The Penance Absolute

Another 15 minute poem. Hope you like. Am not sure about the 7th line.

In cruciform appointment, there outsplayed
Was He pierced for our portion,
Second Adam's holy person
Transfixed for trespass else than His, but paid

The pardoning in full; all other spill
Of saints self-fancying in self-drawn measure
Were pittance to that Godspilled sanguine treasure
That fed the soil of Calvary's fertile hill.

-Thomas Banks-

From Song #19

He turns their difference to naught
Then both into Himself, so sweetly
And with a flame so fine and fragrant
Which now I feel in me completely
Reduce my being, till no vagrant
Vestige of my own self stay.
And wholly I am burned away.

-San Juan de la Cruz-

Benediction

May fortune without falter on thee shine,

From thee her countenance never remove;

And in your person virtue stand unshamed,

Unmarred thy love.

May all the graces thee companion, 'till

Tacet-fallen, earth close you in her tomb-

'Till then, may Wisdom's seven-pillar'd house

For thee be home.

-Thomas Banks-

Obituary for an Artist of no Great Significance

Here he lies whose foremost work it was
To pitch a sale on properties of words,
To keep a prospect occupied enough
To leave off brother-slaying with clubs and swords.

Failing in this, he took a part time job
As a dime-shop messiah; but none too well
This suited him- for as no doubt you know,
The girl Eurydice is still in hell.

The surgeon-critics most officiously
Forbade the favorite postures of his craft-
The cancer-causing faults in his technique
That "Might be cured sir, by a second draft."

Cynical and hopeless of repair
He ends in jingles and in greeting-cards,
Purchased by many a bourgeois-sweatered maenad,
And paid his place among the muted bards.

-Thomas Banks-

Movie Notes

If you haven't seen "The Lookout," I give it a very enthused double plus. Reminded me visually of some of the stuff the Coen brothers do, but the writing was all around a bit tighter.

Go to Youtube and check out the preview for the "Sleuth" remake that's coming out in the next few months. Michael Caine and Jude Law. Kenneth Branaugh directing. Thumbs vertical.

While you're at it, pick up a copy of the original Sleuth, which is the best two-character movie ever made.

The new Beowulf (The motion-capture one) looks sort of (read: completely) geeky, but I'll probably see it anyway. At least once.

Finally saw "Benny and Joon," after years of people telling me how good it was, and realized they were mostly right. Johnny Depp's Buster Keaton routine is definitely worthwhile. I also noticed about halfway through that it was filmed in Spokane.

Lines from Hamlet

From Act four, Scene four:

How all occasions do inform against me,

And spur my dull revenge! What is a man

If his chief good and market of his time

Be but to sleep and feed?-A beast, no more.

Sure, He that made us with such large discourse,

Looking before and after, gave us not

That capability and god-like reason

To fust in us unused. Now whether it be

Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple

Of thinking to precisely on th'event-

A thought which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom

And ever three parts coward-I do not know

Why yet I live to say "This thing's to do,"

Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means

To do't. Examples gross as earth exort me,

Witness this army of such mass and charge,

Led by a delicate and tender prince,

Whose spirit with divine ambition puffed

Makes mouths at the invisible event,

Exposing what is mortal and unsure

To all that fortune, death, and danger dare,

Even for an eggshell. Rightly to be great

Is not to stir without great argument,

But greatly to find quarrel in a straw,

When honor's at the stake. How stand I, then,

That have a father killed, a mother stained,

Excitements of my reason and my blood,

And let all sleep while, to my shame, I see

The immenent death of twenty thousand men

That, for a fantasy or trick of fame,

Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot

Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,

Which is not tomb enough and continent

To hide the slain. O from this time forth,

My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth.

On Persuasion

Most of the people I know, self included, argue a lot, or perhaps even too much. For at least a few of us though, I think this must be a good thing. People who are given to aggressive discourse stand a better chance of offering a satisfactory account of themselves, if an account is ever called for, than people to whom the rule of deferrence denies the chance to cross propositions with a likely opponent. This much I gathered from living at a boarding house for a time long enough to realize that grace at times dwells even in division, even one as trivial as an argument on the theoretical application of the Mojo to the actual world of Men and Women. This is another point of knowledge I acquired at the Big Haus- that it is often more beneficial to devote a measure of mental energy to the trivial areas of life than to the Calamities of This Present Hour. This may be bias on my part, as most of the areas in which I am at all expert don't really mean that much. Fortunately, the atmosphere of the Big Haus fosters engagement with what Aristotle called "The Beautiful and the Useless." Very little, in all of the many arguments that there transpired, ever registered as a matter of any great importance. Most of E.W.'s philosophical expositions centered in the realm of proper valuation of the world and the things of the world, and then after having done so, casually dismisses all of them as objects of Futility. I am convinced, after having several years of attended his church and hanging out at his house that the reason anyone at all attends his church or hangs out at his house must owe itself to the fact that E.W. has the rare talent of making the proximity of the catastrophic sound sort of comfortable, provided one has an accomadating front porch and a good cohiba with which to enjoy it.

Among the other blessings of semicivil discourse is that, if I may state the obvious, it forces one to speak. A person's syntactical abilities tell as much, if not more about them than all the rest of their habits combined. Vocal expression is a better measure of intelligence than any standardized test could ever be, and it provides an opportunity to judge not just how much a person knows, but how much of what he knows he also as successfully arranged in a web of interrelation, and more importantly, what is the order of valuation in which he has placed it.
The ability to judge the latter of these is, I believe, the shortcoming of the Christian Classical movement, and the root of the development why relatively few students who graduate from any of its schools use their classical education for anything. They can teach grammar, logic and rhetoric year in and year out, and teach them effectively, but still not point a student toward a proper regard, specifically a proper aesthetic regard for the Order of Things, the attainment of which is, or ought to be one of the chiefest goals of any sound theory of education; we listen to the turn of a man's arguments, we can guess with some accuracy how closely he has gauged the optimal valuation.

Sorry to end on a dogmatic note, but I need to take off. Will post more on this in a bit.