It is the day of Patricius Qatrikias Pádraig Padrig

Irish Kings and Archers, 13th Century

Patricius;  Qatrikias;  Pádraig;  Padrig, -- also known as Saint Patrick -- was born on March 17 in A.D. 385  (d.461). A Romano-British Christian missionary and the bishop in Ireland -- of equal importance, he was also a poet.

Patrick composed a poem call "The Lorica," the first hymn written in Gaelic. ('Lorica' is a type of poem that invokes God's protection.) In Patrick's poem he asks for God's protection from druids, whom he believes are planning an ambush as he and his friar traveled to the King's court in A.D. 433.

(The portion below, called Faed Fiada, is translated by Seumas MacManus in The Story of the Irish Race.)

"Deer's Cry" (Faed Fiada)  ~ For protection from an ambush of the Druids"

I bind me today, God's might to direct me,
God's wisdom for learning,
God's eye for discerning,
God's ear for my hearing,
God's word for my clearing.

God's hand for my cover,
God's path to pass over,
God's buckler to guard me,
God's army to ward me
against snares of the devil,
against vices, temptation, against wrong inclination,
against men who plot evil, anear or afar, with many or few.

Christ near, Christ here, Christ be with me, Christ beneath me,
Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ be o'er me, Christ before me.
Christ in the left and the right, Christ hither and thither,
Christ in the sight, of each eye that shall seek me, in each ear that shall hear, in each mouth that shall speak me --
Christ not the less in each heart I address.

(Go here to read a Celtic prayer for endangered travelers.)

Bob Dylan's Changing Times

The Beatles are not the only ones making history 50 years ago this week. On this day, Feb 10, 1964  Bob Dylan released his classic   "The Times They Are a-Changin,"  on his 3rd album (Columbia Records). Perhaps he could be seen as the prophetic figure who presaged the era of upheaval the Beatles and so many others represented, most notably, Dylan himself. 

 

The line it is drawn 

The curse it is cast 
The slow one now 
Will later be fast 
As the present now 
Will later be past 
The order is 
Rapidly fadin' 
And the first one now 
Will later be last 
For the times they are a-changin'.

See John Lennon's Don't Let Me Down.
See George Harrison's Let It Roll

Happy Birthday, Lewis Carroll

by Wendy Murray

Today is the birthday of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson -- better known as Lewis Carroll -- born on January 27, 1832. He is best known for his classic fantasy novels Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (late 1871).

A writer, logician, photographer, mathematician and Anglican, Dodgson was mentored in his writing by his friend and fellow fantasy-writer, the esteemed George MacDonald (who strongly influenced C. S. Lewis), who read Dodgson's unfinished manuscript of the first book and encouraged him to try and get it published. In 1865 MacMillan released Alice's Adventures in Wonderland under Dodgson's pen name Lewis Carroll.

Charles Dodgson,
 a.k.a. Lewis Carroll

Often overlooked in the 'Alice' corpus is Carroll's classic "nonsense poem," Jabberwocky, which is found in Through the Looking-Glass. In the story Alice has found herself in a backward world on the other side of a looking glass when she finds a book written with illegible symbols. (Go here to see a creative rendition of this.) She realizes that, to read it, she must see it through the reflection of a mirror (being on the other side of a looking glass). When she does so, she ends up as confounded as before:

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
      Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
      And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
      The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
      The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand;
      Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
      And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
      The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
      And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
      The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
      He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
      Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
      He chortled in his joy.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
      Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
      And the mome raths outgrabe.

Buy this here

Despite the mysterious word choice, Alice intuits that the poem tells an exciting story with adventure and suspense. She concludes:

'It seems very pretty,' she said when she had finished it, 'but it's rather hard to understand!'  . . . 'Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas—only I don't exactly know what they are! However, somebody killed something: that's clear, at any rate.'

The Plaintive Faith of T. S. Eliot

Image Copyright©WendyMurray2014.
 All rights reserved.

Poet T.S. Eliot (1888 to 1965) died on this day, January 4, in 1965. Best known for the poem The Waste Land (1915), Eliot is considered a ground-breaking poet that changed the rules of modern poetry through the imagination and restraint he brought to this work.

(Listen to Eliot reading The Waste Land:)

He possessed a singularity of vision that captured the tension between the ballast of faith and the plaintive uncertainties of human experience. A sense of it is captured in this portion of the poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915):

And would it have been worth it, after all,

Would it have been worth while,

After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,

After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor--

And this, and so much more?--

It is impossible to say just what I mean!

But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:

Would it have been worth while

If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,

And turning toward the window, should say:

"That is not it at all,

That is not what I meant, at all."

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do

To swell a progress, start a scene or two,

Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--

Almost, at times, the Fool.

Last Year's Words

“For last year's words belong to last year's language And next year's words await another voice.” 

― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

Michelangelo's Little-known Love of Poetic Verse

"As when, O lady mine / with chisell'd touch / The stone unhewn and cold / Becomes a living mold, / The more the marble wastes / The more the statue grows."

Michaelangelo was a poet and philosopher on top of all else he accomplished.

"Michelangelo scribbled jokes, thoughts and mundane shopping lists in the margins of his artistic sketches, providing a fascinating insight into his moods and artistic genius." Noted in the book: Michaelangelo, A Life on Paper

He worked from the theory of "concetto" (pronounced con-CHET-oh), the Italian word for the English word "concept." Michaelangelo understood it as the notion that the art form (or concept) exists within (in his case) the marble, and the artist is intended to set it free.  

Photo: Getty

 Michaelangelo's poetry captures in verse a glimpse of what he achieved in marble:"Just as in pen and ink / There is high or low or intermediate style, / There are in marbles rich or base images / So far as our genius can draw them out."

"Michelangelo’s ardour is eloquently described in the poems which the artist composed for Cavalieri, mainly in the early phase of their friendship.  Five handwritten sonnets are included in the exhibition; most of these are here shown for the first time."  

From The Courtauld Gallery 

Released Oct 1 2013: A Bow From My Shadow

Ecco Qua Press is proud to announce the released of its latest title: A Bow From My Shadow, A Dialogue, by Luke Irwin and Alex Miller, Jr.

It is available on Amazon and BarnesandNoble.com.

Please join with EQP and celebrate the power of words and gifted minds of these young poets!http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-bow-from-my-shadow-luke-irwin/1116910882?ean=9781467500661


Ecco Qua Press is an independent publisher of fiction, literary nonfiction, and poetry. The name is Italian, translating to “Here it is,” defining its mission to  get good work out and into the hands of  interested readers.

Irish Poet Seamus Heaney Has Crossed O`er the Hoary Sea, 1939 to 2013

Seamus Heaney, 1939 to 2013

The irrepressible, earthy and Nobel-Prize-winning poet-of-our-time, Seamus Heaney, died in Dublin on Friday after a short illness. You can read his obit almost anywhere now, which we, at Ecco Qua Press, cannot improve upon. (Here is the New York Times's.)

Heaney was known to us here personally, his having been a friend and colleague with our author, Bruce Guernsey (From Rain, Poems 1970 - 2010). They communicated about the book and Heaney was all grace and good will.

To honor his memory, we include a brief excerpt from a conversation Heaney shared at Harvard University (2011) with student Madeleine Beckman:

Trust your writing, but don’t always trust it will stay with you. I try not to give them too much hope. My own personality is skeptical and earnest and it’s my own attitude to my own work. I come here [to Harvard] and don’t write for five or six months of the year. Poetry isn’t important in one sense -- it’s more important to live your life and be a good person. Who cares about poetry, there’s plenty already around. Life is more important than art.

We close with a stanza of his poem: A Kite for Aibhín

After 'L'Aquilone' by Giovanni Pascoli (1855-1912)

Air from another life and time and place,

Pale blue heavenly air is supporting

A white wing beating high against the breeze . . .