Archive for January, 2010

XCIX

Don January 30th, 2010

XCIX

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.”

This was a fairly early sonnet, but I still think it’s one of my best.  It stems from the fact that Bethlehem in Hebrew (Beth Lechem) means “House of Bread.”  And so, some two millennia ago, it came to be.  The poem was in New Oxford Review, Jan.-Feb., 1982, p. 31.

Bethlehem

Sonnet XXXII

Bethlehem, Beth Lechem, House of Bread:

Your white stones waited silent in the sun

For long years (long as people feel them run).

The prophets wrote no more; the Rabbis read

The old words and unraveled every thread

And found your secret out:  You were the one.

Yet when the time can and the thing was done,

They spent the night at home asleep in bed.

Oh, they could put their fingers on the pages

That told the old fox Herod it was you.

But those uncircumcised, stargazing sages

Came first, and shepherds, wet with evening dew

Had long since been there, and had all been fed

In Bethlehem, Beth Lechem, House of Bread.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

XCVIII

Don January 26th, 2010

XCVIII

 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.”

 

You’ve probably figured out by now that theology and literature are pretty inseparable disciplines for me, two areas of study that I feel compelled to pursue together, however well I may be able to integrate them.  The interesting thing about this poem is that it was inspired, not by Calvin, but by Chaucer, who wrestles with the question of predestination and free will in a number of his poems, “The Knight’s Tale” and “Troilus and Cressida” among them.  Of course, having read Calvin and a few other people didn’t hurt.

 

On Election and Free Will

 

All night long we’d sat up and debated

If Man is free, or if his will is fated

To choose as it has been predestinated.

Or, if Man is responsible and free

By God’s immutable and fixed decree,

Yet God rules all by strict necessity,

How can necessity and freedom mix?

The whole thing left my mind in such a fix

That I went walking, trying to explain

It all, and so got caught out in the rain.

 

The first drops turned to steam upon the road,

But then they all came thick and fast, and flowed

Together.  It was possible to tell

The precise moment they no longer fell

Directly on the pavement with a hiss

But joined to form a watery abyss

That rushed to pile itself up in a heap

Along the curbs, and soon was ankle deep.

 

And all that water had to go downhill

Until it found some river it could fill

Which, in its turn, would have to find the sea.

They did not ask advice from you or me

Or stop to talk abstruse theology,

But just went on about their business, free

To be what their own natures bade them be.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

XCVII

Don January 23rd, 2010

XCVII

 

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.”

 

            I wonder if I was getting any work done on my dissertation while teaching my classes and writing my poems?  Let’s see what the evidence says:

 

Limerick # 3

 

There was once a great student of lore

Who would sit still and study for more

                         Than a day at a grind.

                         He went out of his mind

And collapsed on the library floor.

 

Limerick # 4

 

While writing a long dissertation,

A man made a sound observation:

                         “Once I have the degree,

                        All this rubbish, with glee,

I will burn in a great conflagration.”

 

In fact, I did not follow through on his incendiary threat, as you can see by going to the UGA library and looking up the dissertation (or ordering it from Dissertation Abstracts International—now there’s an idea!).  Donald T. Williams, The Depth of Rightful Doom: The Influence of the English Reformers on Book V of Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Diss. Georgia 1985.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

Don January 18th, 2010

XCVI

 

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.”

 

Whenever I’m back in Athens, I always come up this hill (North from campus before heading right and downhill over the Oconee River to pick up North Avenue to Hwy. 106 N, heading out of town toward Toccoa) to see if the vision is there.  But you have to live there and do it every day to have much of a chance of catching it.  I’m glad that once I did.

 

Sonnet XXXI

On What may be Seen while Looking

North from a Ridge-Top in Athens, Georgia

 

Looking up (as I have often done),

                You see three ridges marching North from here,

                 Unless the mist should melt them into one.

                 But on rare days—say, eight or ten a year—

When some storm’s maybe blown the air as clear

                As it can ever get, the sun goes down

                And in its rays obliquely seems to peer

                Across the ridges’ backs, as if it found

Some vision there worth staring at.  The town

                Grows silent as the day draws to its close,

                And one lone walker looks up from the ground

               And stops dead still and stares—and stares—and knows

The sun’s sight:  Empty air before his eye

                Splits open, and the mountains fill the sky.

Donald T. Williams, PhD