Archive for February, 2010

CIV

Don February 24th, 2010

CIV

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 poem tries to capture a truly magical moment and reveal it as a useful image of a spiritual truth.  The relationships between appearance and reality, and between faith and sight, deserve more thought than they sometimes receive.

North Campus, The University of Georgia, Spring, 1980:

The Ninth Sphere Reflected in the First

“This mist just barely lets the moonlight through.

We’ll see no stars tonight.”  “But where the moon

Is shining, you can bet the stars are too.

No matter we can’t see them in this noon

Of silver foglight, for tonight the trees

Are all intent on standing in for them:

New dogwood blossoms, ranked in galaxies

And constellations, glow on every limb.

Somehow they gather in the diffuse light

And give it back in concentrated flares

Of brilliance, making dark the softer white.”

“What strange astronomy is this, that dares

Set stars ablaze so far from their own sphere?”

“Well, one that knows how much we need their light

And feels their unseen influence down here

And, having seen them once in their full height,

Thereafter walks by faith and not by sight.”

Donald T. Williams, PhD

CIII

Don February 20th, 2010

CIII

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.”

Morning ground-fog hugging the low-lying folds of land when one is starting off on a journey as the sun comes up is one of the most beautiful—and ephemeral—things that Nature does.  No adventure begins quite right without it.

An Early Start

(To Shope Fork, N.C.)

Sonnet XXXIV

“Tonight the Fog will come to the bottoms to keep

A tryst with his bride, the River.  In the morning,

If we are careful, we’ll catch him quite asleep

Right there on the bank beside her still, scorning

To notice the stars fading, to take warning,

Knowing it takes most half a day for the sun

To reach this valley floor with any warming.

So over the meadow he spreads his blanket, spun

Of moonlight that shines on when the moon is done.”

The walkers were careful not to disturb the pair

Of lovers as they left.  When the peaks were won,

They returned; the River alone was waiting there.

“Where does he go?  No one has seen it aright.

I only know he’ll be back again tonight.”

Donald T. Williams, PhD

CII

Don February 9th, 2010

CII

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.”

Rudolf Bultmann is no longer “hot” in biblical criticism, but his disciples continue to wreak their havoc on faith, not to mention common sense.  He thought we could no longer believe the New Testament because it was mythological, and that we had to “demythologize” it in order to find what was true there.  Never mind that anything that did not fit with Modernism, Rationalism, and Scientism was automatically dismissed as “mythology,” nor that when you removed the supernatural there was very little left.  Well, the joke is on the Bultmanniacs.  Did they really understand even mythology any better than they did the New Testament?

A Parable for Demythologizers

To Rudolf Bultmann

“We come with rusty hatchets to chop down

Old Yggdrasil, the mightiest of trees;

We come with buckets full of air to drown

Old Triton, ruler of the seven seas.

For we are Modern Men, the heirs of Time,

And won’t be ruled by anything that’s gone

Before.  So if we think it more sublime

To exorcise Aurora from the dawn,

Then who is there who dares to say us nay?”

And so the desert wind swept through their minds

And found no obstacle placed in its way

To stop the stinging dust, the sand that blinds.

Blistered, parched, and withered, one by one

They fell beneath the branches of the Tree,

Succumbing to the unrelenting Sun

In cool, green shade beside the roaring Sea.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

CI

Don February 6th, 2010

CI

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.”

OK, how about some more limericks?

Limerick # 5

There once was a limerick writer

Whose income grew tighter and tighter.

“If I want to make bread

With my verses,” he said,

“I will just have to be even snider.”

# 6

There once was a student of grammar

Who was an incurable crammar.

He studied his best

On the eve of the test

By beating it in with a hammar.

#7

A writer of verse from Hong Kong

Got all of his limericks wrong.

They started out fine

From the very first line,

But the last one was always invariably and without fail too long.

# 8

The colleges of education

Thought up many a grand innovation.

But when their reform

Became the norm,

Not a kid learned to read in the nation.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

C

Don February 2nd, 2010

C

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 so much fun!  I wrote it because I could.

On the Writing of Sonnets

Sonnet XXXIII

A perfect sonnet must have fourteen lines,

Ten syllables in each, the evens strong

(In French the sonnet uses twelve and shines,

But twelve in English verse is just too long).

In Italy it rhymes A B B A;

A B B A again the Octave makes.

The Sextet then has three rhymes which it may

Arrange diversely when the sonnet “breaks.”

Elizabethan sonnets break three times,

Once after every quatrain, just for fun.

A B A B, and so forth, run the rhymes.

You end them with a couplet; here is one:

This sonnet is not great, but it is good,

A “perfect” sonnet if you’ve understood.

Donald T. Williams, PhD