This week’s poem of the week is Hymne to GOD my GOD, in my Sicknesse from John Donne
Poem of the week: 2/22/08-2/28/08
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Category Archives: Art
Poem of the Week: 2/15/09-2/21/09
This week’s poem of the week is Phyllis McGinley’s “Intimations of Mortality: On being told by the dentist that this will be over soon”.
It was rather hard to find a half way decent presentation of the poem on the internet. In spite of being a modern female poet (a trendy thing in this day and age) who hit the big time in her day and age, almost nothing Phyllis McGinley wrote can be found online. We can’t but help think that this is because she came down on the wrong side of the cultural wars that her generation fought.
Granted, she will never rank among the greatest poets of all time. But there are a lot worse poets than her who are more widely known simply because they had the right beliefs.
Project Overkill Win
Someone spent way too much time making a different kind of clock. I say this admiringly, as one who tends to get carried away with projects. A better quality video is available on Wired. Below is an embedded clip.
The World Turned Upside Down
The CIA has already spent 18 months developing a network of agents in Britain to combat al-Qaeda, unprecedented in size within the borders of such a close ally, according to intelligence sources in both London and Washington.
And why are they doing this? From later on in the article….
Jonathan Evans, the director general of MI5, admitted in January that the Security Service alone does not have the resources to maintain surveillance on all its targets. “We don’t have anything approaching comprehensive coverage,” he said.
In other words, America is sending spooks to its historical ally because they can’t handle their own internal threats.
But America is getting crazy enough on its own. From the Common Room….
I just came back from my local thrift store with tears in my eyes! I watched as boxes and boxes of childrens books were thrown into the garbage! Today was the deadline and I just cant believe it! Every book they had on the shelves peior to 1985 was destroyed!
The reason the books are being destroyed is that they can no longer be sold without being tested for lead first because of a law called CPSIA. We already covered this insane law earlier so hopefully you all are familiar with it. If not just go over to the Common Room and you will learn more then you ever wanted to about the law.
And speaking of insane, there is also this from Bloomberg….
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage-finance companies seized by regulators, may need more than the $200 billion in funding pledged by the U.S. government if the housing market continues to deteriorate, Federal Housing Finance Agency Director James Lockhart said.
The companies’ needs will depend largely on the direction of home prices, Lockhart said in an interview in Las Vegas yesterday. His comments followed statements from Fannie Mae in November and Freddie Mac Chairman John Koskinen last week that the government’s funding commitment through 2009 may fall short of what the companies need to make good on their obligations.
This is hardly surprising and that is what is so insane. Not to long ago, the idea that 200 billion dollars might not be enough would have been front page news. Now it is hardly news worthy.
Poem of the Week: 2/8/09-2/14/09
The Wild Swans At Coole by William Butler Yeats is this week’s poem of the week.
Poem of the Week: 2/1/09-2/7/09
This week’s poem of the week is a simple little pop song with no particular poetic merit. But it is one of the most disturbing simple little pop songs ever produced.
Essay of the Week: 2/1/09-2/7/09
Letters to Malcolm and the trouble with Narnia: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and their 1949 crisis by Eric Seddon is an exploration of why Tolkien objected so strongly to C.S Lewis’s Narnia series and why their friendship cooled so markedly.
It must be admitted that this essay suffers to a degree from the author’s strong Catholic bias. There is no denying that J.R Tolkien was a committed orthodox Catholic. But interpreting J.R Tolkien’s likes and dislikes and what bothered him solely through the prism of Catholic doctrine is to get a limited view of the man.
In particular, some of us would argue that Mr. Seddon gives too short a shrift to J.R. Tolkien’s strongly held aesthetic views (and in particular, his strong aversion to allegory). Mr. Seddon argues that because J.R Tolkien did not object to all of C.S Lewis books equally, then therefore his aesthetic principles could not have been a large part of what he found so offensive in the Narnia series. We do not find this particular argument convincing.
Using the same method of arguing as Mr. Seddon, we could easily argue that theological objections could not have been what bothered J.R. Tolkien because many of C.S. Lewis’s earlier works did not conform to Catholic doctrine.
Nonetheless, Mr. Seddon’s central argument that J.R Tolkien so strongly objected to the Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe because of way C.S. Lewis’s his type of Christ is not without merit. Only, we would add that The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe was also the penultimate type of what Tolkien objected to aesthetically.
To be sure, the two types of objections were never particularly distinct in Tolkien’s mind. But to fail to understand how the two things intertwined is to not understand why Tolkien should object so strongly to Narnia and not as strongly to other books that transgressed various Catholic doctrines.
Poem of the Week: 1/25/09-1/31/09
Lepanto by G.K.Chesterton is this week’s poem of the week. It is perhaps one of the best poems about a single battle every written. It is certainly better the Charge of the Light Brigade for example.
In part, this is because the poem is about more than just a battle that had happened long in the past. G.K Chesterton wrote the poem during a dark time for Europe and it is his mediation on what had saved Europe in the past and what would be necessary to save it in the future.
Cool Lathe Work
You know the guy has got to be good when he can do something that you know is hard and make it look easy. Not too many people have the skills to make a consistent product by hand the way this guy does. Most people would have to have depth guides and such.
Poem of the week: 1/18/09-1/24/09
This week’s poem of the week is A Death Song from William Morris.