NEW POETRY
The Desert by Joshua Alan Sturgill
The Phantom Ship by E. H. Visiak. This one is in verse!
THE WEEKLY MACHEN
Does the Seaside Hotel Pay?: There is a great chapter in Rabelais entitled, in the admirable English version, “How they chirrupped over their cups.” I was reminded of it yesterday, down at Brighton, as I listened to the tale of the Brighton hotel-keepers and drank their venerable Cognac of 1848.
Recently, Austin Conrad reviewed Akboritha by Richard Rohlin at his blog: Akhelas.com.
NEW POETRY
Closed by Joshua Alan Sturgill
Twentieth-Century Village: We were in the peaceful heart of England … There is not a railway station, at Bugbrooke, or within five miles of it. I had driven out from Northampton behind a gently ambling horse, who went slowly up hill because he was tired, and slowly down hill because it was dangerous, and slowly on the level because he felt like it.
NEW POETRY AND UPDATES
Opened by Joshua Alan Sturgill
Congratulations to Jesse K. Butler winner of the third place prize in the Kierkegaard Poetry Competition.
The Joy of London I: To the imaginative man, I suppose nothing has so great an attraction as that which has some savour of mystery about it. He who is something more than a new automaton, a mechanical performer of certain mechanical tasks, returning day by day, feels instinctively that he is born to voyage in the unknown, to live always in contemplation of a great perhaps. And here, I think we touch on the secret of one of the most powerful of the many attractions of London.
Arthur Machen remembers Maurice Barrès, the French Belloc.
CATALOG UPDATE
As Far As I Can Tell, the debut poetry collection by Joshua Alan Sturgill, is now OUT-OF-PRINT. A few remaining copies may be purchased at Eighth Day Books. Sturgill’s latest book, Now A Major Motion Picture, is still available.
Joshua’s newest poem: Disparate
Fugues and Fish Heads by Dale Nelson: When Machen wrote of “a highly elaborate and elaborated piece of work, full of the strangest and rarest things,” he was referring to a great romance that he never managed to compose. But he could have been referring to compositions by Bach.
Marvels of To-Day’s Flower Show: Here was a bank of the richest purple, brilliant to the point of crudity; here were the trumpet notes of scarlet and bright yellow; and opposed to these daring tones were groups of poppies, not only suggesting sleep and quiet and long dreams by their nature, but by those languorous petals that looked like faded ancient silks that had hung for a hundred years in a forgotten cupboard.
NEW POETRY & UPDATES
Long into Night by Joshua Alan Sturgill
St. Sebastian in the Kitchen by Linda Lobmeyer
Chasing the Burr by Bryn Homuth is now available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, the Book Depository and fine bookstores such as Eighth Day Books. Our friends in Canada and the UK may purchase the book here. Australia: Booktopia. And, of course, you may purchase it from the Darkly Bright Catalog.
Jesse K. Butler has published two poems in the latest edition of THINK Journal.
The Joy of London III: And the sight of the map of London always leaves me with a sense of a kind of lesser infinitude—if the phrase may be allowed. Thus does London make for us a concrete image of the eternal things of space and time and thought.
NEW POETRY
After a brief hiatus, Joshua Alan Sturgill returns with The Archangel Contemplates A Buddha.
Dale Nelson digs into Walter De La Mare’s On the Edge, a book read and reviewed by Arthur Machen.
In Memory of Edith Cavell: The last verse swells into sonorous triumph; the sunlight pours in golden rays down from the dome, the painted saints and martyrs glow in the windows. Then the Paternoster, which is a prayer for quick and dead alike, is said, and after the versicles and responses, they sing the Antiphon: I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet he shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die.
If you’re in the area, celebrate St. Pat’s with the Eighth Day Institute on Saturday, March 18th in Wichita. Enjoy whiskey, food and friends. I highly recommend Jack Korbel’s Celtic-inspired music.
Famous Novelist’s Blunder: The artist who sets himself to rewrite masterpieces is, in a sense, a heroic figure. He is the desirer and the attempter of the impossible. At the best he can only hope to be a splendid failure; at the worst . . . let us be merciful, and avail ourselves of the figure called aposiopesis.
Celebrating Machen’s 160th birthday on March 3, 2023…
NEW BOOKS AROUND MACHEN No. 2
Life of Charlotte Brontë: Dale Nelson continues his survey of Machen’s favorite literature with a book the Apostle of Wonder read over twenty times.
NEW MACHEN STUDIES No. 43
What the Prebendary Saw: The original version of an seldom read, but excellent war story.
A Clever Study of the “Average Young Girl”: No writer quite realises his idea; the book as it is written is never quite so fine as the book as it was imagined; and so in a way the best literature makes a catalogue of splendid failures. But after all, this is according to the general scheme of the universe; it is the greatest saints who acknowledge that, after all, they are but miserable sinners. The man who can do a thing really well is always the man who knows that it should have been done a great deal better.
FAR OFF THINGS: The complete first volume of memoirs.
FICTION AND ESSAYS BY MACHEN
The Holy Things / Out of the Earth
Opening the Door / The Gift of Tongues
Word and Voice / The Matter of Romance
Ars Artium / Realism and Symbol
ARTICLES ON MACHEN AND HIS WORK
Why You Should Read Arthur Machen
Lewis, Tolkien… And Arthur Machen?
March 1st is the Feast of St David of Wales:
Meditation by Fr. Gabriel Rochelle
POETRY NEWS
Congratulations to Jesse K. Butler who has recently published poetry in the following journals: Ekstasis and Solum. Currently, Butler is working with Darkly Bright Press on his first volume of collected poetry entitled The Living Law.
The Tale of the Two Guides by Joshua Alan Sturgill
Phillip Neal Tippin concludes The Pilgrimage, Book II.
Among My Books: To my surprise some of the best stories of the year have come to my desk in the last week or ten days. I have been wondering since last February what had become—not of the masterpieces of fiction—but of the well written, well constructed tale, the book that showed cleverness at all events, if not genius.
NEW POETRY
Unconditional Conditions by Joshua Alan Sturgill
The Pilgrimage, Book II: Part 32 by Phillip Neal Tippin
Among My Books: Sound, too, is Lord Redesdale’s contention that the real things are done with pains and difficulty. Here is a doctrine very necessary for the present time, which has got into its silly head the falsehood that important things are to be secured easily, that, everything is to be gained without tears. It would be true to say that nothing is to be had without tears.
An early and obscure work: Sir Serjeant Ballantine
darklybrightpress.com 