"Happy" Saint Patrick's Day ☘️
Dear ones,
This is an uncertain and difficult time to be sure, or perhaps it is only a more clearly uncertain and difficult time than we are wont to face, but as always, there is beauty and truth and goodness in the face of it. To whit: where some schools sent students home immediately, SPU heroically made a way for those who need it to stay, eat, and keep learning. I’ve seen more churches come to creative rescue, more neighbors singing from their balconies, more restaurants creatively adapting to the needs of their communities than I was quite prepared for. A Lenten fast cast suddenly and forcefully worldwide has become, that is, an occasion for a kind of miracle.
And amidst a great deal that is dim, a couple of lights:
The Elegy Beta got its first review today! The fine folks over at Tweetspeak Poetry have published a (mostly-informative) mini-review that calls reading the book:
an almost overwhelming experience....engaging with faith, beauty, and suffering.
That’s pretty much how I find it. Much of the collection I can get my head around, but when I try to read straight through the Elegies, I feel emotionally spent pretty quickly. I wonder if this will ever change for me.
The second nice thing was that The Gospel Coalition sent out an email blast calling guess who
one of today’s most exciting Christian poets
…which, you know, I found pretty exciting.
First Sales
Although my book release party and all subsequent readings have been canceled, it looks like The Elegy Beta has sold better in its first week than Phases did in its first two months! People eventually caught on to Phases when reviews started appearing, but this early momentum is pretty pleasing, all things considered.
Reading
- On the Road with St. Augustine by James K.A.Smith
- Dunce by Mary Ruefle
Listening
- “Lost Voices of the Hagia Sophia” by Capella Romana, which I learned about from this amazing radio story. Listen to that balloon!
Oddments
- This fellow made a list of the “100 Greatest Christian Albums of the 1990’s,” and while the order is Saturnine, and there’s much left out, reading it was terrific fun for me. #nostalgia
- We are getting a new colleague in the English department AND a new Provost! #shakeup
That’s it for now. Try to take care of each other, to the extent that that’s possible. Write long letters. Read poetry books you’ve always wondered at. Stop this elbow-bumping nonsense and let’s revive the courteous 18th-century bow.
