Of Elsewhere
Two more books down, though they’re something of a detour from my plan…. I reread Charles Williams’ Descent Into Hell, which I’ve written about here and here, but before that I read Sera Beak’s Red, Hot & Holy, which was a strange and strangely rewarding experience. I’ll write a bit here about the juxtaposition of […]
The second time through Charles Williams’ masterpiece Taliessin Through Logres, I find that I experience the poems as more difficult than I did the first time, in 2013. This is reassuring, because everyone says they are difficult, and I know that I can sometimes read too lightly to notice even when I’m failing to understand something […]
I’ve decided that my “something borrowed”-week can be something borrowed from a non-poetry genre as well as something borrowed from a friend. This takes the pressure off my friends, and also allows me a bit of non-poetry blogging, though this week there is a connection of a sort. I’ve blogged a fair bit about Christian […]
This is a brief and heterogeneous update post. First, I am trying to put together a chapbook of poetry to submit to real publishers. Um. this is a challenge. And probably premature. But I’m trying it anyway. I may send out some individual poems to publishers as well. I am also trying to figure out […]
Last week I wrote “Why C.S. Lewis?” I still seem to be in a period of Inklings obsession (the Inklings were C.S. Lewis’s Christian writing group), and I’m about halfway through Grevel Lindpop’s Charles Williams: The Third Inkling. I’m enjoying it enormously, although I will be objecting to one aspect of it in today’s post. (For […]
Near the end of Descent into Hell, Hugh Prescott and Adela discuss daydreams. Hugh only barely daydreams, whereas Adela does so often, and her defense of this calls the temptress Lily Sammile to her side. It is worth asking what exactly Lily Sammile is, other than Lilith. Her magical remedies seem to be an exaggerated […]
In the last post, I observed that in a Williams-ian afterlife I might well find myself with “some large messy mess of myself to get through.” Descent into Hell centers around love and reality’s conflict with self-infatuation and illusion. If Sodom is a city of disordered love for others, Williams calls “Gomorrah” as the city […]
C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, the former of whom is quite possibly my favorite author, were part of a Christian writing group at Oxford entitled the Inklings. I am not familiar with all of their work, but I first read Lord of the Rings and Narnia in elementary school, I fell in love with C.S. […]
Of Elsewhere 