Untitled - work in progress.

John Robert Lee

[untitled]

1.

We step to eternity from now

the instant at our feet

the present intersection

of irrevocable hours —

what heart’s door slams shut?

what terrible holy turns inside out?

what mirror fixes this corrupt?

what unbeing dislocates the shrieking ghost?

Ah, but blessèd saint,

clocks stilled and maps scrolled —

what high gates dissolve?

what holy tender comes?

what grace returns what grace?

what glory now unfolds within this earth?

2.

They

“They all lie in wait for blood;

Every man hunts his brother with a net.” – Micah7:2

It’s generosity that’s not there.

They don’t give, they distrust the open hand.

Their own worth is hidden from them.

Those bodies breed monster hearts.

They don’t know their own beauty.

They don’t trust love.

They don’t love.

They don’t.

They.

3.

Camilo and me

cavorting in the shadows’

imagination

of their framed portraits

of Camilo and me, at

the surf-breaking end

of Ocean Spray, like

kindred spirits of shadows

of clouds on reef pools.

C.S. Lewis on The Hobbit

C. S. Lewis Reviews The Hobbit, 1937

November 19, 2013 | by C.S. Lewis

A world for children: J. R. R. Tolkien,

The Hobbit: or There and Back Again

(London: Allen and Unwin, 1937)

The publishers claim that The Hobbit, though very unlike Alice, resembles it in being the work of a professor at play. A more important truth is that both belong to a very small class of books which have nothing in common save that each admits us to a world of its own—a world that seems to have been going on long before we stumbled into it but which, once found by the right reader, becomes indispensable to him. Its place is with Alice, Flatland, Phantastes, The Wind in the Willows. [1]
To define the world of The Hobbit is, of course, impossible, because it is new. You cannot anticipate it before you go there, as you cannot forget it once you have gone. The author’s admirable illustrations and maps of Mirkwood and Goblingate and Esgaroth give one an inkling—and so do the names of the dwarf and dragon that catch our eyes as we first ruffle the pages. But there are dwarfs and dwarfs, and no common recipe for children’s stories will give you creatures so rooted in their own soil and history as those of Professor Tolkien—who obviously knows much more about them than he needs for this tale. Still less will the common recipe prepare us for the curious shift from the matter-of-fact beginnings of his story (“hobbits are small people, smaller than dwarfs—and they have no beards—but very much larger than Lilliputians”) [2] to the saga-like tone of the later chapters (“It is in my mind to ask what share of their inheritance you would have paid to our kindred had you found the hoard unguarded and us slain”). [3] You must read for yourself to find out how inevitable the change is and how it keeps pace with the hero’s journey. Though all is marvellous, nothing is arbitrary: all the inhabitants of Wilderland seem to have the same unquestionable right to their existence as those of our own world, though the fortunate child who meets them will have no notion—and his unlearned elders not much more—of the deep sources in our blood and tradition from which they spring.
For it must be understood that this is a children’s book only in the sense that the first of many readings can be undertaken in the nursery. Alice is read gravely by children and with laughter by grown ups; The Hobbit, on the other hand, will be funnier to its youngest readers, and only years later, at a tenth or a twentieth reading, will they begin to realise what deft scholarship and profound reflection have gone to make everything in it so ripe, so friendly, and in its own way so true. Prediction is dangerous: but The Hobbit may well prove a classic.

Review published in the Times Literary Supplement (2 October 1937), 714.

1. Flatland (1884) is by Edwin A. Abbott, Phantastes by George MacDonald (1858).
2. The Hobbit: or There and Back Again (1937), chapter 1.
3. Ibid., chapter 15.
Image and Imagination: Essays and Reviews, by C. S. Lewis, edited by Walter Hooper. Copyright © 2013 C. S. Lewis Pte Ltd. Reprinted with the permission of Cambridge University Press.
This article originally appeared in the Times Literary Supplement. Click here to read it on the TLS site.

C. K. Williams

Award-winning poet C.K. Williams dies at 78

C.K. Williams, who was the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award, among other commendations, died Sunday at age 78.
(Mary Cross / Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

By Carolyn Kellogg contact the reporter

When C.K. Williams died Sunday at age 78, he was still a working poet. His next collection, "Selected Later Poems," will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on Tuesday.
Williams was widely respected; in 2005, he was awarded the coveted $100,000 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. He won the National Book Award in poetry in 2003 for "The Singing," the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for "Repair" in 2000, and the National Book Critics Circle award in poetry in 1987 for "Flesh and Blood." He was also a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts grant.

Williams was born into a working-class family in Newark, N.J., in 1936; he grew to 6-foot-5 and found his high school passions were "girls and basketball." He tried playing basketball at Bucknell for a year before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania. He began publishing poetry in the early 1960s, married and then divorced, and began teaching in the 1970s.
"Poetry didn't find me, in the cradle or anywhere near it," he once explained. "I seemed to have started writing poetry before I'd read any."

Williams was known for his long lines that were both moving and accessible. "There's nobody like him in the language," Jonathan Galassi, Williams' editor and now head of Farrar, Straus and Giroux told the Newark Star-Ledger in 2000. "He writes a very long line that is his own creation. He tries to incorporate as much of what we're really thinking when we say or do something. He has a strong analytic mind that can dissect powerful emotions that he unfolds in layers. All in all, his poetry is unique."
He served as a chancellor of the American Academy of Poets and for many years taught at Princeton University. He and his second wife had split their time between Princeton and her home country, France.
He was also the author of a memoir, "Misgivings," a book about Walt Whitman, translations of "The Bacchae" and Sophocles, and the essay collections "Poetry and Consciousness" and "In Time."
"There is despair contemplating humanity, if you're looking at all the violence and unnecessary death. Then, you see that human being after human being is living life. And there is joy in it, because in existence there is also great joy. If you spend your whole life being depressed about life, you're wasting it," he told the Los Angeles Times in 2010. "That's the wisdom of my old age."
Twitter: @paperhaus
Copyright © 2015, Los Angeles Times

The suffering church of Syria

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/eidos/2015/09/stupid-statements-and-dying-christians-which-matters-most/

Stupid Statements and Dying Christians: which matters most?

September 21, 2015 by John Mark N. Reynolds

Today in Church we learned that the oldest Christian diocese in the world is in serious peril. A Christian leader got a message out to us saying that “almost all hope” is gone. ISIS confronts his community on three sides and his food kitchen, feeding people of every faith, faces extinction. This week, unless something is done, horror may fall on good people.
My newsfeed says a Republican candidate said something about Islam and the Presidency.
Since the GOP fellow is a decent man and what he said was clumsy and wrong, my guess is the media will hound him into an apology. He should apologize. We will feel better, because a hurt will have been healed and a harm averted to some future candidate for President. This is a problem created on American media with the help of American media by a media driven personality and so American media finds it infinitely more interesting than dead Middle Eastern Christians.
After all, one off the mark comment about a hypothetical Islamic candidate is much easier to deal with than the death of one of the oldest Christian communities in the world. Christians in Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon face the worst situation since the Middle Ages. They are being displaced, robbed, raped, and murdered.
But a Republican candidate said a thing that nobody should defend about a candidate who does not exist.
The lives of the Christians in Syria, my community, are in the hands of God. The only government leader acting is Vladimir Putin. If some of the most ancient Christian churches, schools, monasteries, and orphanages survive, then it will be because a former KGB colonel is acting on his Machiavellian interests. Meanwhile, in the US, we shall make sure that a boy who made a clock some chuckle heads thought was a bomb is honored at the White House.
I am glad for the boy and sorry about the foolish thing the candidate said, but only in the spare moment when I can stop mourning for the murder of Christians in Syria. There is no easy American partisan villain (Bush! Obama! Both?) or “good guys” to support, so innocents must die, priceless art is destroyed, and history is lost. Dead Christians are less interesting than the foolish statements of American politicians.
We could stop the dying. Client states could intervene. The Turks do nothing. The House of Saud does evil. Jordan does nothing. Christians keep dying.
But at least teachers will think twice about ethnic stereotyping regarding school projects . . . and political candidates will remember there is no religious test for office under our Constitution. These are good things. We can feel good about those good things. Perhaps, we will feel less good about thousands butchered with weapons we provided to untrustworthy allies while we did nothing. Perhaps we will if we ever learn of the horrors in between our just criticism of the stupid things Americans do. We are victims of micro-aggressions and we are not going to sit idly by and let this happen.
And we should not. We can condemn the candidate and the school of the clock-making lad and do something in Syria, but the first two are easy and the third hard. So my news feed is flooded by attacks on the candidate and treats for the clock-maker and hardly a word about my dying church.
Meanwhile, American guns in the hands of men who often were “on our side” against the Syrian regime will keep killing Christians in Syria. This is an inconvenient fact, far away, where reporting would put news crews in danger. Better run another story on polls: media news created by media to be reported by media.
Dead Christians in Syria are much harder to film. Macro-aggression is hard. The macro-aggressors will not be threatened by media condemnation and have no interest in being interviewd in our studios, so why should our media care? A Church in peril this week requires no action because it is not in a major American media market. Maybe some candidate will not correct the lunatic ravings of a questioner at this rally? There is a story.
God help us. God save the Church of Syria, my brothers and sisters, and forgive our monstrous sensitivity to local slights and inhuman insensitivity to international genocide.

John Robert Lee - publications

Publications by John Robert Lee

After Gary Butte: Poems. Castries: Mahanaim, 2015.

Co-Editor, Sent Lisi: Poems and Art of Saint Lucia. With Kendel Hippolyte, Jane King,

Vladimir Lucien. Castries: Cultural Development Foundation, 2014. 138p. ill. 

Bibliography of St. Lucian Creative writing 1948-2013. Mahanaim; CDF, 2013;

E Book by Authorhouse, 2013.

Sighting and other poems of faith – St. Lucian edition, Mahanaim Publishing, 2013.

Sighting and other poems of faith – limited international edition, XLibris, 2013. With E Book.

Elemental: new and selected poems. Peepal Tree Press, Leeds, UK, (2008)

Canticles (2007) – poems and photographs by the author.

Saint Lucian Literature and Theatre: an Anthology of reviews. Compiled and edited

by John Robert Lee and Kendel Hippolyte. (2006)

Line: for Derek Walcott at 75 (2005)

Roseau Valley and other poems for Brother George Odlum - compiler and editor.

(2003) [Fifty years of St. Lucian poems and art].

Artefacts : collected poems (2000)

Translations : new and selected poems (1993)

Clearing ground : poems (1991)

Saint Lucian : selected poems 1967-1987 (1988)

Possessions (1984)

The Prodigal (1983)

Dread Season (1978)

Vocation & other poems (1975)

Poems and short stories have appeared in various anthologies, including:

An anthology of African and Caribbean writing in English. Heinemann, 1982.

Callaloo, Volume 28, Number 1 (Winter 2005)

Caribbean New Wave : contemporary short stories. Heinemann, 1990.

Caribbean poetry now. Hodder & Stoughton, 1992, 1984.

Confluence : nine St. Lucian poets. Castries, 1988.

Critical strategies for academic thinking and writing : a text and reader. 2^nd Ed. St.

Martin’s Press, 1993.

Crossing Water : contemporary poetry of the English-speaking Caribbean. The

Greenfield Review Press, 1992.

The Faber Book of Contemporary Caribbean Short Stories. Faber, 1990.

Facing the sea. Heinemann, 1986.

The Heinemann Book of Caribbean Poetry. Heinemann, 1992.

The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse. Oxford, 2005.

The Penguin Book of Caribbean Verse in English. Penguin, 1986.

Poetry Wales Vol. 38 no.4 (Spring 2003).

Review 81: Literature and Arts of the Americas Vol. 43 No. 2 (November 2010).

Small Axe #13, 2003.

The Sun’s Eye. New Ed. Longman Caribbean, 1989.

Time for poetry. Nelson Caribbean, 1988.

Voiceprint : an anthology of oral and related poetry from the Caribbean. Longman, 1989.

West Indian poetry : an anthology for schools. 2^nd Ed. Longman, 1989.

World Poetry Portfolio #58: John Robert Lee. Edited by Sudeep Sen. Molossus, July 27^th

2013.

Interviews

in Talk yuh talk: interviews with Anglophone Caribbean poets. Ed. By Kwame Dawes.

University Press of Virginia, 2001.

“On Life, Words and Faith.” By Dr. Leanne Haynes. ARC Online magazine, June 10^th

2013.

“Pointed in the right direction: a conversation with John Robert Lee.” By Ania Kowalik.

Dépassements online blog. October 17^th 2013.

Foreign language : Karibische Erkundungen [Anthology of Caribbean Fiction]. Berlin :

Verlag, Volk & Welt, 1996.

Revue Noir. Paris (June-August 1993).

Compact Disc : Viewfinder Special. English Language teaching. Munchen, Germany :

 Langenscheidt-Longman, 1999.

Tribute to the Laureates : Nobel Laureate Week 2000. Castries : produced by J.R.Lee

 and Ronald ‘Boo’ Hinkson. 2000.

Poems, articles, reviews, interviews, columns have appeared in various journals, newspapers and websites, including:

AGENDA, ARTS ETC (Barbados), BIM (Barbados), CARIBBEAN QUARTERLY (Jamaica), THE NEW VOICES (Trinidad & Tobago), SAVACOU (Jamaica/UK), SMALL AXE #13, KONTE (St. Lucia), PRAIRIE SCHOONER, POETRY WALES, RACE TODAY (U.K.), WASAFIRI (U.K.), GREENFIELD REVIEW (U.S.A.), REVIEW:LITERATURE AND ARTS OF THE AMERICAS NO. 81 (SPECIAL ISSUE ON BOB MARLEY AND HIS LEGACY, ED. BY LORNA GOODISON AND CHRIS WINKS), THE MISSING SLATE (November 2013), MOLOSSUS, TRINIDAD & TOBAGO REVIEW, BARBADOS ADVOCATE, THE NATION (B’dos), THE JAMAICA GLEANER, CARIBBEAN CONTACT, THE ST. LUCIA MIRROR, THE CRUSADER (St. Lucia), THE STAR (St. Lucia), CATHOLIC CHRONICLE (St. Lucia), THE VOICE OF ST. LUCIA, EnterText, Caribarts.org.

Miscellaneous

B.A. Thesis : “The novels of Garth St. Omer, St. Lucian novelist” 1972. (Excerpts published).

Introduction : “Pebbles : poems”, by McDonald Dixon. Castries, 1973.

Introduction : “Saint Lucia” by Jenny Palmer. Macmillan Education, 1998, 2007.

Editor, “The Flower Festivals of Saint Lucia” Revised Edition  by Hon. Msgr. Patrick A.B. Anthony, Phd, SLC. Folk Research Centre; Jubilee Trust Fund, 2009.

Introduction: “Dunstan St. Omer: The Man and his works” by Msgr. Patrick A. B. Anthony. Castries: Jubilee Trust Fund,  2007.

Noteworthy: Over many years John Robert Lee has conducted interviews (radio and television) with many local, regional and international personalities in the arts, culture, entertainment, politics etc,  including Derek and Roderick Walcott, Charles Cadet, Dunstan St. Omer, Msgr Patrick Anthony, Kendel Hippolyte, Sir John Compton, Dr. Kenny Anthony, Kamau Brathwaite, George Lamming, Rex Nettleford,  Jimmy Cliff, Seamus Heaney, Arthur Miller, Little Richard, and a host of others. These interviews should be available in the archives of Radio St. Lucia, Helen Television System, National Television Network, the Folk Research Centre.

Work in progress:

Bibliography of Caribbean Literature in English for those discovering the literature. Ongoing, published online at mahanaimnotes.blogspot.com.

Book of photography. Book on St. Lucian Art. Collected Poems 1975-2015.

Editing of various publications for the Folk Research Centre, St. Lucia.