The Intentional Thrifter had a coupon

It was a good day to be back at the thrift store! It's Volunteer Appreciation Week, and each volunteer was given a discount coupon. Here's what I found:

A poetry book, with CD, for Lydia

A spring dress for me (better with a belt)

A shiny necklace

And a copy of Dorothy Wordsworth's journals. (Not sure what she would have made of the poetry book.)

Poetic thought for the day: "Until we recognize a grandeur"

"Not with the mean and vulgar works of man,
But with high objects, with enduring things--
With life and nature, purifying thus
The elements of feeling and of thought,
And sanctifying, by such discipline,
Both pain and fear, until we recognize
A grandeur in the beatings of the heart." ~~ William Wordsworth, The Prelude, Book I

Quote for the day: What trees really want

"They wait.
They have no fear. Their fate
Is faith. Birdsong
Is all they've wanted, all along."  

~~ from 1991 #8 in This Day: Collected & New Sabbath Poems, by Wendell Berry

Quote for the day: Memory demands so much

"Memory demands so much, It wants every fiber
told and retold.
                             It gives and gives
but for a price, making you
risk drudgery, lapse
into document, treacheries
of glaring noon and a slow march...

"Take me flying before
you vanish, leaf, before
I have time to remember you,
intent instead on being
in the midst of that flight,
of those unforseeable words."

~~ Denise Levertov, from "Memory demands so much"

From the archives: Northrop Frye, on young poets and weasel words

First posted April 2005 

Two nice quotes from Northrop Frye:

"As long as [a young poet] is writing primarily for himself, his thought will be rooted in private associations, images which are linked to ideas through his own hidden and unique memory. This is not his fault: he can write only what takes shape in his mind. It is his job to keep on writing and not get stuck at that point....Then he is likely to pass through a social, allegorical, or metaphysical phase, an awkward and painful phase for all concerned. Finally, a mysterious but unmistakable ring of authority begins to come into his writing, and simultaneously the texture simplifies, meaning and imagery become transparent, and the poetry becomes a pleasure instead of a duty to read.....Every once in awhile, we run across a poet who reminds us that when the lyrical impulse reaches maturity of expression, it is likely to be, as most lyrical poetry has always been, lilting in rhythm, pastoral in imagery, and uncomplicated in thought." ~~ Northrop Frye, "Letters in Canada," 1953 (reviews collected in The Bush Garden)

"He realizes that the enemy of poetry is not social evil but slipshod language, the weasel words that betray the free mind: he realizes that to create requires an objective serenity beyond all intruding moral worries about atomic bombs and race prejudice." ~~ Northrop Frye, speaking of Canadian poet Louis Dudek

Four book finds

Recent thrift store book finds:

Sounding the Seasons: 70 Sonnets for the Christian Year, by Malcolm Guite

That Distant Land: The Collected Stories, by Wendell Berry

Deep Writing, by Eric Maisel

An Other Kingdom: Departing the Consumer Culture, by Peter Block, Walter Brueggemann, and John McKnight

On the third Sunday of Advent: Come, hidden Wisdom

On the third Sunday of Advent, I invite you to wander over to Malcolm Guite's website, and enjoy his poem "O Sapienta."  (It's at the end of the post, along with a sound clip.)

"Come, hidden Wisdom, come with all you bring,
Come to me now, disguised as everything."

From the archives: Rose Fixer

First posted August 2005. Ponytails was almost eight, and Crayons (Lydia) was four.

This morning Ponytails and I were reading "The Sick Rose" from William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience.

Oh Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
in the howling storm

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy.
And his dark secret love,
does thy life destroy.

Crayons climbed up on the couch and waved her hands over my head. She explained, "I'm putting some water on you."

From the archives: Exploding with creative energy

First posted April 2005

The Deputy Headmistress at The Common Room has been troubled by something on another blog that wonders how those who support conservative politics can also happily mingle with poetry (and, to extend the thought, with intelligence).

At the risk of boring with yet another quote from Northrop Frye, I'd like to offer this, from the very same page of The Bush Garden where I found the quote about weasel words.

"[Poet Irving Layton] speaks of 'the holy trinity Of sex revolution and poetry', and each of these is conceived as an explosion of creative energy against the inhibitions of prudery, exploitation, and philistinism respectively; a trinity more or less incarnate in Freud, Marx, and Whitman." ("Letters in Canada," 1953)

(Again on Layton, 1954)"....the ironic eye does not have free play; it is oppressed by a conscience-driven and resentful mind which sees modern society as a rock pile and the poet as under sentence of hard labour."

It might help to remember what was going on with a lot of poetry during the 1950's when Frye wrote these reviews of Layton: there were a lot of Angry Young People doing the coffeehouse thing, Ginsberg and Kerouac and all that. But I think the basic thought hasn't changed so much in 50 years. Some people still think that to be into the third part of the "trinity," you have to be into the first two as well. I think that's why some of the people in Mama Squirrel's creative writing classes were so weird, or really wanted everyone to know they were weird, or just pretended they were weird, because it kind of went with the turf. Anger poetry was good, exploding against things was good (even if it wasn't good poetry, it was Saying Something, right?). So do poets, or those who read poetry, have to have a rock pile to pound at? Was Whitman as revolutionary as Freud and Marx? Is that why Mama Squirrel doesn't like Whitman much?

And can Christians still manage to have an intelligent discussion about something like this without being called pseudo-intellectuals? Francis Schaeffer thought so, and so did C.S. Lewis.

The Arts and the Christian Imagination (Book Review)

The Arts and the Christian Imagination Essays on Art, Literature and Aesthetics, by Clyde S. Kilby, edited by William Dyrness and Keith Call (Paraclete Press / Mount Tabor Books / ISBN 978-1-61261-861-6 / 256 pages  / Hardcover / $28.99)

Our homeschooling community views education in the context of lifelong learning, and as part of the classical and liberal arts tradition. We recognize the value of each person as one who has been created in God's image, and who therefore shares in some of God's attributes such as the ability to imagine and create, and to form a relationship with the things that have been created. Our  curriculum includes more than normal amounts of poetry, drama, music, and art, the things that many schools would treat as frills or extras; but to us they are so vital, in the literal sense of vital meaning life-giving, that we have started referring to them as "The Riches."

Another phrase we use is "spreading the feast," as opposed to shoving things down people's throats, but which acknowledges that as human beings we do have "affinities" or natural, God-given attractions for truth and beauty. In fact, we are so out of touch with current beliefs as to insist that truth and beauty not only do exist, but that teaching them to children, and seeking after them as adults, is part of what we are called to do as Christians.

A writer and academic who agreed with that idea was Dr. Clyde S. Kilby, a longtime professor at Wheaton College, and author of The Arts and the Christian Imagination, a new collection of his writings from about fifty years ago. His essay "Christian Imagination" is also included in the older edition of Leland Ryken's collection The Christian Imagination, and appropriately enough it follows there right after C.S. Lewis's essay "Christianity and Culture." The subheadings include "The Bible: A Work of the Imagination"; "God, the Imaginer"; "The Failure of Imagination in Evangelical Christianity"; and "Learning to Live Imaginatively," and these are typical of the things he discusses throughout his work.

At one point Dr. Kilby refers to Lewis's description of a child on Easter morning who was heard to say "Chocolate eggs and Jesus risen," and he says "In our desperate evangelical desire for a clear, logical depiction of Jesus risen we have tended to remove the chocolate eggs...There is a simplicity which diminishes and a simplicity which enlarges...The first is that of the cliché-simplicity with mind and heart removed. The other is that of art...The first silently denies the multiplicity and grandeur of creation, salvation and indeed all things. The second symbolizes and celebrates them...[it] suggests the creative and sovereign God of the universe with whom there are no impossibilities."

So part of the problem of Christians making sense of the arts, besides needing more chocolate eggs, is that we may try to stick to what we call real, in the "life is real and life is earnest" sense, and forget that God's creation is full of amazement and grandeur, and although it may be fallen, it still reflects the power and beauty of its Creator. We have a feast laid out for us in Creation, and in the beautiful things that people have created in art, in music, in literature, things that are just as real as our everyday world of work, and that can give us a clearer picture of the love and holiness and power of the Father who inspired them.

The only complaint I have about the book is the almost unavoidable problem of repetition through the various essays and talks. Like any teacher, Dr. Kilby had favourite illustrations and examples which he re-used over the years, and reading the whole book in a short time might make you feel that you've been through a particular point several times already. On the other hand, exploring the collection of talks as a whole is a good way to get a sense of his most vital themes.

Well recommended for those wanting to dig deeper on the question of faith and the arts.

I received a free digital copy of this book from the publisher for purposes of review, but received no other compensation. All opinions (as much as humanly possible!) are my own.

Final book arrived!

Josef Piper, Only the Lover Sings: Art and Contemplation. These are very short pieces (mostly talks) about leisure, music, and the human spirit.

To read this week: Dante, Malcolm Guite, Lenten readings

All three combined in a series of posts on Malcolm Guite's website.

A Week of Joy: Something to listen to

Quiddity #59 (Advent Edition) features Christine Perrin and Matt Bianco discussing T.S. Eliot's "The Journey of the Magi." (You can hear T.S.  Eliot reading his poem here.)

Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory.
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again... 

Quote for the day: C.S. Lewis on Rhetoric and Poetry

"I do not think that Rhetoric and Poetry are distinguished by manipulation of an audience in the one and, in the other, a pure self-expression, regarded as its own end, and indifferent to any audience. Both these acts, in my opinion, definitely aim at doing something to an audience and both do it by using language to control what already exists in our minds." ~~ C.S. Lewis, Preface to Paradise Lost; quoted in C.S. Lewis Then and Now, by Wesley A. Kort (2001)

Education is a discipline: Mrs. Dowson and the great realities (Part Three)

Part One is here.  Part Two is here.

Abridged and slightly adapted from "The Discipline and Organization of the Mind,"  by Mrs. Dowson, L.R.C.P & S.,I. (Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons in Ireland), in The Parents' Review, Volume 11, 1900, pgs. 83-92

Mama Squirrel: You said that we are standing in peril if we either believe "excessively" everything we see, or if we disbelieve everything we don't see; that in fact "overbelieving" is a kind of superstition. Do you mean that we are trying to say that there is no meaning beyond the bare facts? How is it too much to believe in what you do see?

Professor Hinkle: You silly children believe everything you see. When you grow up, you'll realize that snowmen can't come to life.
Karen: But we...
Professor Hinkle: Silly, silly, silly! ( Frosty the Snowman)

Mrs. Dowson: It can get out of focus, out of right proportion. We need to offer science that includes the truths of experience as a whole...yes, they do need to be using their intellectual powers to be able to describe a thing with precision and with clearness, to say all that needs to be said about it and no more, to seize its characteristic differentia from similar things, and the essential points of its likeness to them, and to express the whole notion about it in just the right words. This too, like the power to observe accurately, is an accomplishment and will reveal, in its use, a pedant or a prig.

M.S. I have heard that somewhere else recently.

Mrs. Dowson:  We do need analysis, yes! It has its proper uses. It is only by a process of abstraction, by taking a thing out of its full context in the universe of things to which it is related, by cutting the bonds that tie it to all else and to its true meaning in relation to all else, that we are able to give it precise definition at all. But Nature--our experience of reality--defies our exactness and makes a mock of our descriptions; and unless we know she does our power to impose definitions upon the superficial bits of her that we gaze at in the contracted field of scientific sight must give us a false conception both of her and of ourselves and of our intellectual gains. The great realities of human life, moral and spiritual facts, are entirely beyond the reach of any such precise definition.

M.S.: So there is a danger of concentrating too much on only what is right in front of us?

Mrs. Dowson: There are also things that have their very being through mutual inclusion; and thus, they limit their mental field of view by an artificial horizon shutting out the most precious truths in the possession of mankind. But even greater than this danger is the rather lofty idea that our science-centred students will achieve the the splendid mental qualities developed, for example, in Darwin and Newton.

M.S.:  Isn't that a good goal to have?

Mrs. Dowson:. But the fine qualities displayed by Darwin and Newton are no more to the point in this matter than is the greatness of Caesar or of Wellington in connection with the educational value of learning the date of Waterloo or the successive stages of the Gallic War. Students do not acquire Wellington's powers of generalship by having a school acquaintance with his campaigns, or even by 'getting-up' his admirable Despatches; nor are they in the least degree more likely to gain the power of mental concentration and selection, and the sound judgment and untiring intellectual patience of Newton or of Darwin, through learning physics and biology even by a better method than that in vogue at the present time.

M.S.: You've named several points of both of character and of intellect: courage and wisdom; then sound judgment, intellectual patience and power. But as you say, knowing the facts of science does not give one the qualities of a scientist. So, that makes me think...are we being presumptuous when we encourage young children, or teenagers, to think of themselves as writers, or artists, or scientists? Doesn't that just give them a sense that their own thoughts and ideas are valuable? And isn't it good that the ground has already been so much broken for us?

Mrs. Dowson: On the contrary, the very fact of being able to roam over vast territories in the kingdom of science conquered and opened up by other men not rarely turns the weak heads of those who follow, and makes them, like lunatics at large, think themselves potentates when they are only tramps.

M.S.: So is it humility that we're lacking?

Mrs.. Dowson: Perhaps humanity. If we were tied down to a choice between science and letters, in the name of all that is human and living and universal, we should choose letters....those great organizers of our chaotic democracy of knowledge--the subjects which treat of the mind of man, of his knowing, feeling and acting, and of cause and purpose and meaning in the great whole of things.

M.S. But we don't have to choose between science and humanities.

Mrs. Dowson: No, we may safely make use of both, if we employ, as a necessary corrective to their separateness and their peculiar limitations, those subjects by means of which alone we can shew their fundamental relations.

This is the end of Mrs. Dowson's Part One; but she wrote a Part Two, still to come.

A Week in the Life, updated again: Wednesday (Lydia's Grade Eight)

Hymns:  "And Can it Be"

Current events

Daughter of Time page 165-174.  Why Tyrrell's confession was so bogus.

Lydia checked her e-mail and then went off to read Westward Ho!, chapter 14.  She narrated orally and I drew a line from England to South America on our laminated wall map, to show how far Amyas would have to travel to rescue Rose.

We had a short discussion on blogging ethics and choir Christmas music.  Mama Squirrel went to put a large, baked, somewhat cooled butternut squash through the food processor and a load of jeans in the washer.  Lydia went on to do some math:

Math, A Human Endeavor:  Still on Arithmetic Sequences.  She says this chapter is too easy.  (Isn't that nice sometimes?)

The Apprentice arrived for an overnight visit, and Mr. Fixit made sandwiches.

After lunch: Mr. Fixit and The Apprentice drove to the next town to pick up an electronic part. Mama Squirrel did the dishes. Lydia went back to working on the math lesson.  She said that she found an easier way to do the problems, so would it be okay to do it that way?  I said, do it the way that works best for you.

We read a few pages of A Man for All Seasons.

French:  continued this week's work on verbs.

At that point, Lydia decided that she had done enough school for the day.  She had some free time while Mama Squirrel messed around in the kitchen.

History of English Literature, "Blank Verse": work on that writing assignment from yesterday.

The Easy Grammar Plus:  Still on the Cumulative Review (a little of everything).

Choose other AO Readings (history, geography, Bible, science) from this week's list.

When The Apprentice returned, she taught Lydia how to play Hanabi. (The Apprentice is always good for new games.)

Photo found at BoardGaming.com .

Start with a word (Lydia's Grade 8)

"The smallest significant element in a book is, of course, a single word."  ~~ Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book

Today's plans and readings:

Three pages from How to Read a Book.  Adler says that in the early chapters of his book, he was explaining how to break a book down.  Now he's going in the opposite direction: starting with the smallest units, the words and terms; then building up to propositions (which are composed of terms) and arguments (which are composed of propositions).  Or you can think of it as going from words / phrases, to sentences, to collections of sentences (paragraphs).

Picture Talk: Titian's "The Madonna of the Rabbit" or "Madonna and Child with St. Catherine and a Rabbit."  Interesting audio descriptions here.  (I haven't listened to them all the way through, so no guarantees.  I do know that he mentions St. Catherine's vision of her marriage to Jesus, which is just a little...well, okay.)

Poetry:  Sidney, "My true love hath my heart"; e.e. cummings, "i carry your heart."

Dollygirl's Grade Seven: Term Two, Week Two, or, yes, we are doing school this week

Today's school work:

Some of How to Read a Book, about the usefulness of marking up books, underlining, numbering, making margin notes.  Dollygirl, having been raised to treat books with respect, finds this idea somewhat scandalous.  I showed her my well-annotated paperback copies of Charlotte Mason's books and she was doubly horrified.  Voices from the reading audience?  What do you think?

Grammar page

Plutarch's Life of Demosthenes, Lesson One

The Grammar of Poetry:  about the synecdoche.  A synecdoche, if you never knew or you've forgotten, is when you use part of something to refer to the whole, or vice versa.  Like asking for someone's hand in marriage, or saying you have fifty head of cattle.  We found it much easier to come up with examples like that than to find any that took the whole to refer to the part.  The Wikipedia article uses the example of calling a congregation "the church," which is technically right because "the church" should refer to the whole Body of Christ; but I'm not sure that's the clearest example...or even, on second thought, if that still isn't the part used for the whole.

The Lay of the Land:  half of the chapter about Christmas in the Woods.

Algebra:  how to multiply and divide signed numbers.  Two positives make a positive, two negatives make a positive, a positive and a negative make a negative.  Clear?

The rest of the week:

Will include starting Watership Down, another look at the folk art of Maud Lewis, another lesson in baroque music (using Christmas Goes Baroque II), some Uncle Eric, some Heidi's Alp, and so on.  A little math, a little science.  That's it.  We're counting Friday as a day off, because the school kids are off for Christmas then too.  Our Apprentice has a last exam tomorrow, then she'll arrive home for Christmas holidays on Wednesday evening.

No more school posts till January!

Dollygirl's Grade Seven, Week Seven: Plans for Monday

Opening time: Hymns

Ourselves: finish "Courage."  "Then there is what we may call the Courage of our Capacity––the courage which assures us that we can do the particular work which comes in our way, and will not lend an ear to the craven fear which reminds us of failures in the past and unfitness in the present."

Grammar of Poetry:  Lesson 7: Meter, Part 1.  Marking stressed syllables in nursery rhymes.  Also watch just the first few minutes of this talk on how the rhythm of poetry is more than just something mathematical, something you can analyze and count:  it is something that changes us, that we allow to change us.  Then each choose a poem and listen (don't analyze, just listen) for its rhythm.



Math: Finish Discovering Mathematical Thought this week...going through some challenges that review the concepts already covered.

English History: Saxon-era saint stories that we missed last week.

A History of Music for Young People:  Chapter 3, "The Early Days."  "At the same time as church musicians were exploring polyphony there was growing up, in France and Germany, a great love of melodious, poetic song among the knights and the nobility.  These aristocrats had not only to be able to ride horses, joust with lances, and rescue damsels in distress, they must also be able to compose tender little songs, both words and music, and sing them themselves, accompanying themselves on the lute or the harp."

Christian Studies: Book of Acts, Chapter11

Easy Grammar Plus: One page per day

Powerglide French

More similes for Dollygirl

"The short-clipped manes spring back like roosters' combs"  ~~ "Winged Team," by Jessie Haas, in Hoofprints: Horse Poems

"Chain mail polished like woven silver" ~~ "Treasure," by Jessie Haas

"Horses are swimming in the sea.
Their long manes slide like foam
down the green, glassy wave-troughs."  ~~ "The Spanish Armada Retreats," by Jessie Haas

"Like a prairie fire, the horseback idea
spread across the grasslands."  ~~ "Flare-up," by Jessie Haas

"He first saw one with the corner of his left eye, a wisp of pale sheen that faded away; but others appeared soon after: some like dimly shining smoke, some like misty flames flickering slowly above unseen candles; here and there they twisted like ghostly sheets unfurled by hidden hands."  ~~ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

"While the grey light lasted, they cowered under a black stone like worms, shrinking, lest the winged terror should pass and spy them with its cruel eyes."  ~~ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers