On this Marian feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, I thought I’d offer a reading of Dame Gertrude More’s poem “To Our Blessed Lady, the Advocate of Sinners.”
A short prayer-poem set in common metre, “To Our Blessed Lady” was composed by the Benedictine nun Gertrude More in the early seventeenth century and is edited in my fourth book, Dame Gertude More’s Poems & Counsels on Prayer and Contemplation.
Benedictines paved the way of Marian devotion thru-out the early and high middle ages, and here’s Gertrude, co-foundress of Stanbrook Abbey, carrying on the tradition.
as i sat on one of the huge chunks of cement dumped near the bank of the fox river, i found myself trying to keep the electricity poles and other slabs of debris out of the shots of the opposite bank. that didn’t feel quite right, so i figured i had another “anthropocenum” moment on my hands. these shots are frank about what the fox looks like at this moment in its journey from halbach swamp down to the illinois.
before the first three-liner this time, i just wanted to say ‘thanks’ to all the folks who’ve continued to read these and ‘like’ them too. it’s been a real blessing knowing that a few people out there continue to enjoy a moment with these virtual traces of my walks and identifying-sprees.
thanks, everyone!
a.
tussocky grass soft underfoot
feathered lichen tree-grasp
moss and mushrooms win the day
b.
off the map as raindrops
shower canopy. thank God
for woods with no direction
c.
like wordsworth i leave the city
walls, danish in hand
sky, aster, swamp-oak
d.
moss sex
stripped bark—
a heavenly cascade
e.
bare trunks spire the sky
as bird-call fills the boughs again
out the woods, into the swamp
martin’s woods is a 32-acre plot in waukesha county with mesic and wet-mesic forest as well as a hardwood swamp dominated by ash and swamp white oak. no trails or access aside from the forest edge. wonderful. thanks to the waukesha land conservancy for caring for this land!
Today saw the release of Trinity House Review‘s premier issue! THR is a journal dedicated to serious poets doing work that tends to the transcendent in human life, to craft, and to “the hallows of a haunted age” (from their opening editorial). It’s an honor to be included in its pages and with such terrific poets.
My translation of the Old English “A Journey Galdor” (usually called “A Journey Charm” by editors) appears in the issue. The galdru are a strange “genre” of poetic and prose texts in Old English: half-prayer, half-magic, half-recipe. (!) They are a relic of a time when the self was more porous than moderns tend to think of it.
“A Journey Galdor” is one of my favorites of the genre, because it is a prayer for protection (and so, very practical) and because of its vague mentioning of various kinds of early Germanic “terrors”. This is a world in which elves and dragons and other wights are still very much a live option and need to be defended against. It’s a hoot, and deadly earnest.
I always say I’m excited to announce a new book. But this time I’m even more excited than normal. Gracewing in the UK has done me a great favor in bringing out a book that pulls out all the stops. O Shining Light: Old English Meditations for Advent and Christmastide is the first stand-alone, poetic translation of the Old English Advent Lyrics, a poem that opens the Exeter Book. (The Exeter Book is the first anthology of English poetry, copied down in the southwest of England sometime in the later tenth century.) You can get a copy here!
The Advent Lyrics are a set of short meditations on the “O Antiphons” sung at Vespers leading up to Christmas, and several others. (O Come, O Come Emmanuel” is based on the O Antiphons too.) The early English poet gave us a heartfelt, brooding, and celebratory poem. At the same time, it can be hard for modern readers to see what he is doing clearly at first blush, so we’ve included commentary that breaks open the poetic and theological riches of the poem too. Guides for individual and group reflection too make the book perfect for devotional Advent reading.
I’m particularly delighted because of the following features: my wife Mamie and I collaborated on the Introduction and Commentary; Daniel Mitsui provided illustrations inspired by Anglo-Saxon manuscript illustrations that frame the poem thru-out; Br. Paul Quenon, a terrific poet, photographer, and Cistercian monk, provided a welcoming and astute foreword; and the crew at Gracewing set the work in splendid typeface imitative of Anglo-Saxon script. It’s a poet’s (this poet’s) dream book.
Oh, and for anyone who might want to hear the original poem read aloud, I have posted audio files of myself reading the lyrics here. You can follow along in your book, just like when we were kids! 🙂
this new supplemental subgrouping of sna poems, the “supplementum anthropocenum” will showcase occasional moments of exceptional, natural rupture in the urban and other built environments.
in one of my seminars this term, my students and i are talking about how ‘nature’ isn’t ‘out there.’ (and the troubles that arise from the view that it is.) thought i should start taking it seriously in this series too.
here, a patch of stinkhorns continues to work down the wood chips in a median strip heading into downtown milwaukee (it fruits a few times a year), while a vigorous stand of evening primrose beautifies an abandoned lot on the city’s lower east side. how is this not ‘nature’?
sanders park state natural area is set within a park and ringed ’round by exculpating road(!). two different kinds of forest grow on swells and swale, an ancient terrace of lake michigan. an intermittent stream flows thru the whole; lots of wildflower and fern species.
thanks to racine county parks for keeping this patch of earth.
In honor of today beginning Fall Embertide, the Quatuor Tempora (Four Times) of fasting and prayer that go way back in the Latin Church, here is a poem from my 2018 collection Sunk in Your Shipwreck, “My Embering.”
(For any liturgy buffs: I do know that in the Extraordinary Rite ordo for this year the Fall Ember Days are moved to next week, but it’s b/c of a technicality of the 1962 reform that I’m not worrying about–since I don’t follow the old rite anyhow, I’m sticking with the prior 1400+ year tradition.)
Jacob Riyeff 