* * * * *

I taste a liquor never brewed–
From Tankards scooped in Pearl–
Not all the vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an Alcohol!Inebriate of Air–am I–
And Debauchee of Dew–
Reeling–thro endless summer days–
From inns of Molten Blue.

~ Emily Dickinson

Language is the greatest achievement of culture; poetry is the greatest achievement of language.
~ Vladimir Alexandrov

The magic of literary art, especially poetry, consist in suggesting with words what words cannot possibly say.
~ Martin Angoff

The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.
~ Jean Cocteau

Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement.
~ Christopher Fry

Poetry is truth dwelling in beauty.
~ Gilfillan

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.
~ Samuel Johnson

Poetry is fact given over to imagery.
~ Rod McKuen

Poetry is the synthesis of hiacynths and biscuits.
~ Carl Sandburg

If I read a book, and it makes my body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?
~ Emily Dickinson

When power leads man to arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.
~ John F. Kennedy

To write poetry, I must soak myself with the gasoline of words and then torch myself so that I can burn bright and see what’s going on around me. Writing poetry, that act of language and fire, makes me feel purpose in a universe that often feels like a severe joke.
~ Michael Bettencourt

At certain periods of history it is only poetry that is capable of dealing with reality by condensing it into something graspable, something that otherwise wouldn’t be retained by the mind.
~ Joseph Brodsky

There is not money in poetry, but then there is no poetry in money, either.
~ Robert Graves

Poetry is the power of defining the indefinable in terms of the unforgettable.
~ Louis Untermeyer

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And here are a few quotes I noted elsewhere:

A poet is an unhappy creature whose heart is tortured by deepest suffering but whose lips are so formed that when his sighs and cries stream out over them, their sound beomes like the sound of beautiful music . . . . And men flock about the poet saying, “Sing for us soon again; that is to say, may new sufferings torture your soul, and may your lips continue to be formed as before.
~ Soren Kierkegaard, quote by Madeleine L’Engle, in  A Circle of Quiet (NY: Harper, 1972), page 53:

I love the way words in poetry play off one another like shadows across the floor.
~ Jamie Langston Turner, in A Garden To Keep

(Share your answers in the comments below.)

In the video at the bottom of this post you will see Oprah Winfrey explaining that her rejection of the Christian God and the initiation of her search for something else began when she heard her Baptist preacher say that God is a jealous God. Something about that didn’t set well with her.

Was her concern justified? Is God really self-centered? The below text is an excerpt from J.I. Packer’s book Hot Tub Religion in which he explains why God must be jealous or cease to be God;

That God aims always to glorify himself is an assertion we at first find hard to believe. Our immediate reaction is an uncomfortable feeling that such an idea is unworthy of God, that self-concern of any sort is incompatible with moral perfection, and in particular with God’s nature as love. Many sensitive and morally cultured people are shocked by the thought that God’s ultimate end is his own glory, and strongly oppose such a concept. To them, it depicts God as essentially no different from an evil man, or even the devil himself! To them it is an immoral and outrageous doctrine, an if the Bible teaches it, so much the worse for the Bible! They often draw this conclusion explicitly with regard to the Old Testament. A volume, they say, that depicts God so persistently as a “jealous” Being, concerned first and foremost about his “honor,” cannot be regarded as divine truth, for God is not like that. It is blasphemy, real if unintentional, to think that he is! Since these convictions are widely and strongly held, it is important to consider what validity, if any, they have.

We begin by asking: why are these convictions asserted with so much heat? On other theological matters people can disagree calmly enough. But protests against the doctrine that God’s chief end is his glory are made with passion and often angry rhetoric. The answer is not difficult to see, and it does credit to the moral earnestness of the speakers. These people are sensitive to the sinfulness of continual self-seeking. They know that the desire to gratify self is at the root of moral weaknesses and shortcomings. They are themselves trying as best they can to face and fight this desire. Hence they conclude that for God to be self-centered would be equally wrong. The vehemence with which they reject the idea that the holy God would exalt himself reflects their acute sense of the guiltiness of their own self-seeking.

Is their conclusion valid? We repeat: it is in fact a complete mistake. If it is right for man to have the glory of God as his goal, can it be wrong for God to have the same goal? If man can have no higher purpose than God’s glory, how can God? If it is wrong for man to seek a lesser end than this, it would be wrong for God, too. The reason it cannot be right for man to live for himself, as if he were God, is because he is not God. However, it cannot be wrong for God to seek his own glory, simply because he is God. Those who insist that God should not seek his glory in all things are really asking that he cease to be God. And there is no greater blasphemy than to will God out of existence.

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Because o the O.J. Simpson trial, we have books by a defense attorney, former wife of a defense attorney, prosecuting attorney at the criminal trial, deputy prosecuting attorney, lawyer for the family of one of the deceased in the civil trial, witness, detective, juror or dismissed juror, journalist who covered the trial, friend o the murdered wife, members of the victims’ families, friend of the defendant, former girl friend of the defendant, niece of the defendant, and the defendant himself, who by the way declined to testify in his criminal trial. As one wit put it, the jurors selected for the various O.J. Simpson trials face a really tough decision: Random House or Doubleday.

Tree huggers should hate O.J. Simpson. When you type “O.J. Simpson” into the search function at Amazon, you get 8,646 results. Think of how many trees had to be killed for all those books.

It is common to find discussions of “sense of place” in modern academic texts. Anthropologists, philosophers, and literary theorists give much attention to the bonds between man and place and the manner in which perceptions, beliefs, and actions are influenced by it.

Such considerations were not so common at the time in which Walker Percy penned his novel The Moviegoer. Nevertheless, Percy was not only conscious of this relational phenomena but embraced it and used it artfully in the weaving of his story. At one point “sense of place” becomes not only a creative structural tool but also an explicit topic of discussion. Upon traveling from New Orleans to Chicago the main character, Binx Bolling who serves as the first person narrator, relates the following,

“I am consoled only to see that I was not mistaken: Chicago is just a I remembered it. I was here twenty five years ago. My father brought me and Scott up to see the Century of Progress and once later to the World Series. Not a single thing do I remember from the first trip but this: the sense of the place, the savor of the genie-soul of the place which every place has or else is not a place. I could have been wrong: it could have been nothing of the sort, not the memory of a place but the memory of being a child. But one step out into the brilliant March day and there it is as big as life, the genie-soul of the place which, wherever you go, you must meet and master first thing or be met and mastered.” (page 202)

Percy, understands the gravity of “place” upon the human soul. But he is much more than a cultural geographer or keenly observant reporter. He is a masterful Creator whose characters are spun from the very fabric of the world they inhabit such that The South is not so much a setting for the character’s action, nor a separate entity which demands description, but more like a “great ground of being” without which the characters could not live, and move, and have their being.

New Orleans is the setting for most of The Moviegoer. However, you will not find extravagant descriptions of Southern landscapes and culture. Instead, Percy conjures a literary magic in which the reader interacts with each and every word to see, hear, and smell The South of his recollection and imaginings. It is in some ways similar to the “certification” that Binx refers to in the book;

“There is a scene which shows the very neighborhood of the theater. Kate gives me a look…Afterwards in the street, she looks around the neighborhood. “Yes it is certified now.” She refers to a phenomenon of moviegoing which I have called certification. Nowadays when a person lives somewhere, in a neighborhood, the place is not certified for him. More than likely he will live there sadly and the emptiness which is inside him will expand until it evacuates the entire neighborhood. But if he sees a movie which shows his very neighborhood, it becomes possible for him to live, for a time at least, as a person who is Somewhere and not Anywhere.”

This book “certifies” the lives of we who are Southern by the grace of God. And those for whom The South is only an idea, will find their conceptions solidified and made “real.”

Percy has populated The Moviegoer with characters for whom I immediately developed a fondness; Binx, who is engaged in a search for meaning and purpose, but for whom the search itself is a tonic for a soul burdened by the ordinary; aging Aunt Emily who has the knack for transfiguring the lives of those who surround her but who is struggling with a South that is changing; Kate for whom there is no dearth of suitors but who is unable to love herself or find pleasure in in the company of others.

As I was becoming acquainted with the characters I thought them to be an intriguing group of eccentrics. But as the book evolved it became apparent that they are not so much eccentric as they are unique; — just as you and I. They are not intended to be seen as exceptional, they are intended to be seen as ordinary. The Moviegoer is a watercolor of Henry David Thoreau’s claim that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

For me The Moviegoer is a kind of twentieth century retelling of the book of Ecclesiastes. It is an exceptional work and it very much deserved the National Book Award which it received in 1962.

* * *

In the abbreviated review above I note that Percy does not rely upon extravagant descriptions to portray The South. Still, there are passages that leaped from the text at me due to the intriguing word selections and metaphors. I share a few of them with you here.

Walter would never never say “rich”; and indeed the word “wealthy,” as he says it, is redolent of a life spiced and sumptuous, a tapestry thick to the touch and shot through with the bright thread of freedom. (pages 34-35)

To tell the absolute truth, I’ve always been slightly embarrassed in Walter’s company. Whenever I’m with him, I feel the stretch of the old tightrope, the necessity of living up to the friendship of friendships, of cultivating an intimacy beyond words. The fact is we have little to say to each other. There is only this thick sympathetic silence between us. We are comrades, true, but somewhat embarrassed comrades. It is probably my fault. For years now I have had no friends. I spend my entire time working, making money, going to movies and seeking the company of women. (pages 40-41)

As if to emphasize her sallowness and thinness, she has changed into shirt and jeans. She is as frail as a ten year old, except in her thighs. Sometimes she speaks of her derrière, sticks it out Beale Street style and gives it a slap and this makes me blush because it is a very good one, marvelously ample and mysterious and nothing to joke about. (page 42)

Kate stretches out a leg to get at her cigarettes. Her ritual of smoking stands her in good stead. She extracts the wadded pack, kneads the warm cellophane, taps a cigarette violently and accurately against her thumbnail, lights it with a Zippo worn smooth and yellow as a pocket watch. Pushing back her shingled hair, she blows out a plume of gray lung smoke and plucks a grain from her tongue. She reminds me of college girls before the war, how they would sit five and six in a convertible, seeming old to me and sullen-silent toward men and toward their own sex, how they would take refuge in their cigarettes: the stripping of cellophane, the clash of Zippos, the rushing plume of lung smoke expelled up in a long hissing sigh.” (page 44)

My mother is a Catholic, what is called in my aunt’s circle a “devout Catholic,” which is to say only that she is a practicing Catholic since I do not think she is devout. (page 48)

She transfigures everyone. Mercer she still sees as the old retainer. Uncle Jules she sees as the Creole Cato, the last of the heroes–whereas the truth is that Uncle Jules is a canny Cajun straight from Bayou Lafourche, as canny as a Marseilles merchant and a very good fellow, but no Cato. All the stray bits and pieces of the past, all that is feckless and gray about people, she pulls together into an unmistakable visage of the heroic or the craven, the noble or the ignoble. So strong is she that sometimes the person and the past are in fact transfigured by her. They become what she sees them to be. (page 49)

My neck begins to prickle with a dreadful-but-not-unpleasant eschatological prickling. (page 50)

My aunt is convinced I have a “flair for research.” This is not true. If I had a flair for research, I would be doing research. Actually I’m not very smart. My grades were average. My mother and my aunt think I am smart because I am quiet and absent-minded–and because my father and grandfather were smart. They think I was meant to do research because I am not fit to do anything else–I am a genius whom ordinary professions can’t satisfy. (page 51)

She seems quite indifferent so far; and she is not really beautiful. She is a good-sized girl, at least five feet six and a hundred and thirty-five pounds–as big as a majorette–and her face is a little too short and pert, like one of those Renoir girls, and her eyes a little too yellow. Yet she has the most fearful soap-clean good looks. Her bottom is so beautiful that once as she crossed the room to the cooler I felt my eyes smart with tears of gratitude. She is one of those village beauties of which the South is so prodigal. From the sleaziest house in the sleaziest town, from the loins of redneck pa and rockface ma spring these lovelies, these rosy-cheeked Anglo-Saxon lovelies, by the million. They are commoner than sparrows, and like sparrows they are at home in the streets, in the parks, on doorsteps. No one marvels at them; no one holds them dear. They flush out of their nests first thing and alight in the cities to stay and no one misses them. (page 65)

Whenever I feel bad, I go to the library and read controversial periodicals. though I do not know whether I am a liberal or a conservative, I am nevertheless enlivened by the hatred which one bears the other. In fact, this hatred strikes me as one of the few signs of life remaining in the world. (page 100)

Never, never will I understand men who throw over everything for some woman. The trick, the joy of it, is to prosper on all fronts, enlist money in the service of love and love in the service of money. As long as I am getting rich, I feel that all is well. It is my Presbyterian blood. (page 102)

“You remind me of a prisoner in the death house who takes a wry pleasure in doing things like registering to vote. Come to think of it, all your gaiety and good spirit have the same death house quality.” (page 193)

* * *

From a book with the title The Moviegoer, one might expect a number of movies to be mentioned. Below are the ones of which I made note:

• Stagecoach
• The Third Man
• Panic in the Streets
• It Happened One Night
• Red River
• Holiday
• The Ox-Bow Incident
• All Quiet on the Western Front
• Fort Dobbs
• Dark Waters
• There Shall Be No Night
• Tarzan
• The Young Philadelphians

And, here are some of the books mentioned:

• A Shropshire Lad
• City of God
• Wilhelm Meister
• Plays of Euripides
• Peyton Place
• Arabia Deserta
• War and Peace
• A Study of History
• What Is Life?
• The Universe As I See It
• The Expanding Universe
• The Chemistry of Life
• The Prophet
• Interpretation of Dreams
• Gita
• Gone With the Wind
• The Charterhouse of Parma
• Crito

____________

Richard Lederer, Anguished English (NY: Dell Publishing, 1987), 177 pages.

I love Lederer’s books, and recently went to his book Anguished English to pull out “The World According to Student Bloopers” which I plan to use as an introduction to one of my lectures for a class I am teaching this Spring. I should have known that once I had the book in hand I would not be able to resist reading the whole thing once again (for about the bjillionth time).

Anguished English is appropriately subtitled, “An Anthology of Accidental Assaults Upon Our Language.” When Jacques Barzun has nightmares they must certainly be about the contents of this book. However, for those of us who aren’t quite as possessed obsessed passionate, this book is rolling-on-the-floor funny.

In addition to student bloopers, Lederer shares malapropisms, mixed metaphors, unusual translations, quips, mispellings, signs, and headlines that will have you pleading for mercy. But no mercy will be forthcoming, for like me, you will not be able to put this book down until you have finished it. And, even then you will not be able to escape it because you will find yourself reading portions to your family, congregation, students, and strangers that you meet on the street.

I recommend this book to EVERYBODY. Tolle Lege!

* * * * *

Below are some excerpts from the Student Bloopers portion of the book to whet your appetite.

– Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100-foot clipper.

– Having one wife is called monotony. When a man has more than one wife, he is a pigamist.

– Many an inmate in the house of correction (of composition) knows the one variously attributed to William Lyon Pehlps of Yale University, Tubby Rogers of M.I.T., and others, who allegedly found this sentence gleaming out of a student essay: “The girl tumbled down the stairs and lay prostitute at the bottom.” In the margin of the paper the professor commented: “My dear sir, you must learn to distinguish between a fallen woman and one who has merely slipped.”

– Heredity means that if your grandfather didn’t have any children, then your father probably wouldn’t have any, and neither would you, probably.

– Abstinence is a good thing if practiced in moderation.

– Milton wrote Paradise Lost. Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise Regained.

– The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is in the East and the sun sets in the West.

– To collect sulphur, hold a deacon over a flame in a test tube.

* * * * *

Want more? You can read Lederer’s collection of non sequiturs culled from actual insurance forms at Wes Kenney’s blog.

Or, check out these spelling mistakes.

Or, here for some interesting translations.

And here are some unique quotations.

* * * * *

Now, go buy the book. It is about the price of lunch but will give you a whole lot more enjoyment.

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