the earliest days of film.  Nosferatu was one of the greatest silent films of it's day, made by the great director,  F. W. Murnau. This adaptation was more faithful to the novel than most later adaptations, although departures from the novel by film were usually not as severe as film departures from Shelly's Frankenstein. 



Here is a little on the film:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosferatu

The novel itself was extraordinarily well written.  To give you a little chilling effect I have an excerpt from the novel describing the vampire.
"His face was a strong-a very strong-aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils; with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples, but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion. The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth; these protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years. For the rest, his ears were pale and at the tops extremely pointed; the chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin. The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor."

Here is a little more on the famous novel by Bram Stoker it was based on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracula

The Dark Arts of Halloween VI

Now we get to the dark art of puppetry.  These inoffensive little pieces of cloth and string here conjure up Halloween for us:

The Dark Arts of Halloween V

Poetry, an angelic art, may also be a dark art, leading use to experience the emotions of fear, horror and disgust. After all isn't poetry about emotions, and who are we to refuse to explore these emotions also.

I found this wonderful u-tube presentation  of a contemporary poem by it's author, presented here with puppets, a Confessional for Puppet's Halloween.:



And here by the conjurations of an animator, Edgard Allen Poe has come tapping at our door to read a poem:

The Dark Arts of Halloween IV

Continuing with our rather haunting theme for this week we are exploring the dark art of the devil's music, the blues. I first heard this little number on a Maria Muldaur album, Maria Muldaur and Her Garden of Joy, but I didn't find that on U-Tube.  So here is the best version I could bring you:

The Process of a Poem

A few days ago I wrote a blog entry on the process of a painting, but I am not a painter. So I directed you to someone else's blog, where she demonstrated her steps in producing a painting.

I am however unsuccessfully, a poet, so today I will discuss the process of a poem. I'm not going to go in a linear step by step manner. Rather I am going to discuss the various things I have done in writing poetry so that you can assemble your own process. For those who do not want to write but want to understand, I hope that you can see inside the feverish skull of a poet at work.

I was first introduced to poetry when Beat poet and ad copywriter Lew Welch came and spoke at my high school. He read a few of his poems which I neither remember now nor understood then, but I like something about poetry and I caught the fever from Welch. He said we could write poems, that we could put anything we wanted in them, even a shopping list. So a wrote my first poem, complete with a shopping list. I give gratitude to God that I long ago lost the poem, although I may try sometime another shopping list. The important thing was that I began writing. Maybe, like the Zen poets, I'll write a death poem --and it will be a shopping list.

Then I discovered that poetry was about emotion, So I began to write in states of emotional ecstasy or emotional longing. I wrote in a pagan language, deifying the woman of my imagination and worshiping forces of nature. In other words I was a teenage boy who had discovered poetry. Again I give gratitude to God that I long ago lost these poems. But the value to writing them was that I my emotional state grew deeper and I gradually reached towards the subtle emotions. Often in a poem, we don't at first perceive that there is emotion involved at all. We have to leap into a visual or intellectual world of the artist to feel the emotion. We have to be there with the poet. So the job of the poet is not to give an exact description of his state of mind or heart, but to beckon us forward to the edge of the known universe. He invites us to fall into his world like Alice fell.

Then I began to read the great dead poets, and a few living ones. I read Dylan Thomas and Hopkins and I fell in love with their use of alliteration and assonance. I learned that internal rhyme could provide rhythm even in a free verse poem.

I learned about the majesty of long lines in Whitman. I played around with end rhyme verse. Eventually I learned how to count the accents of my poetry and meter it and I learned from Hopkins how to spring that meter free again, in an irregular meter that wasn't quite free verse.

I learned from the contemporary and from European poets something called the deep image --a sort of surrealism I suppose, but tamed a bit. Where you use deep and inexact images from the subconscious in a poem that includes less deep imagery to provoke. In other words you shift levels of consciousness to bring the reader into your deeper place. The poem may have a non-surrealist structure but it has deeper images as well.

Then I learned to fall completely into the poem, to let it overwhelm me like a shamanic trance. Each poem I wrote I had to find the place where I was to begin and that was a magical struggle. I put my desk in the center of my room, and I put an old typewriter on it (this was before PCs and Macs) On one wall I put a bookshelf filled with volumes of poets --Blake, Neruda, Lorca, Whitman, Thomas and others. Every morning I walked around my desk. I kept walking under I felt I was ready to enter the word of poetry. Then I picked up a poet to come with my on my walk around the desk. I read some poems--maybe even out loud. I learned to hear the poet even when I read him silently. I read until poetry overwhelmed me and I moved past the state of being the listener to the state of being the poet. Then I sat in the chair and fought with the keys of the typewriter to hammer out a poem.

When I finished a draft of the poem I pulled it out of the typewriter. I stopped being the Shaman and applied intellect. I counted it's meter. I looked for opportunities to enhance internal rhyme. I determined what I really meant.

Then once more I became something else. I became an alchemist. I began to grind, boil and recast my metals, precipitating and refining over and over and over. Having spent an hour or so writing a page of poetry, and a few minutes to an hour lending a critical eye to it, now I alchemized the poetry and myself. I cut myself to pieces and I floated down a river until I reassemble as a new poet with a new poem. I sacrificed everything. I spared known of my pride in producing the finely crafted poem.

All of those poems were lost. Only God knows them. But that allowed me to begin again. I had deepened and matured the channels. I didn't need to use the exact same techniques, but I need to learn more about emotion and poetry. I stopped writing for several years, but poetry loved me and I loved her. She was my wife and no man could set aside what God had joined together.

The summery of my old method still exists in mature technique. I write without reservation, I lend a critical eye, and I edit without mercy.

Again my reader I will go back. As I promised you, this is not linear. I want to cover some techniques for starting a poem. One can copy the first line of another poem, follow the lead of that first line but with your own heart. Then in editing the poem, you destroy the other poet, you place him on the sacrificial altar.

You can start with lists. You can list five images of colors, five images of scent, five images of sound, five images of object, etc and then take a knife to the list. Let the list run blood. Start over again with the hacked up and pulpy remains and construct a poem.

You can go for a walk and record the pressure of the word against your skin and ear drums. You can let the world sing to you. Then you can leave that world in order to describe the emotions it gave you. You can walk in the memory or the imagination of that world. The emotions are pinned by your heart to the wall of your mind. it doesn't matter if the world is real or the word alone is real. You can follow the walkway to where the heart left it for you.

Or you can refuse to write the word down. You can memorize the word before you sleep and fall into the dream of those words. You can walk with the words for a day or longer and tumble them over and over, speaking them in your mind over even in your tongue until you can't hold off any longer. And you reach for your beloved and move with your beloved. But then you have to move away from your beloved. To move back towards the world in savage reordering of the words.

The poet must never be afraid to start, to look or to change. Where do you being. Sit down and make a shopping list.

The Dark Arts of Halloween III

Okay kiddies --now it's time for another "dark art" --the art of the mask. We'll keep this one simple. Hold on tight.

The Dark Arts of Halloween ll

Another dark art that can be practices this time of year is making mobiles. Not the pretty kind that tinkle in the wind, but the kind that creep up the neck and tighten up your jaw. Here is one for you.

Musical Saw? #2

As I promised more on the musical saw. In fact I will be providing much more later. Years ago in Santa Cruz I knew Tom Scribner who, among other things, was a legend in the musical saw field. He did more than anyone else in the 60's and 70's to revive the playing of the musical saw and an musical saw gathering started up in the Santa Cruz mountains as a result, after he died. If he taught you how to play the musical saw he would award you a P.h.d in musical saw playing. If anyone has one of those please send a photo in the comment section to show it off.

I remember many occasions upon which I was walking in downtown Santa Cruz and I could suddenly here the eerie, winning sound of the saw. I would follow it's beckoning and find Tom sitting somewhere downtown playing the saw, then I would sit beside him and listen for a while, and find him always willing to chat after a while. I'll provide more detail on Tom and his history in later posting.

Practical advice for those thinking of taking up the art: don't play the tooth side, you will use up to many bows. Actually look for a saw that has a good handle or one specifically made as a musical saw. And bend and play it before you buy it. If it doesn't produce a lot of high pitched sounds it's no good for anything except cutting wood. And between you and me, I think cutting wood is more work than making music.

Besides the saw convention in California there is now an annual one in New York City. I have a little U-Tube from that here for you.

The Dark Arts of Halloween

Well it's an arts blog and it's Halloween so it's time for a little of the spooky arts --like pumpkin carving. The winner of our pumpkin carving contest is my friend Greg Bau, who owes me a beer for appointing him the winner. Here is Greg's pumpkin, courtesy of his mobile upload.

I am willing to consider a runner up contest, of course, and I prefer dark beers, especially porters.

In the comments anything you have to say about other dark arts, like costume making and baking goodies would be welcomed. For the right brew I can award winners there also.

As to why pumpkin carving is a dark art, I am including this U-Tube:

Catholicism and Poetry #5 Gerard Manley Hopkins

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1899) was a English poet and Jesuit priest. He converted from the Anglican church to Catholicism while studying at Oxford under the influence of John Henry Newman, one of man important people with whom he maintained correspondence. He developed at Oxford a friendship with the poet Robert Bridges, later poet laureate of England.

When he entered the Jesuits he burned all his poetry, but when his religious sentiment called forth a new kind of poetry he wrote while telling almost no one about the poems. While never abandoning Aquinas Hopkins began studying Duns Scotus who places emphasis on the uniqueness of each thing and person and in having exacting perception. This fit Hopkins temperament and guided the way he looked at things in his poetry. His poetry is a fusion of Aquinas, Scotus and the world that he sees before him to the service of the God he loves. Because he studied Scotus, however, when he took his final theological exam in the Jesuits, he failed, not relying solely on Aquinas for his answers, and he could not advance in the order. He studied Welsh, but gave it up when his superior suggested that unless he was going to use it in his mission in Whales to draw closer to people, it might not be a worthy pursuit. Yet the Welsh language enriched his poetry in the same way that it enriched Dylan Thomas's. He also had studied Old English and the poetry in that language, which , similarly to the Welsh, relied on internal rhyme devices, like alliteration and assonance. Hopkins did not publish his poetry, sharing them with Robert Bridges and a few others, mainly other poets whom he knew. Bridges revered him through he sometimes criticized his poetry, and in 1918, years after Hopkins death, Brides, as poet laureate had them published.

This U-Tube embed is a five part documentary on Hopkins, so start with the first and click onwards.

Lets take a look at one of the poems read on this documentary:

As Kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame

As kingfisher catch fire,dragonflies draw flame

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells

Stones ring;like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's

Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:

Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;

Selves-goes itself, myself it speaks and spells,

Crying What I do is me:for that I came.

I say more: the just man justices:

Keeps grace: that keeps his goings graces

Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is-

Christ-for Christ plays in ten thousands places,

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his

To the Father through the features of men's faces.

Hopkins here, as in most of his poetry, uses a sprung rhythm, that is the same number of beats as a regular line, but sprung from there position in the line to fall in differing places. This technique falls between classically metered poetry and the loose rhythm of free verse, such as in Whitman. However in this poem some of his lines have a more regular meter. Hopkins often mixed the two as if to place emphasis on why his meter varies in the other lines. He uses assonance and alliteration to spring the meter free and make it fall where he may it. (To spring free my grammar to make my point!)

In this poem Hopkins begins, as he often does showing the action and beauty of God in creation. But that is just a begging point. But then Hopkins does something different, swinging on the cord of a bell he carries us from the natural to the human world. Just as each natural thing serves it's purpose for God, so to does each human being, doing for me , that I came for. Each just man justices, and by that he is Christ for others, part of Christ playing in ten thousand places that the Father can see him lovely in limbs, see him through the features of men's faces.

Wikipedia on Hopkins
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_Manley_Hopkins

Poems of Hopkins

http://www.bartleby.com/122/

Time line for Hopkins Poems

http://www.google.com/search?aq=1&oq=Gerard+Ma&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=gerard+manley+hopkins+poems#q=gerard+manley+hopkins+poems&hl=en&prmd=ivbo&tbs=tl:1&tbo=u&ei=3OrETIXxJoX0swO6i92bDA&sa=X&oi=timeline_result&ct=title&resnum=11&ved=0CF0Q5wIwCg&fp=973e9f93f0f871cc

Catholicism and Poetry #4 Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas is not in any was a Catholic poet, and yet because of time in Welsh churches as a youth, the reading of the Bible, and an unfulfilled attraction to the Catholic faith, many of his poems show a deep spirituality. Thomas was the son of a failed Welsh poet and school teacher who raised his on great literature, hoping not vainly that his son would succeed where he had failed. Thomas's poetry was marked strong cadences derived from internal rhyme: alliteration and assonance. Although his meter was more regular than Gerard Manley Hopkins, his poetic energy was similar. His topics vary widely, but many of them come from his youth and others are spiritual in nature. Some dealt with death. He was one of the most brilliant poets and playwrights of his day, popular with British and American audiences as a reader, and with the British radio listening public.

In spite of his intellect and spiritual leanings, Thomas was also a notorious drunk and a con artist who would talk people out of money, justifying it as necessary to support his writing.

Here is a U-Tube animation with Thomas's voice that tries to recreate what it would have been like to here him read the deeply spiritual "And Death Shall Have No Dominion".

And here is the text of Thomas poem:

And Death Shall Have No DominionAnd death shall have no dominion

Dead mean naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion

Thomas drew on Romans 6:9 "We know that Christ raised from the dead, dies no more; death no longer has power over him." and Revelations, chapter 17, which promises that Christians on rising shall receive new bodies. Another biblical source may be Daniel 12:2-3 Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some shall live forever, others shall be an everlasting horror and disgrace. But the wise shall shine brightly like the splendor of the firmament, and those who lead the many to justice shall be like the stars forever."

However Thomas's reference from the stars may be partially scientific, in that we are born in the stars, or a reference in part to Orion the hunter who has stars in his knee and shoulder.

Thomas also makes reference to love in this poem. He seems to make a reference to the old tradition that sailors shall be tossed from there graves in the sea at the resurrection. An attempt to pin down exact meanings for this poem is futile, but I can say that the poem seems a definite statement of belief on Thomas part.

More on Thomas at Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dylan_Thomas

And Dylan Thomas Home:

http://www.dylanthomas.com/

And other poems by Thomas:

http://www.internal.org/Dylan_Thomas

Sing Out Magazine: The Sing Out Radio Magazine

Sing Out Magazine, for those not in the folkie know, is a magazine founded in 1950 by folk musicians and folk types including Pete Seeger. It has weather the political and economic storms of the years to continue writing about folk songs, musicians and issues in the folk scene. It was started as a successor to People's Songs, which had started as a mimeographed handout and grew to a circulation of 3,000, then folded as an anti-red wave affected was leveled against progressive organizations. In 1950 some of the same people got together and planned the first issue of Sing Out!, which had just broad enough appeal to last.

Sing Out has grown into a larger organization with a resource center and a radio program on NPR. Songs from past and present issues of Sing Out can be heard on this show, produced by the group that has been the heart and soul of the last two folk revivals, and the slow times for folk music in between.

I found some Homer and Jethro on the Sing Out page and track it's source down, so to give you a little flavor of Sing Out I'll post them here.

To find Sing Out Radio go to:

http://www.folkalley.com/music/singout/

And to find the online Sing Out organization and magazine go to:

http://www.singout.org/

Process of a Painting

Ah, dear reader, the few of you that there are. I can't pretend to know much about the visual arts besides film, but I loved the visual of the process for putting together a painting provided by Lynette Hensley on one of her blogs.

http://www.folkierthanthou.com/Art/paintingframe2.htm

Do any of you have comments on the process for putting together your artistic works?

Maybe it isn't T.S. Elliot--So?

Poetry is many things to many people, and often, just like kids who don't like vegetables because they have tasted raw broccoli, the young reader stays away from it because they are not read to tackle the intricacies of philosophical poetry. But a great many fine poets are accessible and write on popular topics, from Robert Frost to Alice Walker. Alice Walker has a new book recently covered in this NPR audio

The background story can be found at:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130699176&sc=fb&cc=fp

Czesla Milosz, Deceased

The famed Polish poet, Czesla Milosz has died at age 93 and here, without further elaboration is a requiem for him from NPR.

Criticism

I've just read a review of a book by Northrop Frye, an eminent literary critic. I'm going be reading The Educated Imagination and suggest you go to Spenser Boersma's blog, After Orthodoxy and read the review:

http://afterorthodoxy.blogspot.com/2010/10/book-review-educated-imagination-by.html

Catholicism and Poetry #3 Soto

Gary Soto is a contemporary American Poet, raised in Fresno, Ca who writes about growing up as a Catholic migrant farmworker kid. Not all of his poems, of course, are on this topic, but no one in America today has explored this area so well or so deeply. Soto has authored many books, poetry, novels and children's books. A complete list can be found on Wikipedia. I highly recommend his "Home Course in Religion and I tried to find some U-Tube readings from that, but u-tube posting are not infinite. Only in heaven will we have infinite u-tube posting.

Here is a poem that touches a little on being a Catholic School Boy.

Here is another poem that touches more simply the question of being a young boy:

But neither of those poems give us much of the Catholic feeling of Gary Soto. So I found a link to a poem about confession:

http://www.akoot.com/garysoto8.html

In this poem Soto sees his Catholic Childhood with very old eyes and gets us to look at our own childhood with our own old eyes. He talks about the Monsignor he knew as a boy, a character in several of his poems. Another poem, from Home Course in Religion that talks about the Monsignor is Pink Hands

http://zocalopublicsquare.org/thepublicsquare/2009/02/24/by-gary-soto-2/uncategorized/

In this poem Soto gets at a lot of what the culture of Catholicism was when he grew up, and what it is now. And beneath the changing culture we see the spirituality of the religion.

Soto is a free verse narrative poet, but it would be wrong to accuse Soto of being chopped up prose. Read some of this poems out loud and listen. Soto knows that poetry is rhythmical and he knows how to tell a narrative story with rhythmical phrasing. I believe Soto is on the better living American poets, and I love his poetry, even though it's style is very different than my own.

Gary Soto's website has some great photos and biography:

http://www.garysoto.com/index.html

Wikipedia on Soto:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Soto

Here is a link to some more Soto poems:

http://project1.caryacademy.org/echoes/poet_Gary_Soto/SamplePoemsSoto.htm

Wow--Jazz Too!

For those of you who think I only like folk music, bluegrass etc here is a little surprise. I like this Herbie Hancock enough to post it. I like this rendition of Cantelope Island for it's mastery of rhythm in Jazz. We don't usually think much of the rhythms that occur in contemporary Jazz, because the emphasis is on the stretching of the framework of sound. I was alerts of this wonderful music by the friend Conor Apperson, a local Seattle Jazz and Rock drummer.

Language is No Barrier to the Language of Poetry!

Listen to this wonderful poem by the German poet, Heinrich Heine. Even if you know little or no German, the sound enriches the meaning of the translation. You can hear where the stress fall. Poetry is always a tension between sound and sense. The background music is from Franz Liszt.

Catholicism and Poetry #2 Southwell

St Robert Southwell, SJ, martyr priest and poet is perhaps best known, as a poet, for his Christmas poems. These poems were set to music years ago, and below we have Sting's rocking version.

Southwell, in his poetry, relies quite a bit on elements of antithesis and paradox, as well as fanciful elements. His literary goal in that is to create more religious emotion or passion, a passion Sting plays so well with in his rock version.

Queen Elizabeth had passed a law that made it a capital offense for a Catholic priest to be in England longer than 40 days. Yet Southwell requested to become a missionary to England in 1586, the next year. After six years of visiting English Catholics in their homes and providing the sacraments he was arrested for his visits to the home of Richard Bellamy who was connected to Jerome Bellamy. Jerome had been executed for treason and his daughter had been arrested. Southwell, at trail, admitted to the facts pertaining to his priesthood, but denied plotting against the throne. His stated innocence of treason. Yet he was convicted, then hanged, drawn and quartered. He was beatified in 1929 and canonized in 1970.

The Burning Babe

As I in hoary winter's night stood shivering in the snow,
Surprised I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;
And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,
A pretty babe all burning bright did in the air appear;
Who, though scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed,
As though his floods should quench his flames, which with his tears were fed.
"Alas," quoth he, "but newly born, in fiery heats I fry,
Yet none approach to warm their hearts, or feel my fire but I!
My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns,
Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;
The fuel justice layeth on, and mercy blows the coals,
The metal in this furnace wrought are men's defiled souls,
For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good,
So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood."
With this he vanished out of sight and swiftly shrunk away,
And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas Day.

Belong are references for further research on St. Southwell.

Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Southwell_(Jesuit)

More biography:

http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/southbio.htm

Poems:

http://shakespeareauthorship.com/xmas/soutwell.html

http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/southbib.htm

G.K. Chesterton Society

I went to a meeting of Seattle's G.K Chesterton Society last night, and heard Dr. David Whalen of
Hillsdale College give a talk on Cardinal John Henry Newman. The talk was given, appropriately, in the Catholic Newman Center, by University of Washington, where the society is currently holding it's talks.

You may ask why I write about Cardinal Newman in a blog about the arts, but if you know much about Newman it is quite understandable. Newman was an advocate of Catholic education and liberal arts studies, holding that we must study each discipline separately, then integrate them to a whole. He argued for Catholic Universities on the grounds that theology was a necessary part of the liberal arts.

The evening began with a brief reading from Chesterton that fit the nights topic, then Dr Whalen's talk. Dr. Whalen was articulate, funny, and personable. He teaches on literature and the Great Books and is quite well versed in Newman's writings. Afterward there was a social hour during which I pressed further a question, part of which Dr. Whalen had artfully dodged and caught up with several old friends from Seattle's Catholic community. I recommend all my readers folllow this link to the society and check out there upcoming events.

http://www.seattlechesterton.org/

Catholicism and Poetry #1 Auden

I am writing here a set of commentaries on poetry in preparation for a class on Catholicism and Poetry I will be doing. In this class, at Blessed Sacrament, Seattle, I will be reviewing Catholic influence over poetry, by Catholics and non-Catholics, with a liberality of what is a Catholic influence. My first poem of concern is Lullaby by W.H. Auden Auden is reading this in a BBC special on his work, later posted on U-Tube.

And for closer examination here is the text:

Lullaby by W. H. Auden

Lay your sleeping head, my love,

Human on my faithless arm;

Time and fevers burn away

Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave

Proves the child ephemeral:

But in my arms till break of day

Let the living creature lie,

Mortal, guilty, but to me

The entirely beautiful.

Soul and body have no bounds:

To lovers as they lie upon

Her tolerant enchanted slope

In their ordinary swoon,

Grave the vision Venus sends

Of supernatural sympathy,

Universal love and hope;

While an abstract insight wakes

Among the glaciers and the rocks

The hermit's carnal ecstasy.

Certainty, fidelity

On the stroke of midnight pass

Like vibrations of a bell,

And fashionable madmen raise

Their pedantic boring cry:

Every farthing of the cost,

All the dreaded cards foretell,

Shall be paid, but from this night

Not a whisper, not a thought,

Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:

Let the winds of dawn that blow

Softly round your dreaming head

Such a day of welcome show

Eye and knocking heart may bless,

Find the mortal world enough;

Noons of dryness find you fed

By the involuntary powers,

Nights of insult let you pass

Watched by every human love.

In the first verse Auden lays out both the sleeping innocence of the child, and the waiting sin, the original sin, summed up the the phrase, mortal, guilty, but to me the entirely beautiful." The child we see to Auden is "ephemeral>" Time will take it's innocence and life as "Time and Fevers burn away." In the middle verses Auden explores more deeply the contradictions of human life, "Gave the vision Venus sends" he says suggesting both death and love at once. He alludes to tarot cards in a manner similar to Elliot's reference--dreaded cards Auden says, predicting the worst for us no doubt. Another contradiction -the hermits carnal ecstasy, showing that we both alone and subject to union through ecstasy. Finally he says, "Beauty,midnight pass.."and gives us our progress towards death.

Violin Bows Can be Used for Things Other than Musical Saws

And here is a post of some great Mozart playing, in case you thought I only liked folk music.

This is by Giles Apap, and to get an explanation of his concert see:

http://www.gillesapap.com/

Musical Saw?

I had a friend in Santa Cruz in the old days, Tom Scriber, who was an ex-wobbly and a musical saw player. I think it's one of the great folk instruments. In his memory here I am putting some musical saw links.

First a flicker photo of the statue to Tom:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/42304632@N00/58958201/

Then a musical saw lesson

And an interview with Tom:

I share more with you another day on Tom Scribner, musical saws and folk instruments.

Baseball and Poetry

I've never been much of a sports fan, especially baseball. Even though baseball is said to be "cerebral" and therefore a game that should attract a poet like me, I find it slow and tedious. Good poetry, on the other hand, I find action packed like great soccer or basketball. A good poem is filled with internal rhyme, metaphor, simile, enjambment, and fast moving imagery.

Maybe that is why I got a puzzled look at the end of a line several years ago. Seamus Heaney, the Nobel prize winning Irish poet was reading in Seattle and I was looking for the line for the tickets. I found a long line and got in it. I inquired, is this the line for Seamus Heaney tickets. Who? This is for the Mariners. Perhaps if she had been a soccer or basketball fan, she would have know the great poets.

Poet in Residence.

Good News. Yesterday I was talking to Sebastian Smitch of Seattle Coffee Works and said I live as an urban monk, but sometimes my mind goes elsewhere. Urban Monk or nun he asked. Urban monk I hastily and emphatically restated. Though an urban monk, I have one unfulfilled wish, to be Poet in Residence at Seattle Coffee Works. You've got it Sebastian said. You are Poet in Residence at Seattle Coffee Works. Advice to young aspiring poets. Find a good coffee shop to sit and write in. If you fail to write any great poems at least you will have coffee to drink.

This Land Is Your Land

By now it's old news that Bruce Springsteen, Pete Seeger and 'Tao Rodriguez Seeger sang Woody Gurthrie's " This Land is Your Land" at Obama's inauguration(Too bad Arlo Guthrie wasn't up there also). Just in case you were out of the loop that day, have forgotten, or haven't gotten enough of it, I've included the You Tube Video of it. But please come back afterward dear reader, since I have something to say about the famous song and our times.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl08hEegDu4

It may be symbolism to have 90 year old lifetime folk and topical singer Seeger lead the nation and a slightly nervous and reticent Obama in the greatest people's patriotic song, but it's important symbolism. It's symbolism that feeds into something FDR once said --"I agree, now make me do it." It's symbolism that says if we can sing together, we can work together and make the president do something about our problems.

There is another important symbolism at work. It's about the words to the song. When Woody first wrote the song it said a lot more about the problems of working people than the version we got to know as kids did. The music publishers and record labels want "safe versions" of songs like this. 3 verses were censored out and seldom sung since:

There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;
Sign was painted, it said private property;
But on the back side it didn't say nothing;
That side was made for you and me.

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry,
I stood there asking Is this land made for you and me?

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

What's important here about these lyrics is that Pete and Co. didn't take the safe way, they included the censored lyrics. Maybe that's why Obama was a little nervous, (and maybe that's why some progressives voted for Nadir or Green,) but he heard and if he keeps on hearing, "Nobody living can ever stop" us.



Of course you can't sign just part of a song so I'm including here the full lyrics.

Please share them with your friends and please leave comments about this or any other great Woody Guthrie songs that keep running through your brain (like they do mine -- I don't have 60's pop songs running around up there for some reason.) I'll include a link here to a two sites about the song for those that want to know more. For anyone wanting to verify my statements about this song see "Woody Gurthrie, A Life" by Joe Klein Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1980.

The discussion of this song on Truthout can be found at: http://www.truthout.org/011909R

The discussion of this song on Mudcat Cafe can be found at: http://www.truthout.org/011909R



This Land Is Your Land

Words and Music by Woody Guthrie


Chorus:
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me

As I was walking a ribbon of highway
I saw above me an endless skyway
I saw below me a golden valley
This land was made for you and me

Chorus

I've roamed and rambled and I've followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
And all around me a voice was sounding
This land was made for you and me

Chorus

The sun comes shining as I was strolling
The wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
The fog was lifting a voice come chanting
This land was made for you and me

Chorus

As I was walkin' - I saw a sign there
And that sign said - no tress passin'
But on the other side .... it didn't say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!

Chorus

In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office - I see my people
And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin'
If this land's still made for you and me.

Chorus (2x)

More on Shape Note Singing

Eric, a Shape Note Singer informs us that there is some You Tube posted footage of lasts years Pacific North West Shape Not convention.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwNZwUNaJrY

If there are any more interesting posts of Shape Note Singing, Folk Singing or the like please forward them as a comment, and I'll post them.

Shape Note Singing

Shape note singing is a cappella form of singing in four part Harmony, dating to the early days of America. It 's roots lie in the signing schools of New England, but it transplanted itself into the American south and grew into a beautiful, fervent form of spiritual folk music. Most shape note singers use a song book known ass the Sacred Harp, which dates back to before the civil war, although revised editions are used now.

I have been listening to shape note signing for several years now. Some of it was heard on the sound track of Cold Mountain. Alan Lomax in doing recording in the south recorded lots of shape note music, available on various Smithsonian albums.

Listening on the outside of shape note signing its hard to understand what's going on, although it's beauty is obvious. I was able to listen to it live at the Northwest Folk Festival, in Seattle, one year and then I knew it was wonderful. Last May, at the Folk Festival, I was able to participate in a shape note singing workshop, and found that with help from those sitting next to me, I could effectively participate in four part Harmony singing.

It's called shape note signing because of an old tradition going back to New England -- each of the four parts is designated by a shape-- a circle, square, rectangle or triangle. Each group knows what it's part is without professional training.

Shape note signing has spread around the country as a result of the spread of interest since the 1940's in all forms of folk and country music. There are shape note signing groups meeting in churches and other places around the country and occasionally they meet in regional conventions.

Saturday February 14th, 2009 and Sunday the 15th there will be the 17th annual meeting of the Pacific NW Sacred Harp Convention at the Labor Temple in Seattle (2800 1st Ave). It's free and anyone can participate. (Donations are accepted). Song books are available for sale. The registration is at 9AM on Saturday and the signing begins at 9:30AM. It lasts till 3:30 PM with a potluck dinner at noon (in the tradition of the South). The details are the same for Sunday.

Please attend if you can and have an interest. If you know anything or have questions about this form of singing, leave a comment.

For more information see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Harp orhttp://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~mudws/harp.html
or http://www.fasola.org/

Scarecrow Video

Scarecrow Video, the largest video store on the West Coast, is based in Seattle's University District. A store dedicated to the love of film - we're home to many events, members of the film community and rare movies you won't find anywhere else. With over 70,000 different titles from around the world, including a large selection of DVDs and DVD players - we have it, or we'll find it.

Film buffs, if your in the Seattle area and you are looking for films to rent or buy, I recommend you visit Scarecrow Video on Roosevelt Ave in the University District. It's the largest video store on the west coast, with over 70,00 different titles. I buy news and used and I rent (although I get a credit each time I buy a new DVD and I haven't worked through all those credits. As a result, my place is begging to look like Scarecrow Video. When I last did a random check of titles I own against Netflick's inventory, Netflicks did not have 20% of the videos or DVD's I own. I attribute that to the wonderful used selection Scarecrow has, with many hard to find items. Naturally the rentals have a great deal of hard to find items.

Here is the contact information for Scarecrow:

http://www.scarecrow.com/

The store is open 364 days a year (11:00am to 11:00pm Sunday through Thursday / 11:00am to 12:00am Friday and Saturday).
5030 Roosevelt Way N.E. / Seattle, WA 98105.
(206) 524-8554
General information: scarecrow@scarecrow.com
Sales: sales@scarecrow.com

There are many ways to keep on hand the DVD's and videos you love: a large store like Scarecrow, a Neflicks membership, the public library if you live in a large urban area, or building a large collection like me.

I'd appreciate any comments people have on their favorite video/DVD source.

10 More Films Ever Catholic Should See after You Get Done With the First Batch

The first ten films (plus alternatives) that I posted yesterday were in response to a request from someone in the parish I go to to recommend ten must see films for Catholics. Occasional film showings there have usually been successful. But for those of you following my recommendations, why stop at the first ten. Here's the next ten in importance.

1. The Decalogue directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski. This is actually a set of 10 films originally made for Polish television. Each of the films is under an hour. Kiewslowski is influenced by existentialism and the polish situation as much as he is by Christianity in these films. They were made shortly before the fall of communism, but he didn't seen to be censored significantly, although he had great difficulty getting permission for the filming. The films take place, each to varying extents, in and around a very large housing project so that they have there "coincidence" some overlapping characters. Film V, about a brutal murder of a taxi driver and the equally brutal application of the death penalty is the most accessible of the films, so I recommend you start there.

See http://www.filmref.com/directors/dirpages/kieslowski.html and also http://www.lumiere.net.nz/reader/content/features/decalogue_the_1.html for more information.

2. Luther directed by Eric Till, starting Joseph Fiennes. Why should a Catholic see a film about the man who split the church in the west? For understanding, so that dialogue could ensue. This films shows Luther as passionate and intense and shows his falls and regrets an his accomplishments. While it has some falls in historical emphasis, it doesn't show the Catholic Church as all wrong or Luther as all right. If I were making a list of greatest films, I would not recommend this one, but given the subject, I recommend it.

3. The Passion of Joan of Arc, directed by Carl Dreyer. Silent, black and white. The complete edition was a lost film, destroyed in a fire like Joan. Finally a copy with the directors cut was found in broom closet in an insane asylum. Dryers account minimizes the unnecessary details and focuses on the trial and execution, based on the actual trial transcript. Renee Faconetti, in her only screen performance, portrayed Joan better than anyone before or since. The film jars us with close ups, odd angles, sweeping movements, intense facial expressions and deliberately odd editing. One of the greatest of the silent films.

4. The Mission , directed by Roland Joffe, starting Robert De Niro and Jeremy Irons. The Mission , winner of the 1986 Cannes Film Festival Best Picture Award, including best picture shows the brutal colonial subjugation of South American Indians, and the Jesuit opposition to their treatment. It deals with penance, service, violence and non-violence. It's visually a stunning movie.

5. The Quarrel , directed by Eli Cohen. Now I'm recommending Jewish movies for a Catholic film study. This is a wonderful film about a chance reunion of two Holocaust survivors in 1948. While it deals with a question in the Jewish community, I see parallels in the Christian community. One character has become a deeply religious rabbi, and the other a novelist and journalist who, once religious, has turned his back on God. In there disputation they examine good and evil, faith, redemption and friendship.

6. The Passion of Joshua the Jew, directed by Pasquale Scimeca. a brillant film dealing with relations between Jews, Muslims and Christians. The action starts in 1492 Spain and moves to Italy. It traces the journey of a young scholar an important rabbi thinks is the Messiah. Drawing from the Qur'an, the Torah, the Gospels and historical circumstance it portrays his parallel fate to Jesus of Nazareth.

See http://www.italianfilmfestival.co.nz/films/2006/film11.htm for more information.

7. Therese by Alain Cavalier. French with English subtitles. Winner of the 1986 Cannes Film Festival Jury Award. This is a wonderful and focused examination of St. Therese Martin, the Little Flower, who at 15 became a Carmelite nun by special intervention of the Pope. She was called the greatest saint of modern times by Pope Puis XI. Unlike the more recent American film of the same title, this film doesn't deal much with what proceeds Therese's vocation, and focuses on fewer incidents in her life. It therefor portrays her with a greater intensity, more focused on the essentials. It meditates on these essentials.

See http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/films/films.php?id=5046 for more information.

8. The Message, directed by Moustapha Akkad. Yes, this is the film about Mohammad starting Anthony Quinn. Every Catholic should be well informed not only on their own faith, but about Islam, Judaism and Protestantism. This is the best film ever made about the birth of Islam and whatever one thinks of Islam, one cannot avoid it. As always with Quinn, well acted,

9. The Ninth Day, directed by Volker Schlondorff. German in English subtitles. There are a lot of excellent films as alternatives to this dealing with the question of the Holocaust, like Schindler's List. A Catholic film study should review at least one of them, dealing with one of the greatest moral challenges of our times. But this particular film deals with the true story of a Catholic priest, furloughed from Dachau. Fr Henri Kremer was in the priest block in the infamous concentration camp, clinging to life and struggling with faith. He was released and asked to persuade his anti-Nazi Bishop to surrender to Nazi occupation. He is told that to fail means his death and his families death, and is given nine days.

10. Entertaining Angels, the Dorothy Day Story, directed by Michael Ray Rhodes. Again here is a picture I wouldn't put in my 100 greatest films of all time, but it survives a useful purpose. Ever Catholic film study should examine what the church does about social justice and this film does that very well. It portrays the life of Dorothy Day, a co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement. In her unbending concern for the poor, she has often been called the "American Mother Teressa."

There are more great films a Catholic should see, and my two lists are insufficient. The Vatican, several years ago, created a recommended film list which overlaps some with mine. Here is the link: http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/films/films.php?id=5046

Hunting for Poetry In Seattle

My readers who share my literary taste will certainly be looking for places to buy poetry. Here in Seattle we have what is to my knowledge the only poetry only books store on the West Coast*, Open Books: A Poem Emporium. It was founded several years ago by John Marshall and Christine Deavel, who had been working at another bookstore and discovered, to their pleasure, that the poetry section, their first love, did best. It's small, but with a great sense of what to buy and sell they have been a great poetry resource for the Seattle area. They usually have some rare, out of print of first edition used poetry providing some collectible editions, and lots of new books, journals and magazines. they currently have about 9,000 titles. It's located in Wallingford, near the Winchell's Donuts.
Open Books: A Poem Emporium,
2414 N. 45th St. Seattle, WA 98103
(206) 633-0811
http://www.openpoetrybooks.com/aboutus.html
store@openpoetrybooks.com

If anyone has a favorite bookstore for the books that interest you, in Seattle or in your home area, please post a comment about it.

*The other I'm aware of is The Grolier Bookshop. It's in Cambridge, Mass. --East Coast