Walt Whitman
Born on May 31, 1819, Walt Whitman was the second son of Walter Whitman, a housebuilder, and Louisa Van Velsor. The family, which consisted of nine children, lived in Brooklyn and Long Island in the 1820s and 1830s. At the age of twelve Whitman began to learn the printer's trade, and fell in love with the written word. Largely self-taught, he read voraciously, becoming acquainted with the works of Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and the Bible. Whitman worked as a printer in New York City until a devastating fire in the printing district demolished the industry. In 1836, at the age of 17, he began his career as teacher in the one-room school houses of Long Island. He continued to teach until 1841, when he turned to journalism as a full-time career. He founded a weekly newspaper, Long-Islander, and later edited a number of Brooklyn and New York papers. In 1848, Whitman left the Brooklyn Daily Eagle to become editor of the New Orleans Crescent. It was in New Orleans that he experienced at first hand the viciousness of slavery in the slave markets of that city.
On his return to Brooklyn in the fall of 1848, he founded a "free soil" newspaper, the Brooklyn Freeman, and continued to develop the unique style of poetry that later so astonished Ralph Waldo Emerson. In 1855, Whitman took out a copyright on the first edition of Leaves of Grass, which consisted of twelve untitled poems and a preface. He published the volume himself, and sent a copy to Emerson in July of 1855. Whitman released a second edition of the book in 1856, containing thirty-three poems, a letter from Emerson praising the first edition, and a long open letter by Whitman in response. During his subsequent career, Whitman continued to refine the volume, publishing several more editions of the book.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Whitman vowed to live a "purged" and "cleansed" life. He wrote freelance journalism and visited the wounded at New York-area hospitals. He then traveled to Washington, D.C. in December 1862 to care for his brother who had been wounded in the war. Overcome by the suffering of the many wounded in Washington, Whitman decided to stay and work in the hospitals. Whitman stayed in the city for eleven years. He took a job as a clerk for the Department of the Interior, which ended when the Secretary of the Interior, James Harlan, discovered that Whitman was the author of Leaves of Grass, which Harlan found offensive. Harlan fired the poet.
Whitman struggled to support himself through most of his life. In Washington he lived on a clerk's salary and modest royalties, and spent any excess money, including gifts from friends, to buy supplies for the patients he nursed. He had also been sending money to his widowed mother and an invalid brother. From time to time writers both in the states and in England sent him "purses" of money so that he could get by.
In the early 1870s, Whitman settled in Camden, where he had come to visit his dying mother at his brother's house. However, after suffering a stroke, Whitman found it impossible to return to Washington. He stayed with his brother until the 1882 publication of Leaves of Grass gave Whitman enough money to buy a home in Camden. In the simple two-story clapboard house, Whitman spent his declining years working on additions and revisions to a new edition of the book and preparing his final volume of poems and prose, Good-Bye, My Fancy (1891). After his death on March 26, 1892, Whitman was buried in a tomb he designed and had built on a lot in Harleigh Cemetery.
A noiseless patient spider
by Walt Whitman
A noiseless patient spider,
I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Friday, April 3, 2009
National Poetry Month, Day 4
Here is one-half of one of the most successful meetings of minds that has ever occurred in arts and letters. The thing that fascinates me about EBB is that she totally withstood the tyranny and abuse of her father, her chronic invalidism, and the tragic death of her beloved brother, and still had such a luminous soul and creative spirit that she lived out the love story of the ages with Robert Browning, a courtship that went on for twenty months and more than 500 letters before they ever met in the flesh. Her story is a testament not only to the immense power of the written word, but the absolutely best illustration I have ever seen of the concept of mind over matter.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett, an English poet of the Romantic Movement, was born in 1806 at Coxhoe Hall, Durham, England. The oldest of twelve children, Elizabeth was the first in her family born in England in over two hundred years. For centuries, the Barrett family, who were part Creole, had lived in Jamaica, where they owned sugar plantations and relied on slave labor. Elizabeth's father, Edward Barrett Moulton Barrett, chose to raise his family in England, while his fortune grew in Jamaica. Educated at home, Elizabeth apparently had read passages from Paradise Lost and a number of Shakespearean plays, among other great works, before the age of ten. By her twelfth year she had written her first "epic" poem, which consisted of four books of rhyming couplets. Two years later, Elizabeth developed a lung ailment that plagued her for the rest of her life. Doctors began treating her with morphine, which she would take until her death. While saddling a pony when she was fifteen, Elizabeth also suffered a spinal injury. Despite her ailments, her education continued to flourish. Throughout her teenage years, Elizabeth taught herself Hebrew so that she could read the Old Testament; her interests later turned to Greek studies. Accompanying her appetite for the classics was a passionate enthusiasm for her Christian faith. She became active in the Bible and Missionary Societies of her church.
In 1826 Elizabeth anonymously published her collection An Essay on Mind and Other Poems. Two years later, her mother passed away. The slow abolition of slavery in England and mismanagement of the plantations depleted the Barrett's income, and in 1832, Elizabeth's father sold his rural estate at a public auction. He moved his family to a coastal town and rented cottages for the next three years, before settling permanently in London. While living on the sea coast, Elizabeth published her translation of Prometheus Bound (1833), by the Greek dramatist Aeschylus.
Gaining notoriety for her work in the 1830's, Elizabeth continued to live in her father's London house under his tyrannical rule. He began sending Elizabeth's younger siblings to Jamaica to help with the family's estates. Elizabeth bitterly opposed slavery and did not want her siblings sent away. During this time, she wrote The Seraphim and Other Poems (1838), expressing Christian sentiments in the form of classical Greek tragedy. Due to her weakening disposition she was forced to spend a year at the sea of Torquay accompanied by her brother Edward, whom she referred to as "Bro." He drowned later that year while sailing at Torquay and Elizabeth returned home emotionally broken, becoming an invalid and a recluse. She spent the next five years in her bedroom at her father's home. She continued writing, however, and in 1844 produced a collection entitled simply Poems. This volume gained the attention of poet Robert Browning, whose work Elizabeth had praised in one of her poems, and he wrote her a letter.
Elizabeth and Robert, who was six years her junior, exchanged 574 letters over the next twenty months. Immortalized in 1930 in the play The Barretts of Wimpole Street, by Rudolf Besier (1878-1942), their romance was bitterly opposed by her father, who did not want any of his children to marry. In 1846, the couple eloped and settled in Florence, Italy, where Elizabeth's health improved and she bore a son, Robert Wideman Browning. Her father never spoke to her again. Elizabeth's Sonnets from the Portuguese, dedicated to her husband and written in secret before her marriage, was published in 1850. Critics generally consider the Sonnets—one of the most widely known collections of love lyrics in English—to be her best work. Admirers have compared her imagery to Shakespeare and her use of the Italian form to Petrarch.
Political and social themes embody Elizabeth's later work. She expressed her intense sympathy for the struggle for the unification of Italy in Casa Guidi Windows (1848-51) and Poems Before Congress (1860). In 1857 Browning published her verse novel Aurora Leigh, which portrays male domination of a woman. In her poetry she also addressed the oppression of the Italians by the Austrians, the child labor mines and mills of England, and slavery, among other social injustices. Although this decreased her popularity, Elizabeth was heard and recognized around Europe.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning died in Florence on June 29, 1861.
A Musical Instrument
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
What was he doing, the great god Pan,
Down in the reeds by the river?
Spreading ruin and scattering ban,
Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,
And breaking the golden lilies afloat
With the dragon-fly on the river.
He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,
From the deep cool bed of the river:
The limpid water turbidly ran,
And the broken lilies a-dying lay,
And the dragon-fly had fled away,
Ere he brought it out of the river.
High on the shore sat the great god Pan
While turbidly flowed the river;
And hacked and hewed as a great god can,
With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,
Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed
To prove it fresh from the river.
He cut it short, did the great god Pan,
(How tall it stood in the river!)
Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man,
Steadily from the outside ring,
And notched the poor dry empty thing
In holes, as he sat by the river.
'This is the way,' laughed the great god Pan
(Laughed while he sat by the river),
'The only way, since gods began
To make sweet music, they could succeed.'
Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,
He blew in power by the river.
Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!
Piercing sweet by the river!
Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!
The sun on the hill forgot to die,
And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly
Came back to dream on the river.
Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh as he sits by the river,
Making a poet out of a man:
The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,—
For the reed which grows nevermore again
As a reed with the reeds in the river.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett, an English poet of the Romantic Movement, was born in 1806 at Coxhoe Hall, Durham, England. The oldest of twelve children, Elizabeth was the first in her family born in England in over two hundred years. For centuries, the Barrett family, who were part Creole, had lived in Jamaica, where they owned sugar plantations and relied on slave labor. Elizabeth's father, Edward Barrett Moulton Barrett, chose to raise his family in England, while his fortune grew in Jamaica. Educated at home, Elizabeth apparently had read passages from Paradise Lost and a number of Shakespearean plays, among other great works, before the age of ten. By her twelfth year she had written her first "epic" poem, which consisted of four books of rhyming couplets. Two years later, Elizabeth developed a lung ailment that plagued her for the rest of her life. Doctors began treating her with morphine, which she would take until her death. While saddling a pony when she was fifteen, Elizabeth also suffered a spinal injury. Despite her ailments, her education continued to flourish. Throughout her teenage years, Elizabeth taught herself Hebrew so that she could read the Old Testament; her interests later turned to Greek studies. Accompanying her appetite for the classics was a passionate enthusiasm for her Christian faith. She became active in the Bible and Missionary Societies of her church.
In 1826 Elizabeth anonymously published her collection An Essay on Mind and Other Poems. Two years later, her mother passed away. The slow abolition of slavery in England and mismanagement of the plantations depleted the Barrett's income, and in 1832, Elizabeth's father sold his rural estate at a public auction. He moved his family to a coastal town and rented cottages for the next three years, before settling permanently in London. While living on the sea coast, Elizabeth published her translation of Prometheus Bound (1833), by the Greek dramatist Aeschylus.
Gaining notoriety for her work in the 1830's, Elizabeth continued to live in her father's London house under his tyrannical rule. He began sending Elizabeth's younger siblings to Jamaica to help with the family's estates. Elizabeth bitterly opposed slavery and did not want her siblings sent away. During this time, she wrote The Seraphim and Other Poems (1838), expressing Christian sentiments in the form of classical Greek tragedy. Due to her weakening disposition she was forced to spend a year at the sea of Torquay accompanied by her brother Edward, whom she referred to as "Bro." He drowned later that year while sailing at Torquay and Elizabeth returned home emotionally broken, becoming an invalid and a recluse. She spent the next five years in her bedroom at her father's home. She continued writing, however, and in 1844 produced a collection entitled simply Poems. This volume gained the attention of poet Robert Browning, whose work Elizabeth had praised in one of her poems, and he wrote her a letter.
Elizabeth and Robert, who was six years her junior, exchanged 574 letters over the next twenty months. Immortalized in 1930 in the play The Barretts of Wimpole Street, by Rudolf Besier (1878-1942), their romance was bitterly opposed by her father, who did not want any of his children to marry. In 1846, the couple eloped and settled in Florence, Italy, where Elizabeth's health improved and she bore a son, Robert Wideman Browning. Her father never spoke to her again. Elizabeth's Sonnets from the Portuguese, dedicated to her husband and written in secret before her marriage, was published in 1850. Critics generally consider the Sonnets—one of the most widely known collections of love lyrics in English—to be her best work. Admirers have compared her imagery to Shakespeare and her use of the Italian form to Petrarch.
Political and social themes embody Elizabeth's later work. She expressed her intense sympathy for the struggle for the unification of Italy in Casa Guidi Windows (1848-51) and Poems Before Congress (1860). In 1857 Browning published her verse novel Aurora Leigh, which portrays male domination of a woman. In her poetry she also addressed the oppression of the Italians by the Austrians, the child labor mines and mills of England, and slavery, among other social injustices. Although this decreased her popularity, Elizabeth was heard and recognized around Europe.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning died in Florence on June 29, 1861.
A Musical Instrument
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
What was he doing, the great god Pan,
Down in the reeds by the river?
Spreading ruin and scattering ban,
Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,
And breaking the golden lilies afloat
With the dragon-fly on the river.
He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,
From the deep cool bed of the river:
The limpid water turbidly ran,
And the broken lilies a-dying lay,
And the dragon-fly had fled away,
Ere he brought it out of the river.
High on the shore sat the great god Pan
While turbidly flowed the river;
And hacked and hewed as a great god can,
With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,
Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed
To prove it fresh from the river.
He cut it short, did the great god Pan,
(How tall it stood in the river!)
Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man,
Steadily from the outside ring,
And notched the poor dry empty thing
In holes, as he sat by the river.
'This is the way,' laughed the great god Pan
(Laughed while he sat by the river),
'The only way, since gods began
To make sweet music, they could succeed.'
Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,
He blew in power by the river.
Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!
Piercing sweet by the river!
Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!
The sun on the hill forgot to die,
And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly
Came back to dream on the river.
Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh as he sits by the river,
Making a poet out of a man:
The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,—
For the reed which grows nevermore again
As a reed with the reeds in the river.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
National Poetry Month Day 3
Yeah, yeah, I know, it's only the second....would you believe there is actually an arcane reason why I chose to start it on the eve thereof....all witchy, don'cha know....anyhoo so you get an extra day of poetry, so deal with it...
Don't I sound almost as surly as today's poet? Really, not quite...? Well, gotta practice my Dylan Thomas brush-offs, then...
Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas was born in Wales in 1914. He was a neurotic, sickly child who shied away from school and preferred reading on his own; he read all of D. H. Lawrence's poetry, impressed by Lawrence's descriptions of a vivid natural world. Fascinated by language, he excelled in English and reading, but neglected other subjects and dropped out of school at sixteen. His first book, Eighteen Poems, was published to great acclaim when he was twenty. Thomas did not sympathize with T. S. Eliot and W. H. Auden's thematic concerns with social and intellectual issues, and his writing, with its intense lyricism and highly charged emotion, has more in common with the Romantic tradition. Thomas first visited America in January 1950, at the age of thirty-five. His reading tours of the United States, which did much to popularize the poetry reading as new medium for the art, are famous and notorious, for Thomas was the archetypal Romantic poet of the popular American imagination: he was flamboyantly theatrical, a heavy drinker, engaged in roaring disputes in public, and read his work aloud with tremendous depth of feeling. He became a legendary figure, both for his work and the boisterousness of his life. Tragically, he died from alcoholism at the age of 39 after a particularly long drinking bout in New York City in 1953.
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
by Dylan Thomas
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.
The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.
The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.
And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.
Don't I sound almost as surly as today's poet? Really, not quite...? Well, gotta practice my Dylan Thomas brush-offs, then...
Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas was born in Wales in 1914. He was a neurotic, sickly child who shied away from school and preferred reading on his own; he read all of D. H. Lawrence's poetry, impressed by Lawrence's descriptions of a vivid natural world. Fascinated by language, he excelled in English and reading, but neglected other subjects and dropped out of school at sixteen. His first book, Eighteen Poems, was published to great acclaim when he was twenty. Thomas did not sympathize with T. S. Eliot and W. H. Auden's thematic concerns with social and intellectual issues, and his writing, with its intense lyricism and highly charged emotion, has more in common with the Romantic tradition. Thomas first visited America in January 1950, at the age of thirty-five. His reading tours of the United States, which did much to popularize the poetry reading as new medium for the art, are famous and notorious, for Thomas was the archetypal Romantic poet of the popular American imagination: he was flamboyantly theatrical, a heavy drinker, engaged in roaring disputes in public, and read his work aloud with tremendous depth of feeling. He became a legendary figure, both for his work and the boisterousness of his life. Tragically, he died from alcoholism at the age of 39 after a particularly long drinking bout in New York City in 1953.
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
by Dylan Thomas
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.
The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.
The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.
And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
National Poetry Month, Day 2
Here's day 2, and another of my favourite poems by a favourite poet. She was unique in her time, and still an icon for women in the arts. Enjoy!
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1830. She attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley, but severe homesickness led her to return home after one year. Throughout her life, she seldom left her house and visitors were scarce. The people with whom she did come in contact, however, had an enormous impact on her thoughts and poetry. She was particularly stirred by the Reverend Charles Wadsworth, whom she met on a trip to Philadelphia. He left for the West Coast shortly after a visit to her home in 1860, and some critics believe his departure gave rise to the heartsick flow of verse from Dickinson in the years that followed. While it is certain that he was an important figure in her life, it is not certain that this was in the capacity of romantic love—she called him "my closest earthly friend." Other possibilities for the unrequited love in Dickinson’s poems include Otis P. Lord, a Massachusetts Supreme Court Judge, and Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield Republican.
By the 1860s, Dickinson lived in almost total physical isolation from the outside world, but actively maintained many correspondences and read widely. She spent a great deal of this time with her family. Her father, Edward Dickinson, was actively involved in state and national politics, serving in Congress for one term. Her brother Austin attended law school and became an attorney, but lived next door once he married Susan Gilbert (one of the speculated—albeit less persuasively—unrequited loves of Emily). Dickinson’s younger sister Lavinia also lived at home for her entire life in similar isolation. Lavinia and Austin were not only family, but intellectual companions during Dickinson’s lifetime.
Dickinson's poetry reflects her loneliness and the speakers of her poems generally live in a state of want, but her poems are also marked by the intimate recollection of inspirational moments which are decidedly life-giving and suggest the possibility of happiness. Her work was heavily influenced by the Metaphysical poets of seventeenth-century England, as well as her reading of the Book of Revelation and her upbringing in a Puritan New England town which encouraged a Calvinist, orthodox, and conservative approach to Christianity.
She admired the poetry of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, as well as John Keats. Though she was dissuaded from reading the verse of her contemporary Walt Whitman by rumor of its disgracefulness, the two poets are now connected by the distinguished place they hold as the founders of a uniquely American poetic voice. While Dickinson was extremely prolific as a poet and regularly enclosed poems in letters to friends, she was not publicly recognized during her lifetime. The first volume of her work was published posthumously in 1890 and the last in 1955. She died in Amherst in 1886.
Upon her death, Dickinson's family discovered 40 handbound volumes of nearly 1800 of her poems, or "fascicles" as they are sometimes called. These booklets were made by folding and sewing five or six sheets of stationery paper and copying what seem to be final versions of poems in an order that many critics believe to be more than chronological. The handwritten poems show a variety of dash-like marks of various sizes and directions (some are even vertical). The poems were initially unbound and published according to the aesthetics of her many early editors, removing her unusual and varied dashes and replacing them with traditional punctuation. The current standard version replaces her dashes with a standard "n-dash," which is a closer typographical approximation of her writing. Furthermore, the original order of the works was not restored until 1981, when Ralph W. Franklin used the physical evidence of the paper itself to restore her order, relying on smudge marks, needle punctures and other clues to reassemble the packets. Since then, many critics have argued for thematic unity in these small collections, believing the ordering of the poems to be more than chronological or convenient. The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson (Belknap Press, 1981) remains the only volume that keeps the order intact.
Hope is the thing with feathers (254)
by Emily Dickinson
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1830. She attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley, but severe homesickness led her to return home after one year. Throughout her life, she seldom left her house and visitors were scarce. The people with whom she did come in contact, however, had an enormous impact on her thoughts and poetry. She was particularly stirred by the Reverend Charles Wadsworth, whom she met on a trip to Philadelphia. He left for the West Coast shortly after a visit to her home in 1860, and some critics believe his departure gave rise to the heartsick flow of verse from Dickinson in the years that followed. While it is certain that he was an important figure in her life, it is not certain that this was in the capacity of romantic love—she called him "my closest earthly friend." Other possibilities for the unrequited love in Dickinson’s poems include Otis P. Lord, a Massachusetts Supreme Court Judge, and Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield Republican.
By the 1860s, Dickinson lived in almost total physical isolation from the outside world, but actively maintained many correspondences and read widely. She spent a great deal of this time with her family. Her father, Edward Dickinson, was actively involved in state and national politics, serving in Congress for one term. Her brother Austin attended law school and became an attorney, but lived next door once he married Susan Gilbert (one of the speculated—albeit less persuasively—unrequited loves of Emily). Dickinson’s younger sister Lavinia also lived at home for her entire life in similar isolation. Lavinia and Austin were not only family, but intellectual companions during Dickinson’s lifetime.
Dickinson's poetry reflects her loneliness and the speakers of her poems generally live in a state of want, but her poems are also marked by the intimate recollection of inspirational moments which are decidedly life-giving and suggest the possibility of happiness. Her work was heavily influenced by the Metaphysical poets of seventeenth-century England, as well as her reading of the Book of Revelation and her upbringing in a Puritan New England town which encouraged a Calvinist, orthodox, and conservative approach to Christianity.
She admired the poetry of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, as well as John Keats. Though she was dissuaded from reading the verse of her contemporary Walt Whitman by rumor of its disgracefulness, the two poets are now connected by the distinguished place they hold as the founders of a uniquely American poetic voice. While Dickinson was extremely prolific as a poet and regularly enclosed poems in letters to friends, she was not publicly recognized during her lifetime. The first volume of her work was published posthumously in 1890 and the last in 1955. She died in Amherst in 1886.
Upon her death, Dickinson's family discovered 40 handbound volumes of nearly 1800 of her poems, or "fascicles" as they are sometimes called. These booklets were made by folding and sewing five or six sheets of stationery paper and copying what seem to be final versions of poems in an order that many critics believe to be more than chronological. The handwritten poems show a variety of dash-like marks of various sizes and directions (some are even vertical). The poems were initially unbound and published according to the aesthetics of her many early editors, removing her unusual and varied dashes and replacing them with traditional punctuation. The current standard version replaces her dashes with a standard "n-dash," which is a closer typographical approximation of her writing. Furthermore, the original order of the works was not restored until 1981, when Ralph W. Franklin used the physical evidence of the paper itself to restore her order, relying on smudge marks, needle punctures and other clues to reassemble the packets. Since then, many critics have argued for thematic unity in these small collections, believing the ordering of the poems to be more than chronological or convenient. The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson (Belknap Press, 1981) remains the only volume that keeps the order intact.
Hope is the thing with feathers (254)
by Emily Dickinson
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Poem A Day - National Poetry Month
Poetry....hmmmm. Seems to have fallen out of favour with many, since there is now a library of several million (at least) tunes to listen to over the Internet...and you all know how I feel about that. But you may not know how I feel about poetry...and so, you are about to find out. April is National Poetry Month, and I have decided, last year, that there is too much wonderful classic poetry languishing between the covers of books no longer opened. So....every day, here in the month of April, I will be sharing poetry with you, both that of my favorite poets, and my own. Every day a new poem to share, and sometimes one I wrote with a bit of an explanation. This is what many of us did before there were online journals and iPods....we wrote, and read aloud or silently, and shared, the distillations of thought, feeling and language known as poems. And I would like, for just one month, to remember myself, and share with you, how rewarding that was. Maybe you'll feel that way too.
Here is the first poem, for the first day of National Poetry Month. I decided to just let a poet's name roll to the top of my mind, and choose one of that poet's works. And the first name that arrived at the top of the witch-ball was one of my favourites, Gerard Manley Hopkins. Here's a short bio, and one of his most famous poems, which I love. I will admit I think a great deal about why I like Hopkins' work so much, since almost all of it is written from the perspective of a Christian priest in love with Jesus. But there is something about his unique rhythms and eye for surprising detail that simply entrances me. And the fact that he was in love for years with another man also makes him far more approachable. So, with no further ado, here is Hopkins, and his possibly most famous poem, The Windhover;
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Born at Stratford, Essex, England, on July 28, 1844, Gerard Manley Hopkins is regarded as one the Victorian era's greatest poets. He was raised in a prosperous and artistic family. He attended Balliol College, Oxford, in 1863, where he studied Classics.
In 1864, Hopkins first read John Henry Newman's Apologia pro via sua, which discussed the author's reasons for converting to Catholicism. Two years later, Newman himself received Hopkins into the Roman Catholic Church. Hopkins soon decided to become a priest himself, and in 1867 he entered a Jesuit novitiate near London. At that time, he vowed to "write no more...unless it were by the wish of my superiors." Hopkins burnt all of the poetry he had written to date and would not write poems again until 1875. He spent nine years in training at various Jesuit houses throughout England. He was ordained in 1877 and for the next seven years carried his duties teaching and preaching in London, Oxford, Liverpool, Glasgow, and Stonyhurst.
In 1875, Hopkins began to write again after a German ship, the Deutschland, was wrecked during a storm at the mouth of the Thames River. Many of the passengers, including five Franciscan nuns, died. Although conventional in theme, Hopkins poem "The Wreck of the Deutschland" introduced what Hopkins called "sprung rhythm." By not limiting the number of "slack" or unaccented syllables, Hopkins allowed for more flexibility in his lines and created new acoustic possibilities. In 1884, he became a professor of Greek at the Royal University College in Dublin. He died five years later from typhoid fever. Although his poems were never published during his lifetime, his friend poet Robert Bridges edited a volume of Hopkins' Poems that first appeared in 1918.
In addition to developing new rhythmic effects, Hopkins was also very interested in ways of rejuvenating poetic language. He regularly placed familiar words into new and surprising contexts. He also often employed compound and unusual word combinations. As he wrote to in a letter to Burns, "No doubt, my poetry errs on the side of oddness…" Twentieth century poets such as W.H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, and Charles Wright have enthusiastically turned to his work for its inventiveness and rich aural patterning.
The Windhover - To Christ Our Lord
I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.
Here is the first poem, for the first day of National Poetry Month. I decided to just let a poet's name roll to the top of my mind, and choose one of that poet's works. And the first name that arrived at the top of the witch-ball was one of my favourites, Gerard Manley Hopkins. Here's a short bio, and one of his most famous poems, which I love. I will admit I think a great deal about why I like Hopkins' work so much, since almost all of it is written from the perspective of a Christian priest in love with Jesus. But there is something about his unique rhythms and eye for surprising detail that simply entrances me. And the fact that he was in love for years with another man also makes him far more approachable. So, with no further ado, here is Hopkins, and his possibly most famous poem, The Windhover;
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Born at Stratford, Essex, England, on July 28, 1844, Gerard Manley Hopkins is regarded as one the Victorian era's greatest poets. He was raised in a prosperous and artistic family. He attended Balliol College, Oxford, in 1863, where he studied Classics.
In 1864, Hopkins first read John Henry Newman's Apologia pro via sua, which discussed the author's reasons for converting to Catholicism. Two years later, Newman himself received Hopkins into the Roman Catholic Church. Hopkins soon decided to become a priest himself, and in 1867 he entered a Jesuit novitiate near London. At that time, he vowed to "write no more...unless it were by the wish of my superiors." Hopkins burnt all of the poetry he had written to date and would not write poems again until 1875. He spent nine years in training at various Jesuit houses throughout England. He was ordained in 1877 and for the next seven years carried his duties teaching and preaching in London, Oxford, Liverpool, Glasgow, and Stonyhurst.
In 1875, Hopkins began to write again after a German ship, the Deutschland, was wrecked during a storm at the mouth of the Thames River. Many of the passengers, including five Franciscan nuns, died. Although conventional in theme, Hopkins poem "The Wreck of the Deutschland" introduced what Hopkins called "sprung rhythm." By not limiting the number of "slack" or unaccented syllables, Hopkins allowed for more flexibility in his lines and created new acoustic possibilities. In 1884, he became a professor of Greek at the Royal University College in Dublin. He died five years later from typhoid fever. Although his poems were never published during his lifetime, his friend poet Robert Bridges edited a volume of Hopkins' Poems that first appeared in 1918.
In addition to developing new rhythmic effects, Hopkins was also very interested in ways of rejuvenating poetic language. He regularly placed familiar words into new and surprising contexts. He also often employed compound and unusual word combinations. As he wrote to in a letter to Burns, "No doubt, my poetry errs on the side of oddness…" Twentieth century poets such as W.H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, and Charles Wright have enthusiastically turned to his work for its inventiveness and rich aural patterning.
The Windhover - To Christ Our Lord
I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
The SLOOOOOOW Blog,,,,
I haven't been over here in a while, because I have been dealing with some physical challenges. But today I am moved to post something that has gotten me thinking and somewhat disconcerted. I just heard, on our local news, that Centerville, a city here in Utah, has decided to use Twitter to disperse local information to city residents. So now the town is tweeting, and other municipalities are expected to follow suit in due course. Tweet, tweet, tweet...pfui.
Aye, there's the rub. Twitter is a way of posting tiny little sentence fragments which are totally incomprehensible to anyone except the person who is being addressed. Reading people's "tweets" on my various blogs is the best way I can think of to entice a headache to come roost between my temples and take up residence for the rest of the day. Twitter is quick and short and immediate. And thus it is the new big thing, and thus it is one more thing turning me into the Crotchety Crone I bill myself as in certain other places.
SLOW THE FUCK DOWN, PEOPLE!!!!
Now we can text while driving while listening to our voicemail on our iPod while looking at the scrolling text of weather and road reports and Amber alerts on the highway monitors, while our PDA sits on the seat next to us scrolling the internet and we have one ear on the music on the radio and half an eye on the drop-down DVD player that has Kung Fu Panda blaring at our overstimulated kids in the back seat, and that doesn't even include the GPS which is talking to us while we skitter down the Internet at 75 MPH. And we wonder why our lives are increasingly shallow, meaningless, useful for nothing more than seeing how much we can get done in the shortest possible amount of time, regardless of the quality of what we are doing.
I am seriously worried here. Twitter is only a symptom, and it isn't the first one. The fact is we are well on the road to obliterating our cultures, our resources, our sanity, our intellect, our environment, and perhaps even our species. And in my opinion a great deal of this is due entirely on our insistence on doing everything less carefully, with more noise, hurry, and attendant chaos and less insistence on slow, quiet, thoughtful words, deeds, and circumstances.
Human beings are mammals, diurnal mammals. Diurnal mammals need to live in their cycles, which include sleep and rest cycles. We need....not just as a lazy convenience, but as an essential of our physical and mental health...the processes which are induced in our minds and bodies by the three gifts of darkness, distance, and silence. We need to think, to take time, to have room to cogitate, to have periods where we are simply sitting and contemplating, with NOTHING on our minds or in our purview except the peace and tranquillity of the quiet mind. Without these things, we fray. We go on rampages. We get sick, and sicker. We get depressed. We pop pills. We drink too much. We abuse each other. And sometimes, we die. And all that is attached to us dies too. And yet we keep on doing it, keep on loading ourselves up with more/faster/shorter/busier/shallower/more frenetic, more careless, more abbreviated, more twittery, more more more....
And in this instance, for sure, less is more. Or, better phrased, more is less. Less thought. Less care. Less time. Less focus. Less inspiration. Less perception. Less life.
For the love of all the gods, people. Slow the fuck down. Slow food. Slow conversations. Slow, leisurely moments of sharing with loved ones. Slow, deliberate and careful cogitation before coming to decisions. Slowly, carefully, deliberately, experience of the immediate moment.
Slow down and enjoy the life you have been given. Too fast and too furious is too damn bad. Why should you twitter your way through life when with some thought, you could sing a full-voiced canticle of joy?
I know you won't listen. You're in a hurry. But that's OK. I won't be following your tweets, either. Because there's no YOU in there any more.
I will be over here under the Bo tree contemplating my navel. Maybe you might like to join me if you ever get the message. And it won't show up on your phone.
Aye, there's the rub. Twitter is a way of posting tiny little sentence fragments which are totally incomprehensible to anyone except the person who is being addressed. Reading people's "tweets" on my various blogs is the best way I can think of to entice a headache to come roost between my temples and take up residence for the rest of the day. Twitter is quick and short and immediate. And thus it is the new big thing, and thus it is one more thing turning me into the Crotchety Crone I bill myself as in certain other places.
SLOW THE FUCK DOWN, PEOPLE!!!!
Now we can text while driving while listening to our voicemail on our iPod while looking at the scrolling text of weather and road reports and Amber alerts on the highway monitors, while our PDA sits on the seat next to us scrolling the internet and we have one ear on the music on the radio and half an eye on the drop-down DVD player that has Kung Fu Panda blaring at our overstimulated kids in the back seat, and that doesn't even include the GPS which is talking to us while we skitter down the Internet at 75 MPH. And we wonder why our lives are increasingly shallow, meaningless, useful for nothing more than seeing how much we can get done in the shortest possible amount of time, regardless of the quality of what we are doing.
I am seriously worried here. Twitter is only a symptom, and it isn't the first one. The fact is we are well on the road to obliterating our cultures, our resources, our sanity, our intellect, our environment, and perhaps even our species. And in my opinion a great deal of this is due entirely on our insistence on doing everything less carefully, with more noise, hurry, and attendant chaos and less insistence on slow, quiet, thoughtful words, deeds, and circumstances.
Human beings are mammals, diurnal mammals. Diurnal mammals need to live in their cycles, which include sleep and rest cycles. We need....not just as a lazy convenience, but as an essential of our physical and mental health...the processes which are induced in our minds and bodies by the three gifts of darkness, distance, and silence. We need to think, to take time, to have room to cogitate, to have periods where we are simply sitting and contemplating, with NOTHING on our minds or in our purview except the peace and tranquillity of the quiet mind. Without these things, we fray. We go on rampages. We get sick, and sicker. We get depressed. We pop pills. We drink too much. We abuse each other. And sometimes, we die. And all that is attached to us dies too. And yet we keep on doing it, keep on loading ourselves up with more/faster/shorter/busier/shallower/more frenetic, more careless, more abbreviated, more twittery, more more more....
And in this instance, for sure, less is more. Or, better phrased, more is less. Less thought. Less care. Less time. Less focus. Less inspiration. Less perception. Less life.
For the love of all the gods, people. Slow the fuck down. Slow food. Slow conversations. Slow, leisurely moments of sharing with loved ones. Slow, deliberate and careful cogitation before coming to decisions. Slowly, carefully, deliberately, experience of the immediate moment.
Slow down and enjoy the life you have been given. Too fast and too furious is too damn bad. Why should you twitter your way through life when with some thought, you could sing a full-voiced canticle of joy?
I know you won't listen. You're in a hurry. But that's OK. I won't be following your tweets, either. Because there's no YOU in there any more.
I will be over here under the Bo tree contemplating my navel. Maybe you might like to join me if you ever get the message. And it won't show up on your phone.
Monday, March 2, 2009
And Yet Once More....
I feel as if this woman, a long-time friend and associate, is reading the inside of my own head and speaking my own thoughts better than I can. So, please, listen. And re-post as far and wide as you like:
Adoption Law in Utah
By Dominique Storni
(permission is granted to repost)
Have you ever had one of those fitful nights where you just couldn’t sleep? I’ve just had one of those nights. I came, I tossed and turned, I blogged.
For some reason, the question of adoption weighs heavily on my mind and heavier on my soul. There are children who want a home. They are tired of being shuffled about from place to place while the adoption system fails to grant them their dream of a loving family.
There is one predominant reason why the government agencies continue to fail to provide these children a permanent home with a loving family. That reason, very simply, is that there is a shortage of available homes and a shortage of legally allowed adoption families.
Easy fix, yeah? Hold that thought.
The Director of the Utah Division of Child and Family Services (DCFS) testified before a House committee (of 1 Democrat and 5 Republicans) that the system is broken. He declared that there are 200 children who need homes and that the state of Utah needs more loving families who are willing and available to adopt.
In spited of this declaration, one Republican member of the committee asked, “If it’s not broken, why fix it?”
Were they even listening? Obviously not.
Experts testified citing reference after reference after reference of studies showing that adoption should be open to all types of families. The only qualifications found relevant were; could they provide a safe home, could they provide a loving home, could they provide a home where the children could grow up and have a chance to learn to be good members of society.
The opposition holds fast to what they call “the traditional family”. They believe the only valid definition of “family” is where a heterosexual man takes a heterosexual woman and heads the family. This myth, at least in Utah, was begun by the leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS or Mormon). That church published “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” and have disseminated it worldwide as if it were canonized scripture. Many refer to it as THE proclamation on the family.
What they won’t tell you is that nearly half of the families who they claim as members of the Mormon Church do not fall within the boundaries of their definition of what constitutes a family.
Many LDS families are headed by single parent homes, lead by either a single mother or a single father. Some families are headed by unmarried couples. Other families in the LDS church are headed by either single or married grandparents or single or married aunts or uncles who have taken guardianship of children left behind from tragic accidents where parents died, or from circumstances of children being removed from unsafe living environments. There are also many family units who are headed by members who identify as Mormon who also identify as either gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender.
These loving groups simply aren’t recognized as families by the Proclamation on the Family.
These family units should be allowed to adopt and love children as much as any other family, however defined.
The opposition to adoption by gay parents presented testimony by representatives of The Sutherland Institute, The Eagle Forum of Utah, and Families Forever. They testified, in their own words, that every credible institution has stated that there is absolutely no difference in children raised in families parented by homosexual or heterosexual parents… “but they’re all wrong”.
Let me repeat that. They testified that every credible agency reports NO difference in children who are reared in gay parented families and straight parented families, “but they’re all wrong”.
They ignore all evidence of psychological research, scientifically based research, and every reputable and respected agency. What do they offer in rebuttal? Documents they themselves wrote. Documents they themselves published. Documents based upon hearsay, innuendo, and made up statements. Documents that every…. again, their words… credible institution, refuses to publish, has continually refuted, and consistently discredits.
To the Utah legislative body, I ask, do you seek the accolades of men who stand at the bully pulpit of self aggrandizement, self righteousness, and unrighteous dominion? Or do you follow the proclamation of Mormon founder and prophet Joseph Smith, “If there is anything lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things”?
The experts are of good report. The experts’ institutions are praiseworthy. If you seek after these things, you would change adoption law to allow these children to be adopted by ANY family that DCFS clears after their very thorough examination, background check, and approval.
It is no secret that there is a very large majority of Utah legislators who are of LDS background, are active in the Mormon church, and who state emphatically that they follow the dictates of their faith and its leaders.
There is a modern Mormon tenet that started, from my best recollection, with N. Eldon Tanner. He was a Mormon apostle and counselor to the Mormon prophet in the 1970’s and early 1980’s. Elder Tanner said, “When the prophet speaks, the thinking has been done.” This philosophy has disseminated throughout they church and into the local Mormon mythos and practice to include any statement by any church leader.
In other words, if a Mormon Church leader tells you something, do not question it. Follow blindly and you will be blessed.
What does this have to do with adoption law and proposed changes to Utah adoption law?
As with the Common Ground Initiatives, the actual anointed leaders from the Headquarters of the LDS church have refused to speak out either in support of or opposition to the proposed changes to adoption law.
Forgive the following lengthy explanation. I hope it will give you glimpse into the psyche of the average Mormon.
Culturally and ecclesiastically in Mormonism, if the leaders at the Church Headquarters do not make a declaration to follow, or declare a modern revelation has been received, then individual congregational leaders are looked upon for leadership.
The leaders in the Utah Legislature, many of whom are (or have been) also ecclesiastical leaders in their respective Mormon geographically defined congregations, are perceived to be speaking for the Mormon church. Two of those perceived Mormon Church leaders are, Senator Chris Buttars and Senate President Michael Waddoups.
Other perceived leaders of the Mormon faithful are Sutherland Institute’s Paul Mero and LaVar Christensen, and Eagle Forum’s Gayle Ruzicka. They have not been officially recognized by the Mormon hierarchy as speaking for them, but the Mormon hierarchy has not refuted their declarations, either.
Without an official statement from the LDS Church, these people are often seen as speaking for them, whether or not they do because they are learned in crafting statements with words that invoke LDS reference, scripture, and practice. They appear just enough to be speaking for the church, without having to actually be officially recognized as speaking for the church.
Their hate speech, fear tactics, and doomsday prophecies scare the followers, who do not or will not investigate for themselves, into advocating for and voting for the blocking of civil rights to groups of American citizens they deem “other” and “unworthy”. These are the same tactics religious leaders have used throughout history to control and subjugate people perceived or defined as “less than”.
Senator Chris Buttars stated, on film after signing a waiver, that gays are like Muslim terrorists and are the biggest threat to the United States of America. He declared proudly that he will do everything in his power to block any civil rights laws that would protect gays as equal citizens.
Senate President Waddoups said that he’s upset Senator Buttars spoke out because they had a closed-doors agreement that he’d shut up. Senator Waddoups also stated that he and the other Republican Senators agree with what Senator Buttars said, but not with how he said it.
If it walks like a duck, and smells like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. Likewise a bigot.
These senators who state openly that they follow the dictates of their faith ask their constituents to blindly follow their lead. They refuse to listen to reputable and credible institutions and expect their minions to do likewise.
Similar expectations of following blindly happened during another period in history. The governmental leaders of that day passed repressive laws that enslaved many citizens. The religious leaders of that day defined who was sinful and who wasn’t by means of ambiguous, arbitrary, and capricious decrees they canonized as scripture.
There was a teacher sent at that time to teach them correct principles, a better way of life, to tell them they needed to forsake their unfair dictatorial ways, and to love their neighbors. This teacher has been a mentor in my life since earliest recollection. His teachings are pure and simple.
For those not familiar with this spiritual path; I speak of the man called Jesus Christ.
We have also oft heard, “Love the sinner; hate the sin”.
I will hate their sins of darkness, of meeting behind closed doors, of secret combinations, of repressing and subjugating “the least of these”, of speaking untruths and bearing false witness, of failing to represent all people, or refusing to listen to expert testimony and instead pay heed to fear mongering lies.
But I will love those sinners at the Utah State Capitol.
I am moved by Spirit to speak unto these so-called leaders who are self proclaimed defenders of their brand of righteousness and who abuse the slogan, “Pro-Family”. To them, I would speak the words of my childhood teacher. I will use the words of He who has visited me many times as I have sought guidance on my path during this sojourn:
1. “Seek not the praises of men“.
2. “They draw near unto me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me“.
3. “I rebuke you and I call you to repentance“.
4. “In as much as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me“.
Adoption Law in Utah
By Dominique Storni
(permission is granted to repost)
Have you ever had one of those fitful nights where you just couldn’t sleep? I’ve just had one of those nights. I came, I tossed and turned, I blogged.
For some reason, the question of adoption weighs heavily on my mind and heavier on my soul. There are children who want a home. They are tired of being shuffled about from place to place while the adoption system fails to grant them their dream of a loving family.
There is one predominant reason why the government agencies continue to fail to provide these children a permanent home with a loving family. That reason, very simply, is that there is a shortage of available homes and a shortage of legally allowed adoption families.
Easy fix, yeah? Hold that thought.
The Director of the Utah Division of Child and Family Services (DCFS) testified before a House committee (of 1 Democrat and 5 Republicans) that the system is broken. He declared that there are 200 children who need homes and that the state of Utah needs more loving families who are willing and available to adopt.
In spited of this declaration, one Republican member of the committee asked, “If it’s not broken, why fix it?”
Were they even listening? Obviously not.
Experts testified citing reference after reference after reference of studies showing that adoption should be open to all types of families. The only qualifications found relevant were; could they provide a safe home, could they provide a loving home, could they provide a home where the children could grow up and have a chance to learn to be good members of society.
The opposition holds fast to what they call “the traditional family”. They believe the only valid definition of “family” is where a heterosexual man takes a heterosexual woman and heads the family. This myth, at least in Utah, was begun by the leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS or Mormon). That church published “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” and have disseminated it worldwide as if it were canonized scripture. Many refer to it as THE proclamation on the family.
What they won’t tell you is that nearly half of the families who they claim as members of the Mormon Church do not fall within the boundaries of their definition of what constitutes a family.
Many LDS families are headed by single parent homes, lead by either a single mother or a single father. Some families are headed by unmarried couples. Other families in the LDS church are headed by either single or married grandparents or single or married aunts or uncles who have taken guardianship of children left behind from tragic accidents where parents died, or from circumstances of children being removed from unsafe living environments. There are also many family units who are headed by members who identify as Mormon who also identify as either gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender.
These loving groups simply aren’t recognized as families by the Proclamation on the Family.
These family units should be allowed to adopt and love children as much as any other family, however defined.
The opposition to adoption by gay parents presented testimony by representatives of The Sutherland Institute, The Eagle Forum of Utah, and Families Forever. They testified, in their own words, that every credible institution has stated that there is absolutely no difference in children raised in families parented by homosexual or heterosexual parents… “but they’re all wrong”.
Let me repeat that. They testified that every credible agency reports NO difference in children who are reared in gay parented families and straight parented families, “but they’re all wrong”.
They ignore all evidence of psychological research, scientifically based research, and every reputable and respected agency. What do they offer in rebuttal? Documents they themselves wrote. Documents they themselves published. Documents based upon hearsay, innuendo, and made up statements. Documents that every…. again, their words… credible institution, refuses to publish, has continually refuted, and consistently discredits.
To the Utah legislative body, I ask, do you seek the accolades of men who stand at the bully pulpit of self aggrandizement, self righteousness, and unrighteous dominion? Or do you follow the proclamation of Mormon founder and prophet Joseph Smith, “If there is anything lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things”?
The experts are of good report. The experts’ institutions are praiseworthy. If you seek after these things, you would change adoption law to allow these children to be adopted by ANY family that DCFS clears after their very thorough examination, background check, and approval.
It is no secret that there is a very large majority of Utah legislators who are of LDS background, are active in the Mormon church, and who state emphatically that they follow the dictates of their faith and its leaders.
There is a modern Mormon tenet that started, from my best recollection, with N. Eldon Tanner. He was a Mormon apostle and counselor to the Mormon prophet in the 1970’s and early 1980’s. Elder Tanner said, “When the prophet speaks, the thinking has been done.” This philosophy has disseminated throughout they church and into the local Mormon mythos and practice to include any statement by any church leader.
In other words, if a Mormon Church leader tells you something, do not question it. Follow blindly and you will be blessed.
What does this have to do with adoption law and proposed changes to Utah adoption law?
As with the Common Ground Initiatives, the actual anointed leaders from the Headquarters of the LDS church have refused to speak out either in support of or opposition to the proposed changes to adoption law.
Forgive the following lengthy explanation. I hope it will give you glimpse into the psyche of the average Mormon.
Culturally and ecclesiastically in Mormonism, if the leaders at the Church Headquarters do not make a declaration to follow, or declare a modern revelation has been received, then individual congregational leaders are looked upon for leadership.
The leaders in the Utah Legislature, many of whom are (or have been) also ecclesiastical leaders in their respective Mormon geographically defined congregations, are perceived to be speaking for the Mormon church. Two of those perceived Mormon Church leaders are, Senator Chris Buttars and Senate President Michael Waddoups.
Other perceived leaders of the Mormon faithful are Sutherland Institute’s Paul Mero and LaVar Christensen, and Eagle Forum’s Gayle Ruzicka. They have not been officially recognized by the Mormon hierarchy as speaking for them, but the Mormon hierarchy has not refuted their declarations, either.
Without an official statement from the LDS Church, these people are often seen as speaking for them, whether or not they do because they are learned in crafting statements with words that invoke LDS reference, scripture, and practice. They appear just enough to be speaking for the church, without having to actually be officially recognized as speaking for the church.
Their hate speech, fear tactics, and doomsday prophecies scare the followers, who do not or will not investigate for themselves, into advocating for and voting for the blocking of civil rights to groups of American citizens they deem “other” and “unworthy”. These are the same tactics religious leaders have used throughout history to control and subjugate people perceived or defined as “less than”.
Senator Chris Buttars stated, on film after signing a waiver, that gays are like Muslim terrorists and are the biggest threat to the United States of America. He declared proudly that he will do everything in his power to block any civil rights laws that would protect gays as equal citizens.
Senate President Waddoups said that he’s upset Senator Buttars spoke out because they had a closed-doors agreement that he’d shut up. Senator Waddoups also stated that he and the other Republican Senators agree with what Senator Buttars said, but not with how he said it.
If it walks like a duck, and smells like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. Likewise a bigot.
These senators who state openly that they follow the dictates of their faith ask their constituents to blindly follow their lead. They refuse to listen to reputable and credible institutions and expect their minions to do likewise.
Similar expectations of following blindly happened during another period in history. The governmental leaders of that day passed repressive laws that enslaved many citizens. The religious leaders of that day defined who was sinful and who wasn’t by means of ambiguous, arbitrary, and capricious decrees they canonized as scripture.
There was a teacher sent at that time to teach them correct principles, a better way of life, to tell them they needed to forsake their unfair dictatorial ways, and to love their neighbors. This teacher has been a mentor in my life since earliest recollection. His teachings are pure and simple.
For those not familiar with this spiritual path; I speak of the man called Jesus Christ.
We have also oft heard, “Love the sinner; hate the sin”.
I will hate their sins of darkness, of meeting behind closed doors, of secret combinations, of repressing and subjugating “the least of these”, of speaking untruths and bearing false witness, of failing to represent all people, or refusing to listen to expert testimony and instead pay heed to fear mongering lies.
But I will love those sinners at the Utah State Capitol.
I am moved by Spirit to speak unto these so-called leaders who are self proclaimed defenders of their brand of righteousness and who abuse the slogan, “Pro-Family”. To them, I would speak the words of my childhood teacher. I will use the words of He who has visited me many times as I have sought guidance on my path during this sojourn:
1. “Seek not the praises of men“.
2. “They draw near unto me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me“.
3. “I rebuke you and I call you to repentance“.
4. “In as much as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me“.
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