Don Williams’ Blog

Don September 27th, 2008

XXIII 

Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”

The limerick is perhaps the most universally recognized form of light verse used for comic effect.  It consists of two lines of (usually) iambic or anapestic trimeter, two of dimeter, and one more of trimeter, rhyming AABBA.  Something about the two short rhyming lines returning to the longer line with the original rhyme lends itself to the comedic effect, perhaps by helping to set up the last line as a “punch line.”  Here is my first attempt at one, justly mocking the false pretensions of negative biblical criticism and the “assured results of modern scholarship.”

 LIMERICK # 1 

A high-critical biblical scholar

Wrote books that all caused quite a holler.

He claimed that St. Paul

Wrote The Campaigns of Gaul,

And he made about three million dollars.

            The assonance and consonance in the first line, the contrast of scholarly phrases like higher criticism with a colloquial vocable like holler, and the use of the rhymes in lines three and four to highlight the ironic discrepancy between the biblical author and a work he had nothing to do with all contribute to the humorous effect, one hopes.  Unfortunately, the likes of Dan Brown and Bart Ehrman can now make much bigger piles of money for the same kind of nonsense than what was intended as a hyperbole back in the seventies.  For that reason alone, the poem is, alas, now somewhat dated.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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Don September 25th, 2008

XXII 

Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”

            Any growing poet needs to be nurtured by the great poetry (and other literature, too) of the past, both for the sake of learning technique and of deepening his own soul.  I wasn’t the first to find the Psalter essential for both.  The Psalms are a catalog of the full gamut of religious emotion.  Not just exercises in pious ejaculations, they sometimes show impiety wrestled with and overcome.  David and his fellow psalmists were not afraid to question God; they were not afraid to ask the hard questions.  They were not afraid to reveal their own doubts and their own sufferings.  But they always win through to peace in the end.  Oh, yes, there are some good lessons there!

 ON DAVID WRITING THE PSALMS 

Such words were never uttered unless by

Some battered brain’s true trial- and tear-taught try

To cry the thing, heart’s clearly seen lament

Before insight intense is spent

Diffused, dispersed, immersed and rent

By hurried passing Time.

Holy Spirit stooping, molding,

Prodding, soothing, moving, goading,

Guiding, forming in this writing

Sword or torch of Truth abiding,

Made to smite complacence in its nest,

To bore into the soul, unbidden guest,

And wake the wound that slumbers in man’s breast:

A memory of the universe at rest.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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Don September 18th, 2008

XXI 

Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”

It is now the Fall of 1971, the beginning of my junior year of college.  Realizing that I do not have the talent to be principal clarinetist with the Atlanta Symphony, and loving music too much to subject myself to the dreary fate of being a junior high band director, I change my major from music to English.  Giving up one lifelong dream, I realize another and enroll in Koine Greek class to satisfy my new foreign language requirement.  But these upheavals are minor events compared to the annual changing of the seasons.

 ODE TO A SHIRT 

I could never wear this shirt in summer;

Winter, spring, were just as bad: 

This is a shirt for wearing in autumn,

Full with autumn colors plaid.

Bright the glory of the leaf-host,

Brown the windblown stalks of corn,

Chill the frost on pumpkin orange

Seen while walking, early morn.

The spirits of these things lie sleeping,

Woven deep among the threads.

Tomorrow will be time for wearing;

Indian summer now has fled.

I could never wear this shirt in summer;

Winter, spring, were just as bad: 

This is a shirt for wearing in autumn,

Full with autumn colors plaid.

            I miss that shirt.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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Don September 16th, 2008

XX Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”   

            Our base of operations in Cartagena, Colombia, on that South American tour, was a hotel from which we could walk straight out onto the beach and gaze North across the Gulf of Mexico toward home, which lay over the horizon.  There is nothing better than the rhythm of the surf to get one in the right frame of mind for practicing the rhythms of poetry, and capturing the spirit of poetry too.

Choir of stars and the sea

To the rhythm of my feet on the sand:

This is the music that follows me

And calls me away from the land.

I hear the waves and feel the spray;

The horizon’s lost in shadows of night.

But there lies a maid who’s as fair as the day,

As fair as the sweet morning light.

            The maid turned out not to be so permanent a part of life as I then thought.  But the far horizon and the promise of something beckoning from beyond it has turned out to be more so than I could then have imagined. 

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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Don September 13th, 2008

XIX Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”   

            The summer after my sophomore year I traveled with an ensemble from the Taylor University Band on a tour of South America, visiting Honduras, Colombia, and Ecuador.  It was my first significant cross-cultural experience, and also introduced me to Pinchincha, the mountain that towers over the 10,000 foot high bowl in which rests the city of Quito.  I made it up to First Peak, about 13,000 feet, and learned something new about majesty and transcendence.

 PINCHINCHA 

I have walked and talked intimately with the clouds

On the slopes of Pinchincha,

And I have left the clouds behind and gone

Where they did not care to follow.

And there I stood alone with the universe and sang

Songs of praise to its Creator.

And there I learned wisdom that cannot be made in to poems,

But this I can tell you:

It is difficult to doubt Him when he thunders at you

With such silence. 

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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