Entries in Saturday Song (8)
Saturday Song: Gerard Manley Hopkins
Gerard Manley Hopkins was ee cummings before cummings ever saw the light of day. You show get to know him.
(BTW ~ Why do poets seem more likely to use three names? Who knows? But these are three names worth knowing: Gerard. Manley. Hopkins. Maybe his friends called him "Gerry".)
Actually, they would've called him "Father Gerry" because Hopkins was a Catholic priest. Born in 1844 to an Anglican family, at 18 he converted to Catholicism and by 20 be became part of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits.
His work as a poet took second place to his priestly calling, because (at the poem below indicates) he saw clearly the glory of God in all human endeavor. He died a few weeks short of his 45th birthday, 1889. Nearly all of his work was published postumously.
Presumably he is still at work, creating ever-cooler stuff for us to enjoy later.
Pied Beatuy
Saturday Song: (Steven Lawrence Hamilton)
Last week I launched a new Saturday feature: poetry. (If you're not a poetry fan, then I'll see you for the regular Tuesday/Thursday posts.) You're invited to read, muse, comment, or share your favorites as well.
I've never met Steven Lawrence Hamilton, but we've corresponded a few times, and share a background as (former) Vineyard pastors. His website, Verve & Verse is a delight and respite from the nervous chattering so common on the blogosphere.
The Bear Cub
i fear the bear-cub
not the bear-cub itself
who flops about, here and there
exploring the ways of
they-who-dwell-in-the-rotted-log
uninhibited in learning
acquiring through experience
the taste of the wild
no, it is the she-bear i fear
whose massive mother strength
adorned by cerberian teeth
ringing with the experience
of a love-struck guardian
it is she who thunders at any threat
to her precious, frolicking
inquisitive likeness
i don’t quite understand God
but God is a she-bear
thus i fear men
not for men themselves
but whose image they bear
Saturday Songs (Fania Kruger)
How about something different on Saturdays? For the next few weeks I'd like to share some of my favorite poetry with you. If you're not a poetry fan, then I'll see you for the regular Tuesday/Thursday posts. And, although this first offering is pretty serious, there's no rule requiring that every poem has to be somber--beauty and whimsy belong in my collection as well.
Fania Kruger (1893-1977) was born in the Crimean peninsula, married a rabbi, and eventually settled in Witchita Falls, Texas. I stumbled across a paperback collection of her work, and bought 63 poems for 97¢. That's a parable in itself.
I hope you like it. Let me know what you think:
THE TENTH JEW
The cold was bitter and the sky was red,
Within the Polish ghetto lay the dead.
And in the corner of a blasted of wood
In wounded bleeding circle, nine men stood
Praying for the dead. When the shadows draped
The fields with gray, these hunted had escaped—
Nine only out of hundreds burned and slain,
To offer Kaddish, grief’s austere refrain.
No other left in a ghetto of red slaughter,
To join in prayer for absent son or daughter,
For mother, wife, all vanished in that day—
No tenth man for a minyan and to pray.
And though the Temple's law required that ten
Male voices must make valid grief’s amen,
Shivering, moaning there, while bare boughs swayed,
Deep in the forest, only nine men prayed:
“Yisgadal . . .” Their quivering, plaintiff chant
Rose hoarsely as they held their covenant—
Closed in a gray mist, a cowl of twilight haze,
Their faces pale as a frozen meadow glaze,
Nine voices growing fainter and fainter . . . Then
Suddenly from the gloom a sound— “Amen!”
A tenth voice, a minyan! They all turn to see:
Behold upon a starkly twisted tree
A tortured sufferer, murdered anew,
Crucified Jesus, the tenth praying Jew.