[Alex Pepple]

What Frank said ... Indeed, I have a book review to that effect forthcoming in Think Journal.

Cheers,
...Alex

[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by Quincy Lehr

Oh, don't get me wrong--I like the Martin poem.

Seriously? What am I missing? You need to educate me on this one. Maybe I'm just not much for disaster poems? I didn't even like "Convergence of the Twain!"

Or maybe it's the book title that put me off. Those words are dog whistles in certain circles. Of course, I have no idea if that's what he means. Perhaps its perfectly innocent.

Anyway, I'd like to hear about exactly why so many people, of such diverse tastes, like the poem. I'm seriously interested.

Thanks,

Bill

[Rick Mullin]

I will not be of much help, Bill.


At the risk of marginalizing myself even further in my corner of a sphere, may I?:

911 is a tough category. There are a lot of terrible 9-11 poems, as we all know. There is a reason for this. Martin’s isn’t terrible. But so much of his poem is a clever if not ostentatious framing of the disaster within a relatively obscure turn in the Revolutionary War—harrowing though it was. He spends too much time illuminating the frame rather than the picture.

Martin, as far as I’m concerned, makes (rather blatantly) the mistake of bringing his knowledge to an event that can only overwhelm and take us outside what we know. How many people read this poem and said, “Oh, I didn’t know about Wallabout Bay. Interesting. Let me Google that”? He imposes history on something bigger than history. Thus he also imposes intellectual control, in this case by offering narrative historical context, which I don’t generally admire in any art.

The best part of the poem is, of course, the end where he lets go. The middle is largely a well-written description of events. Some of it is moving.

Here he gets on the right track:

Like something we’d imagined but not known

Then he insists on aligning it with the past--a specificity in the past. With something we know. Well, perhaps that is a human tendency. But even a Pearl Harbor comparison would become utterly beside the point.


Some observations: The poem begins with a reference to himself as he tells us where he was when it happened—often the hallmark of a bad 9-11 poem. Oddly, it goes on to read as if it could have been written by someone who was in Kansas that day. And maybe the best 911 poem has been written by someone who was in Kansas that day.

He uses the word "paradigm" without irony—often the hallmark of a bad poem.

This poem succeeds, for me, to the extent that he brings experience, rather than knowledge, to the pile. But the personal experience is obscured in this. I would prefer the purely personal to being told how we all feel. It's a fine poem, but I really am amazed at how people cherish this as a great 9-11 poem.

[Tim Murphy]

Here's Paul's poem, which was a winner of our sonnet bakeoff, even though it's not fourteen lines:

Charlemagne's Vision


Remembering his father's last campaign
To purge the south of Saracen and Moor
And how Grandfather stopped the tide from Spain,
Driving the Muslims from the fields of Tours,
King Charlemagne surveyed the scattered dead
At Roncesvalles, where Roland's ivory horn
Lay shattered on the ground beneath his head,
Then left his slaughtered Paladins, to mourn,

And saw, in troubled sleep, a second Rome
Encoiled by hydra heads--a living net
Encircling London, Paris, Amsterdam,
Each serpent-head poised like a minaret
Above the drowsy heart of Christendom--
Loud cries, bright shafts, red flames, a streaking jet,
Then bodies bowed down in a vast salaam.

I love Paul's poem and Charles' poem for precisely the reason Rick dislikes the latter, their historical sweep. They are ambitious. Of course I love Paul's poem for calling it as I see it. We are both inimical to Islamofascism.

[Quincy Lehr]

Wow, Lake's poem is the sort of thing Le Pen would read to his children. It's really, really awful! But then again, I'm inimical to Islamophobia. (Which implies no fondness for "Islamofascism," whatever that might be.)

[Janice D. Soderling]

What Quincy said.

[Andrew Mandelbaum]

Not buying the historical pole vault from Roncevalles to 9/11 either.
Drowsy heart of Christendom?

[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by Tim Murphy

We are both inimical to Islamofascism.

This is exactly my point about the title. It's hard to imagine anything more christofacist than the vineyard movement. All the elements are there: the cult of personality, the mysticism, the received authority, which is yet undetermined, the separation. It's almost as if they've never read Martin Buber, much less Maritain.

Maybe he didn't know anything about that movement when he chose that title, even though that's hard to imagine. But readers can't be blamed for wondering if there isn't some kind of intended association.

Thanks,

Bill

[Tim Murphy]

I think I can assure you that everything about Paul's poem is intentional.

[Maryann Corbett]

Originally Posted by W.F. Lantry

Maybe he didn't know anything about that movement when he chose that title, even though that's hard to imagine. But readers can't be blamed for wondering if there isn't some kind of intended association.

Bill, I'm assuming that by "that title" you mean Martin's Signs and Wonders. (Correct me if I'm wrong.)
With respect, I've never heard of the Vineyard movement until just now. American religion is such a ferment of stuff that everybody can't be aware of everything. In the Martin books I've read, I see nothing like that--very little, in fact, that's overtly religious.

Readers who wondered, if there were any, would be set straight by reading one or two reviews of the book (and there are already a few online) that mention its introductory epigraph, a tiny little poem in which he explains what sense of "sign" and what sense of "wonder" he has in mind.

It's a very good book, as I see things. I think people ought to go back one and read his Starting From Sleep as well; it's even better.