. The title “Love Calls Us to the Things of This World’ is taken from St. Augustine. “Plato, St. Teresa, and the rest of us in our degree,” says Wilbur, “have known that it is painful to return to the cave, to the earth, to the quotidian; Augustine says it is love that brings us […]
Eating Poetry (XXVI) – No worst, there is none
“O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap May who ne’er hung there.” There are poets, and then there is Gerard Manley Hopkins. No worst, there is none No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief, More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring. Comforter, where, […]
Eating Poetry (XXV) – Some of the Words Are Theirs
The close of The Great Gatsby is probably the most famous and referenced ending of any American novel. Lyricized in a lushly romantic invocation of American promise, somehow gone wrong in the stinking, rich like of Tom and Daisy Buchanan, and in the aftermath of Jay Gatsby’s failed striving, with such foolish and criminal élan, […]