“She went to girls’ schools and was taught French, and history, and geography, and music, and painting, the usual things that a… middle class? You might say middle class. She was really more of the sort of upper yeoman peasant class. Her father was, at any rate.”
The quotation refers to Mary Anne Evans (1819-80), aka George Eliot, and is from the BBC4 podcast titled “Middlemarch” of April 19, 2018. The comment is by Rosemary Ashton, Emeritus Quain Professor of English Language and Literature at University College, London. (Should that be “Emerita Quain Profesoress”?)
I assume “Scarborough Fair” is an old melody, though it’s sometimes hard to distinguish what’s echt and what’s ersatz in the matter of “traditional” airs. Simon and Garfunkle did a defining version of the song for my generation. I like to hum the melody and chord it on guitar, but I’ve contrived words to it that are closer to my own experience.
They evoke my grandmother’s tales of the rigors and sweetness of ranch life. She was a tough, sentimental woman with a knack for storytelling. Ranching between the Wars in Chihuahuan Desert country of a county bigger than Connecticut was no picnic. A thousand-and-one mishaps could befall a lone rancher riding fence (looking for breaches), checking watering holes, locating strays, etc.
Grandmother had responded to a number of crises in her day. Her dread of a horse returning riderless to the house impressed me. Mounted or not, a seasoned work horse would make its way back to the barn from even the furthest pasture, which was by way of being a distress call of its own devising, triggering an anxious search for the rider. Old Blue was the tallest peak on the family ranch in the Glass Mountains.
***
Are You Riding the Strawberry Roan? (To the tune of “Scarborough Fair”)
Are you riding the strawberry roan? Grass is green at the foot of Old Blue. If you are tired, dear, give her some rein, Old roan horse, she’ll know what to do.
Fence mending’s done and the shadows are long, Creek’s running fresh at the foot of Old Blue. Tarry a spell there in mourning dove song, A sip of sweet water is nought but her due.
(Instrumental bridge — where I pick-and-canoodle something resembling an instrumental solo)
The ranchwoman gazes where last she did see Her husband amounted set out for Old Blue: Dear, if you’re not able to come home to me, The old roan horse, she’ll know what to do.
My granddad put reverse English on his curses with statements such as: The blessèd cinch strap on this saddle is busted! And my uncle by marriage had the same name as a legendary western outlaw, but shared no other trait with that scoundrel. “Scoundrel,” in fact, was his strongest insult, except when compounded in a rare extremity of exasperation into “confounded scoundrel” with stress on the CON-.
The family trivia has little relevance except to point out that if Mr. Trump swore like a West Texas rancher, his repertory could include invective such as:
That blessèd Gavin Newsom, the confounded scoundrel who governs California!
Mr. Trump dictates revelation for his irrupting dispensation. There are impromptu connections one makes in the reading life that tease, entangle, invigorate, sustain. Mitch Teemley recently republished his open letter to Donald Trump from January 20, 2017. Luminous, aspirational, it’s well worth reading. (After Bishop Budde exhorted Trump to “have mercy” in a prayer service at the National Cathedral, he called her a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater” in a social media post. Sic transit pietas.)
Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.
The passage, James 1:12, dates from 145 AD. It brought to mind verses written by a Jewish Arab* who lived some 400 years later in pre-Islamic times:
1 ‘iḏā-l-mar’(u) lam yadnas min(a)-l-lu’m(i) ^irḏ(u)-hu | fa-kullu ridā’(in) yartadī-hi jamīl(u) When a man’s reputation has not been sullied by baseness, then every cloak he puts on is beautiful. 2 wa-‘in huwa lam yaḥmil ^alā-n-nafs(i) ḍaim(a)-ha | fa-laisa ‘ilā ḥusn(i)-ṯ-ṯanā’(i) sabīl(u) And if he has not made himself endure injustice, then there is not (for him) a path to the beauty of praise.
Stature conveyed through tribulation suffered and surmounted must have been a topos common to the wisdom traditions of many ancient cultures. What appeals to me as a student of one of the Semitic languages (Arabic) is that the writings represent two of three religions originating in the Middle East (Christianity and Judaism), and one of the writings is voiced in the scriptural language of the third (Islam) by a pagan, i.e., one who lived in what Arabic calls the jāhilīya, or “age of ignorance.”
“If we can focus on that which is beautiful and good and true, we will ride through these four years and find our purpose.”
Notes ā ī ū ẗ ṯ ḥ ẖ ḏ š ṣ ḍ ṭ ẓ ḡ *The transliteration and translations are mine, from Arberry’s Arabic text. ”AL-SAMAU’AL ibn Gharīd ibn ‘Adiyā’ flourished in the middle of the sixth century A.D. Said to be a member of a Jewish Arab tribe, he dwelt in the fortress of al-Ablaq near Taimā’ [in modern day Saudi Arabia] where he is reported to have sheltered the poet Imra’ al-Qais fleeing before King al-Mundhir of al-Hīra. His name was proverbial for fidelity.” (“Biographical Notes,” A.J. Arberry, Arabic Poetry:A Primer for Students, Cambridge University Press, 1965) Literal: 1 when the man – was not sullied by the baseness his reputation – then every cloak he puts it on – beautiful 2 and if he did not carry upon the soul its injustice – then there is not to the beauty of the praise a path From Lane’s Lexicon: “[F]or one says, فُلَانٌ لَا يَــحْمِلُ الضَّيْمَ, i. e. (assumed tropical:) such a one refuses to bear, or submit to, and repels from himself, injury. حَمَلَ عَليْهِ [as syn. with حَمَّلَــهُ]: see 2, in three places. B16: حَمَلَ عَلَى دَابَّتِهِ فَوْقَ طَاقَتِهَا فِى السَّيْرِ (assumed tropical:) [He tasked his beast beyond its power in journeying, or marching, or in respect of pace]. (S in art. جهد.) and حَمَلَ عَلَى نَفْسِهِ فِى السَّيْرِ (assumed tropical:) He jaded, or fatigued, himself, or tasked himself beyond his power, in journeying, or marching. (S, TA.)”
Photo illustration by Alex Merto. [New York Times caption and illustration]
There was talk of expanding the welfare stare, certainly, but Sanders’s Medicare for All was not at the heart of these fights, nor was rolling back globalization, as with the 1999 protests against the World Trade Organization.
(New York Times, January 25, 2025)
It may have been fixed by the time you follow the link! Hang in there, Grey Lady, we need you more than ever.
Finally, the rich are going to get a fair shake in this country. Hail, lord of hosts!
From somewhere near the Gulf of America, wishing you a nice day.
Yours in freezing…
PS: There are some rivers in Texas that could do with good English names, starting with the Rio Grande, the Colorado, the Brazos, the Guadalupe, the San Antonio, the Navidad, the Lavaca, the Pedernales, the San Marcos, the Blanco, etc.
In previous posts, I’ve mentioned that I don’t belong to any religion.
(Friedrich Zettl)
I always read Mr. Zettl’s blog, Zettl Fine Arts, with great interest and profit, no less his latest entry. It takes no more than his first few words to set me thinking. I, too, can affirm that I don’t belong to any religion. I know that “belonging” to a religion is just a phrase, and I use it like many. It occurs to me, however, in an idealistic way, that religion might fare better were it conceived as belonging to the believer, and not vice versa. An institution presuming to own its members looms like an ecclesiastical deep state codifying and enforcing a steep corpus of regulations governing the ideation and actions of the faithful. Subscribe, profess, conform, or else. Is that a winning narrative?
I grew up with this doxology: Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end, amen, amen. The jingle is stuck in my head’s deep lore like a Brylcreem ad. Make of it what you will. An early brahmin of the Church, I’m not sure who, said this: “Truth is sought by philosophy, found by theology, and possessed by religion.” Cogito, ergo I think not, sir.
Someone says, “You’re religious underneath the brave denials because you jabber about it like this.” No, I’m not. And yes, I know. Spirituality teases me like poetry does. I’m a practitioner of neither in a formal way, but I consume them, and both are vitally irritating. My stake in poetry is increasingly assertive ever since I’ve presumed, as a reader, to own the author’s poem, not be owned by it, thus making of it what I will, or can. Religion and poems are not riddles that have a single meaning specified by their creators. They’re questions seeking better questions.
The tiny speaker in Megan Denton’s “A Girl and Her Fireplace” (Poetry, December 2024) is off to a shaky start.
Born on a new moon, one minute after my sister and one pound less, my ribcage was full
of roosting songbirds and hers a steady drum, and when all three pounds of me came earthside I heard God say,
everyone you love lives here.[…]
I was let loose in a world too cruel for me, […]
Wee unchurched mountain girl,
planting jelly beans in the forest […]
At thirty-four and many years sick, sometimes I still think
of all the people throwing coins into fountains. […]
What the superficially puny being possessed of indomitable spunk is grateful for is solitude and self-reliance:
[…] I thank every tipped domino that led me here: my first winter
completely alone, save for the glowworm orange of my hearth. […]
She confesses her terror, and admits to sitting a little too close to the sustaining warmth.
[…] Forgive me. I am at the doorway of the firebox, feeding all my prayers to the flame.
Coins into fountains, prayers into flame: I read the two images as related, expressing a longing for prolonged joy fiercely voiced from within a heightened awareness of contingency. Denton’s second poem, “Ars Poetica with Invocation,” meshes tightly with “A Girl and Her Fireplace.” Here’s how it starts:
Which way to the monster cage? I am in my god body now—
in my sandy foxhole sat backwards in a chair.
The speaker says she had “wintered in a lighthouse not far from here” (callback to that firebox above). Her imagination is her monastery:
[…] My little monk feet clack about my mugwort garden: […]
Push against me as hard as you can. Still I will go on swinging my war ax,
despite my stringbean heart. All the queen’s horses
and all the queen’s men could not stop the scritch of my pen.
Next to the steel resolve of that stringbean heart, set down in lapidary words, autocracies don’t stand a chance. No wonder they crucify their poets. After the musky putins have ridden their cock-rockets off to Banbury Cross or wherever (and God speed), those with the mountain girl’s mettle will be around to model enduring valor. Remember how Samau’al burns the woman from a hostile tribe who sneers at the tiny number of his cohort on the battlefield:
tu^ayyir(u)-nā ‘an-nā qalīl(un) ^adīd(u)-nā | fa-qult(u) la-hā ‘inna-l-kirām(a) qalīl(u)* She shrieks disdain at us for being so few in number. I said to her, “So true, madame. The noble are not plentiful.”
Note *As-Samau’al’s poem is from the 6th century A.D. The Arabic text I’ve transliterated is from A.J. Arberry, Arabic Poetry: A Primer for Students, Cambridge University Press, 1965. The translation is mine.
First responders plunge into scenarios that need to be made sense of quickly. I call myself a first responder to poetry, and not a critic, but the poetry I read is published, so at least one other reader more qualified than I am has responded to it. I cling to the trope of first responder, nevertheless, because it excuses my ill-thought-out comments. A reader of novels can knock out 50 pages at a sitting, where a single poem can take all day if you let it. Treated as an emergency, perhaps an hour.
Is it fair to cite pieces of poems? Poetry magazine does so routinely on its back cover, so yes. Context aside, many poems have phrases or images which draw the reader to them. Why not notice those moving parts outright? Consider these excerpts from Poetry, January-February 2025.
I feared her blotchy wrath // that sometimes showed itself / and others / slept like something // without a hippocampus. (“Mother’s Mother,” Khari Dawson)
They will never know / this zubaan of ours, / so let me put it this way: / in every version of this story, / I will wipe your spilt cereal milk / off the floor before any grown-up / can scream. (“Appi’s Lullaby,” Sarah Aziz. Note: I think “zubaan” here is Urdu for “tongue,” meaning “language.”)
The first time / I tell someone I’ve thought about / ending it // is right after the first time / someone tells me they’ve thought about / ending it // and here we are suddenly feeling hopeful. (“Dispatch from the Edge of the Universe,” Lesley Younge)
do // hold your untethered thoughts / unspoken and unheard. (“boy laughs at my period-stained skirt,” Dianna Vega)
and the stars came out, and I watched, just beyond the path, / closing one eye and then the other, volleying that ancient light / between hemispheres. (“Where the Sky Is,” Anya Johnson)
But later, alone in my room, / true love bloomed like Narcissus flowers once / on the pool of blue carpet, lips parting / in practiced prayer, petal soft and striving / stamen against the cool mirror (“First,” Kate Hubbard)
After dinner, I wash the dishes, / look out the window. / I say / to the world: Captivate me. (“Ennui When Watching the Ocean,” Yetta Rose Stein)
Somewhat related: I’ve heard that Emily Dickinson never used the word “lyric” in reference to the verses she wrote (some eighteen-hundred of them). She called them her “thoughts.”
The two male scholars urgently want to talk about what’s dealt with in the Kama Sutra that’s not, um, you know, the sex part.
BBC4 moderator Melvyn Bragg presses them, saying the sex part is why the book’s famous in the Western World. Could they kindly talk a little about it for the purposes of this British podcast?
His entreaties founder on consternation and deflection. They insist the ancient masterpiece isn’t really about sex.
The female scholar masters the situation, stepping up with cool fluency to elucidate the erotic content of the Kama Sutra. For tapping the aquifer whence intimacy flows, she is up to snuff.
Within moments of writing the above, I read “Beach” by Maeve Marien-McManus (Poetry, January-February 2025). In this elliptic lyric a young woman connects with her capacity for sending back the male gaze reconfigured. She’s reached the aquifer, and then some, is the feeling it gives me.
Beach by Maeve Marien-McManus
to me I bend their gaze & I break it. For the women on the shore I break it.
For once my young body stronger, treading deep water, men’s water. surrounded.
the men call & at distance, I turn. Our ocean.
I stare back.
My animal stillness snaps their tautness a claim. For once, bender not bended.
they shrink away. splash muttering away power, power, now I own three gazes and now I know, now I know. Inside I’m just power.
EthicalDative 
Cussing with Class
“Governor Newscum.”
Tut tut, Sir, it’s a scruffy taunt.
My granddad put reverse English on his curses with statements such as: The blessèd cinch strap on this saddle is busted! And my uncle by marriage had the same name as a legendary western outlaw, but shared no other trait with that scoundrel. “Scoundrel,” in fact, was his strongest insult, except when compounded in a rare extremity of exasperation into “confounded scoundrel” with stress on the CON-.
The family trivia has little relevance except to point out that if Mr. Trump swore like a West Texas rancher, his repertory could include invective such as:
That blessèd Gavin Newsom, the confounded scoundrel who governs California!
Doesn’t that sound more presidential?
(c) 2025 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved