Blog Binge Continues with Poetry from Jeanne Bryner

Early Farming Woman—August/September

I first discovered Jeanne Bryner’s poetry in a compilation called Every River on Earth, a rich anthology of Appalachian writers from Ohio University Press. Her poems in that collection focused in close on the good people who work the land. In her recent chapbook from Finishing Line Press entitled Early Farming Woman, she again trains her poet’s eye and ear on those people, but the reader is teleported back to the earliest farmers in a time when young virgins are sacrificed for the harvest, a nomad woman must decide to abandon one child to save the rest of her brood, and violent raids are common to acquire or defend the best land. The images are brutal, yet beautiful, as the women of the poems braid communal bonds of sisterhood required to nurture life against the beginnings of war.

Many anthropologists believe that war—as we know it—did not exist as long as humans were hunter-gatherers. These scholars theorize that wars developed as humans began to claim territory for farming. The competition for fertile land gave rise to open conflict. In the expert sequencing of her poems, Bryner’s first poem “carves the moment:

quiet hummingbird, wren golden eagle,

the milk rising, the water running down.”

The reader moves from bucolic bliss of women bathing at water’s edge, one sister carving the image of the moment, to the first major conflict in the series of poems.  We journey through a land and time fraught with dangers and loyalties, heartbreak and joy.

I first read the 18 poems out of sequence, favoring titles I found intriguing.  While the poems stand alone quite well—and many of them were submitted as stand alone for previous publication in various journals—I really didn’t get the full effect of the chapbook’s artfulness until I read it in sequence. Bryner has mastered placing her poems in a way that surprises and shocks the reader with story. I think I audibly gasped a few times during my second reading at the horror or the anguish or the compassion of the speaker. 

All viewpoints within the chapbook are distinctly feminine. Whether it be the new mother bathing at the stream with her new baby, flanked by her mother, who is lovingly washing her daughter’s hair while a new generation suckles, and a sister who is documenting the beauty of the moment, her female relatives, and nature in a carving. Or whether it be a female lamb who is adopted as both a pet and a breeder by an early farming family. The lamb describes the heavy bonds of love in these haunting lines:

“…The children grew,

swinging clubs, pelting rocks, a sudden thud

I was blinded. Now if the great door stands open,

I don’t try to leave. Protection is milk,

and love a brand,

not nearly as gentle as it sounds.”

The title poem, placed nearly one-third of the way through the chapbook, “Early Farming Woman,” portrays a widow trying to fend for her family when she happens upon a dark-skinned man with a lamb slung over his shoulders. The widow considers her plight and the promise this chance meeting opens for her family in these lines:

“The man speaks and it is the sound

of morning birds. My children wave

to him, point to his lamb.

I am tired of dry seeds and praying

for the clouds to tell their story.

I’ve had my fill of beatings,

carrying the elders’ water in clay vessels.

Whatever this man wants, I will give him,

and my children will eat.”

In another poem entitled “Field Flower,” a woman nurtures her dead sister’s son, who is growing up with a gentle nature, not valued by the men of the tribe. The speaker expresses her love for the sweet boy and the fears she harbors for his fate:

“He pets and pets the babies, waters

elders and the sick, hides from storms.

His father? The other men?

They whip any dog that cannot run.

any boy that will not kill.”

In one of the most powerful poems from this chapbook, a character called “Gray Braid” describes how a warring tribe attacks her village, killing her grand daughter and her sister, leaving her near death, but surviving to tell the story:

“I am the shade 

of a tree with many circles

and when I am stronger

there will be much to tell.

I am my sister’s tongue.

I am my sister’s tongue.”

Jeanne Bryner is indeed her sister’s tongue, telling a tale of survival, love and perseverance for those whose tongues have been cut out for fighting back against a world of violence and fear. She is a nurse by profession and a poet by avocation whose poetry has been adapted for stage.

Her writing accolades include fellowships from Bucknell University, the Ohio Arts Council, and Vermont Studio Center. Her poetry collection Smoke:Poems received an American Journal of Nursing 2012 Book of the Year Award. She lives with her husband near a dairy farm in Newton Falls, Ohio. You can find a link to Early Farming Woman at WVXU.org/aroundcincinnati

John Mellencamp American Troubadour--Summer blog binge

John Mellencamp, American Troubadour—July/August 2015

Susan Compo, author of Warren Oates: a Wild Life, credits David Masciotra with creating “almost a new genre” in Mellencamp: American Troubadour, new in April from University Press of Kentucky. Compo describes the book as “Part biography, part cultural and sociological commentary—with a touch of hagiography/fan nonfiction thrown in.”  The author’s bent toward “hagiography” is where I had the most problems while reading this provocative work.

I first encountered the word part “hagia” in Dan Brown’s intrigue novel, Inferno, where code breaker protagonist Robert Langdon must track down a bioterrorist using lines from Dante’s Inferno as clues.  The word root “hagia” is from Greek, meaning “saint.” As revelation goes, I next ran into this word part in a poem by Thomas Merton called “Hagia Sophia,” or Saint Sophia. When researching the word “hagiography,” I found that it refers to any writings about the saints which might document and highlight their miracles.  I also found that to use the word about someone’s writing might be pejorative, as it implies a kind of fan worship or uncritical stance.

While Masciotra organizes his book in semi-chronological order, beginning with John Mellencamp’s early years as a major label invention, John Cougar, and progressing toward offering glimpses of a mature artist who paints and writes songs of social import, the author often circles back to discuss song lyrics and musical elements as they apply to American culture.  Masciotra makes fair comparisons between Bob Seger’s earlier songs and Mellencamp’s, quoting lyrics from “Jack and Diane” and “Night Moves” to exemplify the sexual posturing of inexperienced youth. But when he attempts to disclaim Bruce Springsteen’s lyrics as “inauthentic” by comparison, he loses me. To me, the differences between these two songwriters is largely point of view and style, with Mellencamp espousing a first person viewpoint and stripped down rock presentation for many of his songs, and Springsteen creating street characters who seem mythic against a wall of sound reminiscent of every Phil Spector production value known to man.

I was surprised at Masciotra’s criticisms of Springsteen given his previous writing, Working on a Dream:  the Progressive Political Vision of Bruce Springsteen. But it seems that Masciotra takes the sociological and cultural aspects of his writing very seriously.  He often does pieces for The Washington Post, the Atlantic, Salon, and alter.net that regularly receive harsh reader blowback.  For example, he recently wrote a piece for Salon accusing Americans of blind hero worship for our police and military. This drew some colorful reactions from police blogs and members of the armed forces that I cannot share with polite company over the radio. Suffice it to say, they were not pleased or even in agreement.

The strongest passages in this study of Mellencamp as a Midwestern artist with some heft, grit, and insight are the chapters where Masicotra examines the themes in Mellencamp’s lyrics and praises his contributions to what we now call Americana. He attributes Mellencamp’s invention of using many folk instruments in his gypsy rock albums as a precursor to Americana.  He also compares Mellencamp’s midwestern vision to artists like Grant Wood, Theodore Dreiser, Jim Harrison, John Prine, and even Kurt Vonnegut. That vision seems to embrace “insistence on viewing the ebb and flow of experience as a holistic force carrying with it many contradictions.”

There are also a few wonderful quotes from Mellencamp about songwriting that I have taken to my songwriter’s heart and recently brought into my songwriter’s circle for discussion.  “The whole point is writing simple melodies people can sing along to,” says Mellencamp. He goes on to say, “people respond strongest to vague songs with ‘open ended’ stories or scenes.”  He adds, “in order for a complicated song with specific detail and imagery to work, the melody must be beautiful.”  Masciotra discusses how many Mellencamp tunes fulfill these standards while illuminating many issues in American culture like poverty, race, and lack of community. I especially enjoyed his take on “Little Pink Houses.”

I expected Mellencamp:  American Troubadour to follow the pattern of many music bios I have read in the past few years. I was looking for biographical highlights, middle of the book pictures and a discography. Instead, I found an—at first—troublesome chronicle of an artist’s growth over his career set against the cultural background of his time. David Masciotra provides thoughtful analysis of musical and lyrical elements that have made John Mellencamp way more than a footnote in the history of the rock song.

To listen to this review on WVXU.org, click here.

Binge Blogging. In a World of Netflix and On-demand Movies, You Knew it Was Coming.

This morning, I woke up feeling extra tired. Sometimes, I can’t place the source of my fatigue. Then, I decided this morning would be a good time to round up all the books I’ve reviewed since May in order to post the reviews on this blog.  Now, I think I know at least one source of the tired.  These books have been my teachers for the past five months. I have quoted them in discussions, used them to understand what it’s like to be a refugee, learned new words from them like “hagiography,” gained new insight into the early roots of democracy, and flat out enjoyed some really good poetry in the process. So, it is with great pleasure that I post these reviews which originally aired on Around Cincinnati, a fine cultural radio program produced by my longtime friend, Lee Hay(who is probably way more tired than I am for her weekly dedication to producing fine programming for the Greater Cincinnati arts community.)  The show airs each Sunday evening at 7 pm.  I will post audio links with my reviews so that you can see what else WVXU.org offers our community each and every day.

Medic Against Bomb—June, 2015

I once told my high school American Literature students that The Red Badge of Courage was all I ever needed to know about the Civil War. And yet, Stephen Crane wasn't even born during that war and had not yet experienced battle when he wrote his realistic account.  Some sources indicate that he pieced together his heart-wrenching narrative from talking to war veterans and from examining news articles written during war time.

Frederick Foote did not have to look far for his accounts of battle and its aftermath in Medic Against Bomb: a Doctor's Poetry of War.  He was there, piecing together the wounded and grieving for the dead.  His 2014 collection from Grayson Books is the 2013 winner of the Grayson Books Poetry Prize and draws this praise from North Carolina's former Poet Laureate, Joseph Bathanti who says:

"These are tough poems, yet imbued with a beauty borne of truth that one can't turn away from…These poems are crucial. These poems are Requiem."

In the first section of Medic Against Bomb entitled "Contact," there are poems about wounded Iraqi soldiers, wounded American soldiers,  the nurses and the doctors, innocent civilian victims , and the press.  I noticed on reading this section, that Foote often used some form or rhyme, almost to make sense of the suddenly blind civilian, or the soldier missing limbs, or the special needs child thrown onto the medical helicopter to rid his family of the burden for his care. Most of the poems here are told from the medic's point of view as he tries to make sense of the senseless.  I would like to share part of a beautiful poem entitled "You Gave the Iraqis Their Scarves, for Doctor Pat McKay.

"you'd find a place

no one could observe

bring out an ancient

Singer sewing Machine

and squares of silk

left over from a quilt

the nurses made

to celebrate our work

And there each night

like the breath of a word

You'd sew, quietly sew.."

In the second section entitled "Battle Fugue," the poems abandon most conventions, favoring the hard-packed density of words associated with the battle experience in Irag and the medic's struggle to put the wounded back together. Medical instruments are juxtaposed with military equipment in lines that almost demand to be barked through clenched teeth.

Here is an example from the poem, "Corpsman."

"reaches under Kevlar to augur the dawning

flange no wider than fingers torn flesh thin door

flash back to times of homely diarrhea

pack him like you never packed before

clipping with Kellys abdominal chitlins

pushing trach oncounter Marine boots still on

Sam stick with me Sam…"

Foote provides notes at the end of the volume for those not acquainted with medical and military jargon.  He explains the "Kellys" as surgical clamps and the "trach" as an abbreviation for the tracheotomy, a procedure for cutting open the wind pipe to ease breathing.  I used the glossary after reading all the poems to get a deeper understanding.  Although all of them were comprehensible to me without the explanations, I like to fully understand.

The third section of the book is called "The Ruins of Peace" and deals mainly with the after effects of war on a country, the soldiers, and the medical teams. Those effects often last for years, or may never go away.  One poem, "Blood Brothers," paints a picture of enemies who died together:

"The flight swirled down from the roof

where the troops went in

and somehow, amid confusion

and acrid haze,

these two fell down

together: a beardless Marine

poured out on a Mujahadeen

killed by grenades."

Foote calls his final section "Coda."  It contains one small poem that I will read in its entirety.

"The Gunner John

Pity him here, his skull crushed by a tread--

beneath the mud pressed out, one intact jaw.

some teeth at ninety degrees, the scraps of a tongue--

Was he no more that this? No this was a mask,

place it in calm beneath the ground,

and when he takes it off, he'll still be whole."

Frederick Foote is a retired U.S. Navy physician who lives in Bethesda, Maryland. He is the director of Warrior Poetry Project at Walter Reed National Medical Center.  A portion of proceeds from his book, Medic Against Bomb: a Doctor's Poetry of War goes to the Green Road Project for Wounded Warriors. You can find a link to this book at wvxu.org/aroundcincinnati

The Way the World is: the Maggie Boylan Stories

I was first sucked into Maggie Boylan's chaotic world in the collection entitled Every River on Earth, an anthology of Appalachian writers from southwestern Ohio. In that story, then entitled "Coming Home," Maggie had just completed her court-ordered rehab and was struggling to navigate the pitfalls of being labeled a known drug user who must steer clear of all other known drug users or be tossed back in jail. To complicate matters, most of Maggie's neighbors are dealers, users, or cops, her husband has given up on her, plus she has no ride. That hair-raising story in which Maggie must run a physical and spiritual gauntlet to maintain even one day of sobriety post-rehab made me want to root for Michael Henson's foul-mouthed protagonist.  If she is not an Everywoman, she is surely a familiar face in the undeniable scourge that is prescription drug abuse.

The Way the World Is: the Maggie Boylan Stories is Michael Henson's latest book from Brighthorse Books, 2015.  He already has an impressive array of publications in poetry and fiction with seven other works in print since 1980 from West End Press, MotesBooks, and Dos Madres Press, to name a few.  He is also a long time member of the Southern Appalachian Writers' Cooperative.  Add to his accolades that The Way the World Is has earned him the Brighthorse Prize in Fiction for 2014 and that he has been declared by official decree the Poet Laureate of Mt. Washington.  I think I would cherish that honor the most. Being recognized as someone important to one's own community speaks volumes about Henson's impact as a writer, a community organizer, and a substance abuse counselor.

But back to the compelling character Henson has created in this collection of linked stories, Maggie Boylan.  Described on the back cover as "Addict, thief, liar, lover, loser, hustler…queen of invective," the reader sees Maggie struggling to navigate the labyrinth of traps addiction sets for its snares.  In one story, Maggie gets her hands on ten dollars which she attempts to bring to her long-suffering husband, Gary, who sits in jail for something she has done, taking the proverbial "rap" for her. Yet, at every turn, former drug buddies are waiting to get that quivering bill from her addled and aching fingers.  The cycle continues.

The stories can all stand alone, of course, but they are arranged skillfully in an order that delivers dramatic tension and the satisfying feeling of having read a short  novel. In addition to Maggie, we meet deputies who battle with the shadowy cast of characters on Pillhead Hill, many of whom they have known since elementary school, reformed druggies who lend a hand to the wavering Maggie, judges who are part of the problem, and a couple of drug-doomed young women Maggie will alternately  hustle, help, and then grieve.

The cover art for the collection was done by folk artist Bonita Skaggs-Parsons, preserved in stark photograph by her daughter, Misty Skaggs. The tough questions raised for the reader by The Way the World Is  include what can we do now that heroin is part of the picture? How can we turn away from someone so real and in our faces as Maggie? Here is one passage showing Maggie's fight for sobriety:

"it would be just a short walk down her lane and across the road, over the bridge, and up that Pillhead Hill to the house. The lights would be on and the boys would be happy to see her. And of course, they would front her--one or two, or even three or four--enough to get her through this godawful night.

Without willing it or willing against it, she threw the little jacket across her shoulders and stepped into the yard. Without willing it or willing against it, she crossed the yard. At the edge of the road she stopped, out of old habit, and looked to the right and to the left.

Then when she looked forward again, she saw the coyote in the road. He had not been there when she looked to the right; he had not been there when she looked to the left, but now, as she looked to cross the road, the coyote stood directly in her path. He must have come up from the bed of the creek, she thought. As if in response to the notion, the coyote shook out his coat and cast a silvery spray into the moonlight. Maggie stood frozen in place." 

This review first aired on WVXU.org's AROUND CINCINNATI in May, 2015.  To listen to the audio clip of the review, click here.

The Seed of Me

Since poet, Karen George dedicates her latest chapbook of poems to her grandmother and mother, and since a photo of a mother and bride adorn the cover, reflected in the intimacy of a dresser mirror, I was prepared to read this group of poems as personal intergenerational legacy.  What I was not prepared for was how completely a poet's craft can transform the personal into the magical and universal. 

The Seed of Me, 2015, from Finishing Line Press is George's third chapbook. She is also the author of another title from Finishing Line, Into the Heartland,  2011 and Inner Passage, 2014, from Red Bird Chapbooks. Her first full collection, Swim Your Way Back was published by Dos Madres Press in 2014. 

I read The Seed of Me expecting a tribute to the poet's mother and grandmother for nurturing a creative spirit. Instead, I read about light bodies, broken dolls, missing spleens, birthmarks, motorcycle rides, bowling balls, and the dead among the living.  I read about blisters and  visions.  I read about the moon.

One of my favorites from this chapbook is "The Moon After a Poetry Jam." I love it for its musical language and magical  image. Here are just a few lines to let you know what I mean:

"Over the main road the moon hangs low, pregnant with rise,

and I unmoor to meet her in inky air. Down the winding

hill she hides behind tree clumps of humid-heavy leaves,

her glow a halo luminous above the crowns."

Another poem awash in magic imagery is entitled "Transformations, the Suspension Bridge."  In it, the poet recalls driving from Kentucky to Ohio over the Suspension Bridge on the day her grandma died:

"Parallel strings of light

transposed

to strands of DNA, pulsing.

Streetlamps flared,

floated from their posts,

drew together like magnets.

When the current entered,

I no longer heard

tires from the bridge,

felt the wheel vibrate,

smelled winter or river.

The moment peeled

forward, into place,

and lamps returned

to their posts

and subdued states."

In several poems,  the speaker engages with something beyond everyday experience--a current that both transcends and transforms time.

The poet recognizes her sensory connection to the extraordinary early in her life and describes her experience in the poem from which she draws her chapbook's title.  The poem is "The Dead Live at Hemlock Lodge, Natural Bridge, Kentucky."

"The first time  I felt the dead   among the living.  I was ten, on a 

family vacation.   The dining room air   dusk-heavy, as though we

trudged through waist-high water.   The dark wood of tables, chairs,

wall and ceiling beams   dimmed the midday light from the bank of

windows.  I neither saw nor heard the passed, only felt their current,

a pool.   No fear or torment, more like the salve of walking in woods

among tunneling insects   and roots.   I knew not to tell, as I knew

not to question   the nuns in school.   To keep beliefs and doubts

hidden.  I studied my parents' and sisters' faces, and buried the secret

in my soul. Not the place they said sin tarnished, but where the seed 

of me   burrowed, thinned, and branched."

The Seed of Me honors both George's mother and her grandmother through stunning universal imagery that connects even the most personal family story to the cosmic current.

This review aired in April 2015 on AROUND CINCINNATI, WVXU.org.  There were a few extra sentences about a then upcoming event for the poet that has already passed.  If you'd like to listen while reading, here is a link.

Every River on Earth

I read many compilations by and about Appalachians. But seldom have I read a collection so rooted in place as Every River on Earth: Writing from Appalachian Ohio published earlier this year by Ohio University Press. Edited skillfully by poet Neil Carpathios, the coordinator of the creative writing program at Shawnee State University in Portsmouth, this intriguing collection is divided into four parts that speak to the paradox of Appalachian experience as defined in southern Ohio.

Carpathios acknowledges his "transplant" status in the introduction to the book's themes,"…this anthology started with a personal, maybe even somewhat selfish desire to better grasp my new home," he says.  Winnowing the 400 plus submissions down by the primary criterion of "quality," Carpathios sought to include a variety of styles, subjects and voices that he says took on a life of their own, falling organically into four sections:  "Family and Folks," "The Land," "The Grind," and "Home and Away."

The book takes its title from David Lee Garrison's poem which includes this lyric tribute to the land:

"Wind pokes the land in winter,

trying to waken it,

and in the melting snow 

I see rainbows and in them

every river on earth."

Donald Ray Pollock provides the longtime resident's perspective in his foreword to the anthology when he says, "no, I can't think of anywhere I'd rather live."  Even though he admits  his life in Knockemstiff has included factory work, hard living and eventually an alcohol and drug rehab, he asserts that while there is "ugliness and despair and heartbreak in these hills, there is also much goodness and mystery and beauty."  Later in the anthology, the reader is treated to the beauty that Pollock makes of heartbreak in his story of forgiveness, "The Jesus Lights."

In the opening section, "Family and Folks," I was instantly charmed with the poetic voice employed by Roy Bentley, with Jeanne Bryner's stunning imagery when describing her farmer neighbor at work, and by the sense of magic in poet, Cathryn Essinger's "The Way Things Are." Ed Davis takes a surprising offer from a desperate widower to create "a boiling Appalachian stew" from his novel-in-progress. And I am still giggling from Janet Ladrach's "The Farmer's Wife's Vacation."

The second section includes homage to the landscape of southern Ohio including two of my new favorite tributes to sycamores by Cathryn Essinger and Richard Hague. Essinger entitles her poem "Someday the sycamores…" and in her playful lines, supposes that someday these trees are simply going to walk away in reaction to an ever-hovering danger from development.  She closes her poem with these  lines:

"And if you watch carefully, if you sit down in the dark

when the moon, that old tattletale, is out of sight,

you will see them stand

on gnarled knuckles and inch away, see them gather up 

their children, hand in hand, and even if you call,

they will not come back."

Richard Hague is a Cincinnatian who has published 14 books, many that are set in eastern and southern Ohio. In his nonfiction contribution, he describes how easy it is to forget that we live in a natural world when the city swallows so much of it. Hague relates the sycamore hunts he and his late friend, Joe Enzweiler used to plan together. He also crafts many indelible descriptions of the trees:

"The sycamores edged the stream like a procession of white-robed deacons."

The third section of the book is entitled "The Grind."  It is here that we read about the difficulties of living in Appalachian Ohio.  Those ugly, desperate heartbreaks that Donald Ray Pollock warns us about in his foreword.  Among my favorite reads from this section--which was heavier on prose than the other sections--are Michael Henson's "Coming Home," "Destroying New Boston" by Brooks Rexroat and of course, "The Jesus Lights" by Donald Ray Pollock. In these raw stories, a recovering addict gets thrown right back into the path of cronies who will surely drive her to drugs, a bunch of bored teenagers accidentally wreck part of a town's painful heritage, and a man's grief illuminates a path for forgiveness.  While the circumstances in many of these tales are bleak, the characters are not. Many of them discover "the goodness and the mystery and the beauty" in their plights.

The final section, entitled "Home and Away" is largely devoted to those looking back at southern Ohio from somewhere else.  Whether it be Los Angeles, New Orleans or a fourteenth floor apartment, the characters and speakers look back homeward over time and distance.  My favorites from this section include Ronald D.Giles' "The Friday Night Dance," and Hayley Hughes' "The Fair."  Both are personal stories, but from very different time periods. Giles writes of an eighth grade dance experience in the 1950s while Hughes shares her more recent adventures at the Ohio State Fair with her father-- from her earliest recollections to her twenty-sixth year.  While Giles' maintains a strict narrative timeline, Hughes bounces around her quirky personal essay revealing the tricky relationship she maintains with home and family.  I also enjoyed the found poem in this section entitled "Portrait of Southern Ohio in Five-Syllable Road Signs" by Adam Sol.

While Every River on Earth laments the ugliness, despair and heartbreak of Appalachian Ohio. its quality of writing is testament to the goodness, mystery and beauty rising from a deep sense of place. Several of the authors have a reading scheduled at Joseph-Beth Cincinnati on April 4th at 2 pm.  You just might want to be there if you enjoy masterful writing or a great yarn.

This review originally aired on WVXU.org's AROUND CINCINNATI on March 27, 2015.  You can listen to the review at this link:  Listen to this review.

The Letters of Thomas Merton and Victor and Carolyn Hammer

We are no longer a letter writing society. A Facebook friend was lamenting that just the other day as she plotted to start her own letter writing club. At the holidays, my mother-in-law mourned the loss of handwritten letters from one side of her family. Since the matriarch had passed on,  no one who would take up the role of family scribe. E-mails, texts, Skype, and all manner of social media connect us instantly with those we know across the miles and oceans.

Alice Walker knew the power of the letter when she created her epistolary novel, The Color Purple, in which an isolated protagonist, Celie. catalogues her unspeakable tragedies through letters to God.  In Soldier, Come Home, playwright Frank Wicks uses his ancestors' letters from the Civil War to teleport audiences into the sacrifices of real soldiers and families.  In December of 2014, two academics, F. Douglas Scutchfield and Paul Evans Holbrook, Jr. brought us a collection of letters between spiritual icon, Thomas Merton, and an extraordinary couple who printed many of his writings through their small press in Lexington,KY, Victor and Carolyn Hammer. I found the trio's letters a compelling read, offering a glimpse into the lives of those working for "the greater glory."

The collection from University Press of Kentucky entitled The Letters of Thomas Merton and Victor and Carolyn Hammer: Ad Majorem Dei Glorium is fully academic in its presentation of the letters, complete with explanatory endnotes and several appendices of supporting documents and bibliography.  For the Merton scholar, these conventions could serve as a springboard to further work on the poet, social justice advocate and theologian. But for the reader who just wants to know the hearts and minds of those engaged in a calling, the letters speak eloquently for themselves.

Scutchfield and Holbrook categorize the topics of the letters in an afterword as "art and spirituality, the collaborative publications, Merton's reading list, and mutual friends."  Victor Hammer and Thomas Merton open their correspondence by discussing at length the differences between classic and modern art. Hammer, a painter and master artisan of many crafts, also excelled at printing, bookbinding, calligraphy and typography, creating several uncial typefaces. When they discuss some of the illustrations that might accompany Merton's writing, both men reveal their ideas about how the sacred should be rendered. Hammer holds that only classical concepts can truly glorify, while Merton asserts that sometimes the poverty of line and space can suggest and serve. Their subsequent letters echo this discussion throughout the book, sometimes becoming quite humorous. At one point, Hammer begrudgingly calls Picasso, "an interesting experimenter."  And Merton responds to a picture of St. Notburga that Hammer sends him with these comments:

"I like her intelligent and alert expression(even though I think the most pure tradition of sacred art demands that the saint look a bit gaga and withdrawn) and find it very edifying."

Carolyn Hammer, curator of rare books at the University of Kentucky Library during most of the correspondence, located books for Merton's research and teaching. Most of the letters from Merton include a list of the books he was seeking at the time.  Sometimes the list reflects his immediate need--books on South American cultures to help him better understand the novitiates in his charge. Sometimes the book requests were solely to inform his writings and teachings on theology, philosophy, or poetry.  I found the book lists fascinating in themselves for their far-reaching scope of interests spanning such topics as ancient clerics, modern politics and philosophy, recent history, William Faulkner, W.H Auden, Shakertown, and the Tao of Painting. 

The letters also focus on the collaborations between the Hammers and Merton. Among the most interesting are the discussions of Hammer's painting Hagia Sophia Crowning the Young Christ, a pedestal triptych tempera on gold-ground panel.  Merton discusses the feminine nature of God in his letters to Hammer about the painting. Eventually, Merton and Hammer collaborate to publish Merton's meditative poem entitled Hagia Sophia(which translates to "divine wisdom.") Scutchfield and Holbrook include photographs of Hammer's work in their mid-book graphics.

Many of the people the Hammers and Merton knew in common were writers, publishers, and musicians.  For example, The Hammers introduced Merton to John Jacob Niles with whom he later collaborated. In the letters there are several mentions of Niles performing in Lexington and even of poet, Denise Levertov. While the Hammers frequently visited Merton at Gethsemani Abbey for picnic discussions, Merton was limited in his travels to Lexington unless on official Abbey business or for medical appointments. But the letters emphasize how much he valued being able to meet with the Hammers in person. Almost every exchange includes planning for future visits to continue discussions of their favorite topics, art and spirituality for the greater glory

Over time, it is still the letter that acts as primary source for so many historians, biographers, novelists, and playwrights.  There is a built-in sense of dramatic tension to a carefully presented set of letters between real people, or even imagined characters, that makes for captivating reading. The point of view is first-person, intimate, and often very revealing of the letter-writer's ghosts and obsessions. I value The Letters of Thomas Merton and Victor and Carolyn Hammer: Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam for the witness this collection bears creativity, intellect and growing friendship among those who collaborate to serve something bigger than themselves.

***This review originally ran in an edited version(for time) on AROUND CINCINNATI, WVXU.org on January 16, 2015.***

You can listen to the review as it aired at this link: Listen to the review