The Ideal Londoner’s Holiday: Narrow winding lanes with hedges all wild and overgrown are not convenient for motorists; and so they must go, for this is an age of progress. I always admit the progress—but I have my own opinion as to the ultimate destination of the progressive. … I suppose we must console ourselves as best we can with the red raw of the new County Lunatic Asylum, and with the thought that lunacy is greatly on the increase.
NEW POETRY
IṢA: The Present and Approaching Lord by Joshua Alan Sturgill
“Merry England!”: “The Middle Ages! What were the drains like in the Middle Ages? Tell me that.” He might have asked what about the motor-omnibuses, the taxi-cabs, the electric lighting, the “tubes” in the Middle Ages. And yet, granting our superiority in these and many other matters. are we merrier than of old? Are we merry at all? I have a shrewd suspicion that we have lost mirth and gained comfort—a very different thing.
AN ARTHUR MACHEN CALENDAR
NEW POETRY
Ash and Maples by Joshua Alan Sturgill
Max Reinhardt’s Latest: There is cold horror upon the heart of Œdipus; he hopes for a moment that there is some mistake. He hopes only for a moment; from the thronging, surging crowd an old man is pushed forward, the herdsman who had exposed him at the bidding of his father and mother; and, as with fire and thunder from heaven. Œdipus and Jocasta are smitten from our sight.
NEW POETRY
Now That It’s Inside Out, a short prose poem by Joshua Alan Sturgill
AN ARTHUR MACHEN CALENDAR
St. George and the Dragon
When Knights Were Bold: But who can get up any shadow of excitement over the encounter of two limp cabbage-stalks with steel?Really, there was nothing in it. Three times only, as far as I can remember, applause sounded; and, in each case the horses ran their course with some spirit and directness, and a shock was at least simulated; one saw the knights swaying in their saddles.
NEW POETRY
Jesse Keith Butler, the author of The Living Law, was interviewed by Rob McLennan.
Exile and Madness: Some Thoughts On Being Cursed by Joshua Alan Sturgill, the author of Now A Major Motion Picture.
The Red-Cross Treasure House: And it struck me that there was a link that united nearly all the objects in Messrs. Christie’s “Great Rooms,” whether they came from medæval China, the France of the Regency, or seventeenth-century England. They are beautiful, all of them, because they were “made for fun”; not because they were made for use.
NEW POETRY
Even This Far by Joshua Alan Sturgill
Religio Poetae, Part 6: Dale Nelson concludes his study of Coventry Patmore’s classic.
A New War Poet: It is with difficulty that I express my meaning—for poetry by its definition is the last and essential truth, which can be defined no farther; but I would say that the poem of “Evening in February” seems to me to picture eternity itself.
Lord Dunsany’s Introduction: I have looked for a poet amongst the Irish peasants because it seemed to me that almost only amongst them there was in daily use a diction worthy of poetry, as well as an imagination capable of dealing with the great and simple things that are a poet’s wares.
NEW SPRING BOOKS
NEW POETRY
PŌNIKŌAN by Joshua Alan Sturgill
The Celtic Paradise: It is a beautiful theory; I wish I could believe in it—but I don’t. Still, I think that every Celt thrills in his heart when the West is mentioned; there lingers in his soul that desire for the paradise beyond the glassy waterfloods which drove the monks of Wales and Ireland and Scotland to embark in boats without oars or sails, trusting that the winds and the waves would somehow bear them to the blessed and happy island.
Recently, Jesse Keith Butler, the author of The Living Law, read poetry from his new volume at a fundraiser for Windstone Farm Linlathen. Based on a farm in the Ottawa valley, this organization is led by Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson, a prominent George MacDonald scholar. Windstone Farm Linlathen is focused on “Cultivating Community through Theology, Ecology, and the Arts.” Among other events, Linlathen Lectures attract Christian artists and Inklings readers from near and far.
For our Canadian customers, Butler’s book is now available for purchase from Indigo.
All But Immersion by Joshua Alan Sturgill
Religio Poetae, Part 5 by Dale Nelson: “Wordsworth and Coleridge inspired MacDonald, and MacDonald inspired Lewis and Tolkien. Who would have predicted the enormous blessings for the Christian mind and imagination that came about from the writings of these two Inklings (even as the world descended into violence and vileness that Patmore could not have conceived)?”
Stilted Formulas of Courtesy: … the real difficulty is in the production by tens and scores and hundreds of novels, which are, frankly, of no use at all. They have no merit of any sort or kind; they are not funny, they are not exciting, they are not original, they are not well written, they have neither character nor “characters.” They almost make the “non-ens”—the existence of nothing—an imaginable idea.
The latest Arthur Machen collection from Darkly Bright Press has returned to print. What Do We Know? Observations of the Strange and Unusual sold out quickly when it was released late last year in a limited hardcover edition. The trade paperback is now available for purchase. Read excerpts.
POETRY
For Salad And For Wine by Joshua Alan Sturgill
The Living Law by Jesse Keith Butler has been highlighted on the Kingdom Poets blog by D. S. Martin.
“Love and Unrest”: There certainly are novels which confine themselves strictly to the action without wasting time over descriptive passages; they are mostly tenth-rate stories about detectives. But this new rule—that a novel is to be concerned only with “action”—must be squashed with all convenient firmness and despatch.
darklybrightpress.com 