O Thou Highest Dialectic,
justify our inner visions,
sanctify our crass electric
sanctuaries; stitch incisions
made in anger and in error,
bless our reticent emotion,
shaping fear to holy terror,
forming need into devotion.
Harmonize our aimless movements,
infiltrate our itching sinews,
desecrate our great achievements
with Thy frailty; open venues
in all empty hearts and cities:
divulge truth in cogent lectures,
goodness in mundane committees,
beauty in new architectures.
Shine above our steel erections,
and beneath our epidermis,
satisfy all predilections
with true objects; when our term is
finished in this incarnation,
realign what strains are errant
resurrect each soul and nation:
make all holiness inherent.
Part I gave ideas for poems; Part II discussed several metres; and this article is about choosing a title for a poem.
A poem should be reasonably intelligible without a title. As a name is not entirely essential to one’s person, a title is not entirely essential to at least the most literal understanding of a poem. Shakespeare’s Sonnets, for example, and most of Emily Dickenson’s poems are untitled. This is not to say, however, that a title is always useless or even injurious: often it is desirable. Hence this article.
Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor is properly understood as a dark comedy. She says in the introduction that “it is a comic novel about a Christian malgré lui [Fr. In spite of himself], and as such, very serious, for all comic novels that are any good must be about matters of life and death.” Consequently, it is a novel filled with grotesque, ugly, and dirty things, filled with prostitutes, loose mothers, corrupt preachers, abusive fathers, cartoonish drunks, and, in the middle, Hazel Motes, who is trying to prove to himself that he is not a Christian. View Full Post
Published in 1940, Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls is a rich novel set within the chaos of the Spanish Civil War. The plot revolves around Robert Jordan, an American volunteer, and his mission to dynamite a bridge. Around this simple premise, Hemingway weaves a masterful story that chronicles Jordan’s conflict between duty and love for a girl named Maria, his relationship with the members of an unpredictable guerilla band who either help or hinder him, and his ultimate and inescapable fate. The allusion in the title to John Donne’s piece is no mistake. When the last page is turned, Hemingway has produced a masterful novel that has come in a full circle–but does not end with the final sentence. View Full Post
By Nick Embrey
There is no melody in the sky and
roads have no rhythm; not even one is
righteous; towers tumble while shadows stand;
they play their loud fiddles with such blind ease…
I want to scream and and cry out to the Lord,
“What is Your plan here, what grand storyline
are You bringing to fruition by Your Word?”
But it would hurt far too much for a sign
to truly appear, so I stay silent
and wonder where my future days have gone;
would it hurt too much to know where they went?
But surely, they are gone, and I am done
and life means nothing. Yet I am not poor-
I am quite content; I wish it hurt more.
