S5E59 – Poetry Month: “The Poetic Spirit” – After Hours with Rev. Dr. Malcolm Guite

This month we begin “Poetry Month” with popular poet and Inkling scholar, Rev. Dr. Malcolm Guite!

S5E59: Poetry Month: “The Poetic Spirit”, After Hours with Rev. Dr. Malcolm Guite (Download)

Show Notes

Introduction

Quote-of-the-week

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Biographical Information

Rev. Dr. Malcolm Guite appeared briefly on Pints With Jack when we recorded a tribute to the late Walter Hooper. He’s an accomplished poet and important voice in the Church of England and throughout the world. He is author of Mariner: A Voyage with Samuel Taylor Coleridge and one of the most inspiring speakers working on Lewis and the Inklings today.

Guest Biographical Information

Chit-Chat

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Discussion

1. “Jack’s Poetic Desire”

• Dymer

2. “Modernism and T.S. Elliot”

• The Cambridge Companion to C. S. Lewis

3. “As contemporary poetry”

How will the legend of the age of trees
Feel, when the last tree falls in England?
When the concrete spreads and the town conquers
The country’s heart; when contraceptive
Tarmac’s laid where farm has faded,
Tramline flows where slept a hamlet,
And shop-fronts, blazing without a stop from
Dover to Wrath, have glazed us over?

…

So shall a homeless time, though dimly
Catch from afar (for soul is watchfull)
A sight of tree-delighted Eden.

C.S. Lewis, The future of forestry

• “Ash Wednesday” by Malcolm Guite

I thought it would last my time—
The sense that, beyond the town,
There would always be fields and farms,
Where the village louts could climb
Such trees as were not cut down;
I knew there’d be false alarms

Philip Larkin, Going, going

4. “Mystery and language”

Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still. Shrieking voices
Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them.

T.S. Elliot, Burnt Norton

From all my lame defeats and oh! much more
From all the victories that I seemed to score;
From cleverness shot forth on Thy behalf
At which, while angels weep, the audience laugh;
From all my proofs of Thy divinity,
Thou, who wouldst give no sign, deliver me.

Thoughts are but coins. Let me not trust, instead
Of Thee, their thin-worn image of Thy head.
From all my thoughts, even from my thoughts of Thee,
O thou fair Silence, fall, and set me free.
Lord of the narrow gate and the needle’s eye,
Take from me all my trumpery lest I die.

C.S. Lewis, The Apologist’s Evening Prayer

• David’s Crown

“It seems to me appropriate, almost inevitable, that when that great Imagination which in the beginning, for Its own delight and for the delight of men and angels and (in their proper mode) of beasts, had invented and formed the whole world of Nature, submitted to express Itself in human speech, that speech should sometimes be poetry. For poetry too is a little incarnation, giving body to what had been before invisible and inaudible.”

C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms

Warm, dark, obscure and infinite, daughter of Night:
Dark is her brow, the beauty of her eyes with sleep
Is loaded and her pains are long, and her delight.
Tempt not Athene. Wound not in her fertile pains
Demeter, nor rebel against her mother-right.
Oh who will reconcile in me both maid and mother,
Who make in me a concord of the depth and height?

C.S. Lewis, Reason

For me, reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.

C.S. Lewis, Bluspels and Flalansferes

But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ [An Aramaic term of contempt] is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.

Matthew 5:22

5. “CS Lewis: A Sonnet”

From ‘Beer and Beowulf’ to the seven heavens,
Whose music you conduct from sphere to sphere,
You are our portal to those hidden havens
Whence we return to bless our being here.
Scribe of the Kingdom, keeper of the door
Which opens on to all we might have lost,
Ward of a word-hoard in the deep hearts core
Telling the tale of Love from first to last.
Generous, capacious, open, free,
Your wardrobe-mind has furnished us with worlds
Through which to travel, whence we learn to see
Along the beam, and hear at last the heralds,
Sounding their summons, through the stars that sing,
Whose call at sunrise brings us to our King.

Malcolm Guite, CS Lewis: A Sonnet

Beverage and Toast

• During this interview Andrew and Malcolm were drinking Matt’s favorite, Macallan 12.
• Andrew toasted Patreon supporter, Brian Roden, a Northwind scholar who has just had a baby.

More Information

• Malcolm Guite (Website)
• Malcolm Guite (YouTube)
• The Word within the Words (My Theology, 3)
• David’s Crown

Wrap-Up

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