The Quad – Summer 2014

he T

Summer 2014

uad Q Grove City College

The Quad Senior Editor Alice Hodgkins Junior Editor John Gordon Assistant Editor Laura Egan Department Editors Seth Mueller (Creative Nonfiction) Bethany Dzielski (Poetry) Rachel Lamine (Essays) Blake Denlinger (Book Reviews) Matthew Huff (Short Stories) Assistant Editors Rachel Pullen (Creative Nonfiction) Laura Egan (Poetry) Luke Sayers (Essays) Taryn Cole (Short Stories) Laura Storrs (Book Reviews) Art Director Louis Petolicchio Art Director’s Assistants Liesel DeFeo Mary Leone Rich Christman Abby Cliff Design and Layout Editor Chadwyck Cobb Design and Layout Assistants Abby Cliff Style Chief Sierra Davies Copy-Editors Nick Hiner Kaitlyn Scully Alicia Pollard Laura Storrs Tucker Sigourney Steven Fielding Distribution Chief Anna Kitchin Distribution Assistant Mary Leone Conundrums Tucker Sigourney Webmaster Jackie Dods Marketing Director Mia McMahon Faculty Advisor Dr. H. Collin Messer Editorial Advisory Board Dr. Joseph D. Augspurger, Dr. Daniel S. Brown, Dr. James G. Dixon III, Dr. Joshua F. Drake, Dr. Michael F. Falcetta, Dr. Gillis J. Harp, Dr. Charles E. Kriley, Dr. Julie C. Moeller, Dr. ­Jennifer A. Scott, Dr. Kevin S. Seybold Cover Art Richard Christman

Editors’ Note In March, our staff had the privilege of spending an evening with Christine Perrin, a poet and professor at Messiah College, as she spoke on the subject of reading as writers. Together we read through Robert Frost’s poem, “Mowing,” which is about taking joy not merely in the product or accomplishment, but in the tangible act doing of good work.

With this poem bubbling in our minds, and the coming rush of finals week looming, we readily noticed the way many of these pieces revolved around the import of action and obligation. Among the many fantastic pieces in this issue, Zack McClelland writes of duty without joy in “Kill Me, Colonel,” while John Hermesmann reminds us in “Morning” of the way the dread of a day and of its responsibilities takes ahold of us. Dr. Eric Potter reviews Billy Collins’ most recent collection of poems and discusses Collins’ own responsibility to the approachability of poetry.

Laura Young, one of our own Quad alumnae, reviews two books on food and the act of eating.

I have felt continually privileged to serve as editor this year, and to have been regularly humbled by all of our readers and contributors, who maintain such steadfast good faith in what the Quad aims to do. Moreover, I am grateful for the patience and trust which has been graciously extended to me by my co-editor, by Dr. Messer, and by our marvelous staff. It is with confidence that I am able to leave this publication in the highly able and talented hands of John and of Laura Egan, who will be taking on the responsibility as next year’s Junior Editor.

We hope that as you read through this summer issue you are reminded of the value of good work, and the ways in which it can transcend duty and become a bearer of grace.

Alice Hodgkins Senior Editor

John Gordon Junior Editor

Volume 6, Issue 4, Summer 2014 The Quad is published quarterly by students of Grove City College and funded by the college. The works in this magazine, however, do not necessarily represent the views of Grove City College, the editors, the advisor, or the editorial advisory board. The editors are responsible for the selection of articles; responsibility for opinions and accuracy of facts in articles published rests solely with the individual authors. The Quad grants permission for any original article to be photocopied for local use, provided that no more than 1,000 copies are made, are distributed at no cost, and The Quad is properly cited as the source.

Anyone may submit to The Quad. Pieces are selected through a blind submission process. Submissions must be sent to quad.submissions@gmail.com. Include what department you are submitting to, year, campus mailbox number (or address) with your name and use 12 pt Times New Roman font, double spaced; when citations are necessary, use Chicago style. Any rejected submissions which are not returned will be destroyed. Accepted submissions may be withdrawn at any time. Anyone interested in writing a review should contact the editors.

The Quad is available online at www2.gcc.edu/orgs/TheQuad

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VOLUME 6 ISSUE 4

No dream of the gift of idle hours Kill Me, Colonel

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Zack McClelland

Dinner’s at Six

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Laura Young

Same Sky

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Mary Pochatko

The Carpenters

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Troy Beaudry

Medievalism: Tennyson’s Revision of Malory

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Katie Koller

Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound The Lovely Aims of Billy Collins

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Dr. Eric Potter

Morning

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John Hermesmann

Chris Thile: the Man, the Myth, the Mandolin

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Jordan Carmichael

Sin Behind the Pulpit

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Bethany Dzielski

Oaths

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Dan Garner

Salem’s Last Confession

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Corrie McNulty

Conundrums 27

The Carpenters Troy Beaudry

We rose at dawn before the world awoke Hands splintered sore would slowly ease to life Between strong coffee sips sit curls of smoke And with still morning all the earth is rife.

Our hardened muscles handle wood like clay While hides of leather drink the sun’s crude oil Yet here and there this work reverts to play For one can only shoulder so much toil.

The weight of pine and fir sits burdensome On weary spines of sinew webbed and sore Yet calloused spirits lift till they are numb As fractured men returning home postwar.

The sawdust clings to dampened arms of flesh Like feathers hiding softer souls within For countless hours our seasoned lives enmesh Forsaking hurt and shielding deep chagrin.

And when the afternoon has come and gone And welcome evening crawls in ripe with red We pack our tools (for labor’s never done) And brace ourselves for journeys yet ahead.

Working as a carpenter’s assistant last summer, Troy Beaudry (’14) was called “Tony”, “Boy”, “Greg”, “Kid”, “Skip”, “New guy”, and “Tito” more often than “Troy”. He imagines it would have been different working with The Tender Carpenter.

Sin Behind the Pulpit Bethany Dzielski

P

am wasn’t your typical pastor’s wife. She hated bras, and never wore one in the house. She felt the same way about pants too, wearing an oversized t-shirt most of the time. Her favorite one said, “Retired size 6” across the chest. She grew up in a huge, loud Italian-American family, and still loved food and family more than anything — anything except for God, of course. At 60, her thinning dyed hair was three different colors. But it was better than her husband’s bald head or at least that’s what she told herself when she looked in the mirror. He looked like someone had placed a flesh colored bowl on his head, leaving the bottom hair to peek out, clinging for dear life.

After forty years of marriage there wasn’t much that Pam didn’t know about Bruce. She knew the way the mint foam leaked out of his mouth and down his chin when he brushed his teeth. She knew how he couldn’t sleep with his feet tucked in. And how he paced back and forth in the kitchen when he was coming up with next week’s sermon.

Years have a way of layering, she thought, like dust on her porcelain dolls in the attic.

It was evening on a Wednesday, Bruce’s day off. Pam lounged on the couch, and Bruce read his latest book, this one about miracles.

Pam had almost everything she wanted — her nowgrown daughter lived right next door with the two grandkids, her best friend was just down the street, and although the nondenominational church where Bruce was a pastor was small, with a congregation of only 30, it was enough to pay the bills. But she wasn’t happy. She was haunted by her past — by the brother who killed himself years ago, by the unborn child she’d aborted as a teen, but also by her present — by the growing apathy that hung in the air between her and Bruce. Their comfort was almost too comfortable, too distant. Pam wanted more intimacy — more sex even.

He may be a pastor, and they may be in their sixties, but they weren’t dead yet.

Pam looked at Bruce, watched as his eyes moved across the page, tracing an unseen thought. She sighed, and

grabbed the remote. “You don’t mind?” she asked him.

“It’s fine. Go ahead,” he said, barely looking up from the page.

A few minutes later, Chris Tomlin’s rendition of “How Great is Our God” started playing in the kitchen, from Bruce’s phone. He left his book and hurried to answer.

“Hello. Oh Hey, Eddie,” he answered. Eddie was one of the elders at the church. He and his wife Kim had followed the couple during a church split 10 years ago. Pam halflistened from her perch on the couch while she watched The Mentalist.

“Oh...Wait...No.” Bruce fumbled. Hurrying to the bathroom, and shutting the door firmly behind him. Click.

He even locked the door. He never locked the door.

Pam turned off the TV. Listened. She couldn’t make out his words, but his voice dripped with agitation, hinted at fear.

The phone call ended. Pam waited, staring at the bathroom door. Minutes passed, ticking away on the clock above the mantel.

Bruce opened the door abruptly, the sudden noise causing Pam to jump. He stared at his feet, moved and sat on the rocking chair, diagonal from Pam. Behind Bruce’s bifocals his eyes were red, swollen even. He wouldn’t make eye contact with her.

“What is it, Bruce?”

“That was Eddie.”

“Okay. So?” Eddie and Kim were close friends and church confidants. Eddie calling was anything but unusual.

“He said that if I don’t tell you then he will,” Bruce stared at the ketchup stain on the thigh of his jeans.

“Tell me what?” Pam’s body was rigid. Her heart pounding like a Native American drum underneath her oversized Notre Dame t-shirt.

A fresh wave of tears slid down Bruce’s cheeks. His voice cracked, dropping to a whisper as he said, “That Kim and I had an affair.”

The shock hit Pam like a tornado gust. That evening’s

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lasagna fought the brownies for an exit in her gut. Pam bristled, burned, exploded. “You asshole!” She screamed, chucking the TV remote across the room. It hit the wall and shattered, sending batteries flying back at her.

“When?” she managed, swallowing back tears.

“It was twelve years ago, when we were still at Living Grace Church,” he muttered. This time looking at her, squinting, causing wrinkles to appear around his eyes.

Pam couldn’t hold it in any longer. Tears exploded from her eyes. She heaved for breath.

He moved to sit next to her.

She sprang up, revolted. “Leave. I mean it. Get out!”

She screamed.

He obeyed. Grabbed his coat off the hook by the back door and allowed the screen door to slam behind him. Not even bothering to close the actual door.

For a while, Pam sat in silence as reality crashed into her again and again. Her emotions and her body swayed like small fishing boat caught in a hurricane. She held her gut, and willed the storm to calm. “Jesus, help,” she whimpered.

After twenty minutes passed, Pam wiped her eyes and blew her nose for the third time. She grabbed a Coke from the fridge, and a medicine bottle from the cabinet. She washed down her sleeping pill with carbonated resignation.

She sighed, collapsed into bed. Alone.

The sun rose and fell three times. Pam didn’t shower, didn’t put on a bra, and certainly didn’t leave the house, barely getting out of bed to let their chocolate lab outside to do his business.

On the third day she found herself in the living room.

In the same spot where she’d heard the news. She picked up an old photo album that happened to be resting on the side table. The album started the day Bruce and her first met — they were smiling strangers then. Young and stupid, sinful, before they found Jesus. They were at a waterfall, for a party – a drunken brawl with lots of weed. Pam still remembered what weed smelled like, and the giddy vagueness that would swallow her then. She could use some weed

Summer 2014

now. “Jesus, help me,” she whispered again.

She flipped the page, tears again pooling on her cheeks. The next photos were of their wedding. Bruce’s hair was long then, and so was hers. Long and thick and beautiful. But even the wedding photos brought up bad memories — of how she’d found out soon afterward that Bruce had fathered a child with another woman — a girl really — it happened on Bruce’s prom night. And this after Pam had just aborted Bruce’s baby, ridding herself of his unwanted offspring. He would have been 41 this year, the baby she’d aborted. But, she wasn’t the same woman she was then, and Bruce wasn’t the same man he had been those many years ago. At least, that’s what she had thought.

Pam returned the photo album to its place with a shrug and picked up her smart phone which was on the coffee table.

She should call Bruce, she thought, stroking her phone with her thumb. He’d left her messages. He’d been living in a hotel for three days. He’d called the Ramseys, their “bishops” of sorts, though they weren’t really bishops, because their church was nondenominational. They were on the first plane out of Raleigh, North Carolina. They were going to rescue the church and hopefully their marriage.

She dialed the familiar number.

“Hello,” he answered, sounding like a lost puppy.

“We’ll talk at the church when the Ramseys get here at six,” she announced, then hung up quickly. Just hearing his voice made her heart pound. She checked the time on her phone: 3 pm. It was time to shower.

They met at the church. It was a long white building with a short steeple at the top of a hill, with only one way up — a gravel road. The conference room consisted of a long oval table, surrounded by eight swivel-chairs. There were no windows, but the walls were adorned with several religious paintings. The room was ordinarily used for elders’ meetings or prayer meetings, but today it was a war room. Pam sat with her arms folded. Bruce directly across from her, eyes averted, and Jan and Dale Ramsey on either side. Jan and Dale were the younger couple, by ten years or so, but the clerical and spiritual power that they held

The Quad

in church circles greatly outweighed their years. Dale was a heavy set man with small rim glasses, which made him look like he was constantly squinting. Jan was overweight too, though not as much. She always wore something from her large collection of polka dotted dresses and a heavy musk that reminded Pam of the flower arrangements at funerals.

They questioned Bruce first. Where? What? When?

How? Pam barely listened to the answers, staring at a painting of Jesus hanging above Bruce’s head instead. Jesus was rejected, she thought. He went through a lot of pain.

Honestly, at that moment she’d rather take the crown of thorns — heaven help her.

Then, Dale turned to Pam. “Pam,” he said gingerly, placing his hand on her arm. She jerked away, instinctively.

“Would you like to tell us how you feel?”

How she feels? She could barely process the question.

She felt like a pile of boulders had trapped her beneath them. Like she was the only human being on a deserted island, trapped under a pile of rocks, and to make it worse, a thunderstorm had just started rumbling in the distance.

“Alone,” she said, pausing. “Betrayed. Afraid. Angry.”

She paused again, looking back at Jesus’s face — imagining his humiliation. “What gets me the most is that he let me think I was crazy — for years I was convinced that he and Kim were having an affair. I confronted him several times about it, and he denied it.” She paused, letting it sink in to their Mona Lisa faces. “I told my friends. No one believed me. They all thought I was crazy. I thought I was crazy,” she whispered the last sentence.

Over the course of the next two hours it all came out.

Bruce’s illegitimate child, Pam’s abortion, Pam’s brother’s suicide, even the weed and booze. Decades of secrets were laid out on the table, like freshly cut slabs of beef. Pam didn’t like it. Why do all my secrets need to come out? I’m not the one who cheated, she thought. Yet, somehow having it all laying out there, rotting, it at least seemed real, seemed manageable.

They took a snack break. Some donuts and coffee. The Ramseys talked in hushed voices in the hallway. Bruce sat in the corner of the room, swirling his coffee with his pinky.

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He looked like he was smaller, Pam thought. Like he’d lost weight or shrunk somehow since the last time she’d seen him. Pam willed that the vanilla-filled, chocolate covered donut she was eating would swallow her. That when she swallowed its sugary contents it would somehow turn her into a donut — the best kind of donut. The donut that everyone wanted.

More questions. More answers. More talking. Pam still stared at Jesus. Come off that cross, she thought. You’re my savior, so come off that cross and save me.

It was decided that Eddie and Kim would be instructed to tell the church on Sunday that they were leaving because they were moving, or because they felt called to go to a different church. Whatever it was, it wasn’t the truth — at least not the whole truth. Pam could not believe that the Ramsey’s would ask Eddie and Kim to lie. But then, she never thought her God-fearing husband of forty years would commit adultery.

The church wouldn’t have to know about the scandal, they said. Maybe I want them to, Pam thought. Some would know. They would find out in trickles. Trickles that turned into streams that turned into oceans. Oceans that just might sweep the sand right out from under them. It was better if everyone was just told the truth up front, she thought.

As the evening drew on, Pam found herself looking at Bruce. Looking at the skin tag under his left eye and the freckle on his nose. Bruce was saying something now. Pam focused on his lips.

“Pam. I know that this doesn’t make it better. But, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I love you. I hate it that I’ve hurt you. I know that things haven’t been the best these past few years.

But I want to make it right.” He looked deep into her eyes.

She couldn’t look away. For the umpteenth time that week, tears leaked from her eyes.

“How can I ever trust you again?” She whimpered.

“I don’t know,” he said, hanging his head.

“I don’t know either.” She turned away, starring at the blue carpet.

“Pam. Pam. . .” He walked around the table and knelt

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beside her chair, grabbing her hand. “Pam, I’ll do anything.

We can get counseling. I’ll give up the church. I’ll do anything, if you just say you’ll give me a second chance. Please, let me come home.”

“No.” She said, pulling her hands away. “One day, I may forgive you — with the Lord’s help. But today is not that day.” She took one more glance up at Jesus. Smiled.

Grabbed her purse and walked out. But not before saying, “Oh, and you will tell the church the truth… If you don’t , then I will.”Q This semester Bethany (’14) has been blown away by the reality that Jesus died not only for our sins but also for our shame. She knows now that her identity is not in her past mistakes or even in her calling but only in Christ.

Same Sky Mary Pochatko

A breath of air, an ocean away where reminiscent tendrils snake through lotus blossoms, ripe with honey-sweet memories, rose colored pipe dreams among longing dewdrops which artfully lie poised for their delicious adherence to gravity.

Self-serving, desperate gulps of air pregnant with spring.

A sea, a pinprick penetrates the waves, a ray breaks through the last bottle on the shelf.

Adequate, the clear, cool liquid illuminates, shimmering south and breathing brushstrokes, faint – the back of the throat.

Iolaire seductively mull, cradles, nudges the roof.

Once more to the mountains, mist-strewn and enveloping.

Hair blown back, cascading joyously golden down the bronze, sapphires collide with diamond studded lapis lazuli, as the pearls reflect the moonglow.

The constant universe.

Mary Pochatko (’14): My youngest sister once forgot my middle name, so the rest of my sisters and I took it upon ourselves to convince her that it is “Racecar”, when it is, in fact, Helen. We are now in agreement that H-e-l-e-n spells Racecar.

The Lovely Aims of Billy Collins Dr. Eric Potter

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n the wake of the attacks on September 11th, a journal- Like the cover illustration of his new book, which depicts ist asked then-poet-laureate, Billy Collins, what people a retriever riding an old-fashioned, red-wheeled tricycle, should read. He replied, “The Psalms.” A surprising an- Collins loves to take common things (dog, tricycle, sky) and swer, and an endearing one from a poet whose poems have combine them in uncommon ways so as to surprise and endeared him to many readers. So many readers in fact that delight. when the cover of his newest book touts it as a New York Such combinations often contribute to the humor for Times bestseller, it is not advertising hyperbole: his books which Collins is known. Sometimes that humor comes have, in fact, sold over a million copies. What makes for in the form of a literary joke, as in the poem, “Looking this marked popularity, especially at for a Friend in a Crowd of Arriving Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems a time when the general audience for Passengers: A Sonnet,” which repeats

by Billy Collins poetry seems low? Perhaps it is Collins’s the line, “Not John Whalen,” thirteen New York: Random House, 2013 use of ordinary language or his convertimes and ends with the line: “John sational tone or the imaginative twists his poems take or Whalen.” More typical than this poem-as-stunt is the their sly humor. humor one finds in “The Sandhill Cranes of Nebraska,” Collins, who has written ten books of poetry, displays which lies in the situation and in the wry observations the all of these qualities in his newest, Aimless Love: New and speaker makes about himself and human experience. The Selected Poems, which combines work from four previous poem begins with the speaker arriving in Nebraska only to volumes, all published since 2000, with more than fifty new be told he had missed the “astonishing spectacle” of the poems. In this work, he generally avoids rhyme and meter, sandhill cranes “feeding and even dancing on the shores of and he rarely employs traditional forms (except to parody the Platte River.” Everywhere he goes, whether Georgia or them on occasion). He does not offer a dense texture of Vermont, he has always just missed something spectacular sound, his use of figurative language is sparing, and he (the azaleas, the fall color), so that he concludes that such avoids the kind of densely symbolic, highly allusive poetry wonders only occur when he is “apparently off / in another of the high modernist tradition. When he does make al- state, stuck in a motel lobby / with the local paper and a lusions, they are generally available to the lay reader who Styrofoam cup of coffee, / busily missing God knows what.” mostly stayed awake in high school English. Most striking, Collins often focuses his humor on writing, language, perhaps, he avoids several hallmarks of much contemporary and the role of the poet. In “Tension,” for example, he poetry, which make it difficult to understand, such as the mocks bad writers who use the word “suddenly” in an use of discontinuous syntax and the kind of verbal play that effort to create tension. Similarly in “A Word About Tranmakes for a glittering, though often impenetrable, poetic sitions,” he satirizes the poor use of transitions by using surface. By contrast, his poems make so much sense that transitions poorly, as in his second stanza, which reads, they have been accused of being prose paragraphs chopped “Secondly should not be placed / at the opening of your into lines. second stanza.” More typical are poems in which he is very While Collins would argue for the cadence and integ- conscious of his role as poet. In “If This Were a Job I’d Be rity of his lines, his speakers do use plain language in a tone Fired,” he wakes up feeling uninspired; in such situations, that is conversational without being breezy or overly seri- he explains, he turns to other poets “to get [himself] goous. The speakers are honest, observant, and, often, funny. ing” only to find that their examples make him feel like

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he should change jobs. By the poem’s end, however, he is heading out “for a walk / around the lake to think of a new career,” and then he adds, but not before I told you all about it in well, look at this, five quatrains— better than nothing for a weekday, I thought, as I headed merrily out the door.

If his pervasive humor can make Collins seem like the class clown among poets, his joking might also seem like an effort to mask pain. Running through his poetry, though, is an awareness of mortality. In “Obituaries” this awareness affects everything that he sees. The poem begins by reflecting wryly on the habit of reading the obituaries first, though the speaker decides that it is the best way “to place a thin black frame / around the things of the morning.”

The frame serves as constant reminder of death’s presence as well as a way to heighten our awareness of the things of the world. Later in the poem, the speaker imagines the dead paired off and entering “an ark of death,” though there are so many dead there would have “to be many arks / an armada to ferry the dead.” If the presence of death can overwhelm, it can also make the things of the world more precious. In “American Airlines #317,” for example, the speaker describes a flight to Los Angeles. As the plane begins its “final descent,” he recognizes that the “world might terminate or begin afresh again,” nevertheless, he acknowledges that although “life’s end [is] just around another corner or two,” the earth continues to offer life and beauty: “yet out the morning window / the thrust of a new blossom from that bush / whose colorful name I can never remember.” (Even here the humor of the last line prevents the emotion from edging into sentimentality.)

Despite his enormous popularity, Collins is not without his critics. Some, in fact, have faulted him for being too popular; after all, if a work is popular it must not be serious.

Others fault him for being too accessible. For them, a poem whose sense can be paraphrased is suspect, since they view that kind of sense as unnecessary and very likely oppressive in the way it reinforces patriarchal hegemony. Collins’s

take on accessibility is quite helpful. As he explained in an interview, “I think accessible just means that the reader can walk into the poem without difficulty.” For him the “real question” is “getting the reader into the poem and then taking the reader somewhere because I think of poetry as a kind of form of travel writing.” One such journey occurs in “Central Park” where the reader enters a familiar place, the carousel in central park. The speaker approaches the carousel, but, rather than riding it, he reads a sign about how the carousel “was first designed to be powered / by a blind mule, as it turned out, strapped to the oar of a wheel in an earthen / room directly below the merry turning of the carousel.” The more he contemplates this information, the more his view of his situation and surroundings changes, though nothing else around him responds to this startling revelation. As he thinks about the mule in its underground chamber, he recognizes a “blind mule within” himself and is led to pity and song. The poem ends, “Poor blind beast, I sang softly as I left the park, / poor blind me, poor blind earth turning blindly on its side.”

As with any poet whose work you read in bulk, there are times when Collins’s poems cloy. “There’s Billy,” you’re inclined to say, “up to his old tricks again.” But then along comes a poem that possesses all his endearing qualities: his ability to combine the common in uncommon ways, his awareness of words and writing, his humorous perspectives, and his capacity for serious emotion in the face of sorrow.

Reading it, you are reminded again of why you keep returning to his work. “The Names” is one such poem. Dedicated to “the victims of September 11th and their survivors,” it opens with the poet lying awake, seeing the names in the “silver glaze on the windows.” He begins saying them alphabetically, one for each letter. In the morning he still finds them, seeing them “among thousands of flowers” each with a name: “Fiori inscribed on a yellow petal / Then Gonzales and Han, Ishikawa and Jenkins.” The names are everywhere he looks: “written in the air” and “under a photograph taped to a mailbox,” in the woods, in the “pale sky” and “blown over the earth and out to sea.” They are

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still there in the evening, “outlined on the rose clouds” and he continues to read them, “Vanacore and Wallace, / (let X stand, if it can, for the ones unfound) / Then Young and Ziminsky, the final jolt of Z.” The names are everywhere and in everything, and they do not stop. “So many names,” he says in the final line, “there is barely room on the walls of the heart.” Q

Eric Potter is a professor of English at Grove City College, where since 2000 he has taught courses in American literature, modern poetry, and creative writing. His poems have appeared in such journals as The Christian Century, First Things, and 32 Poems, and he has published two poetry chapbooks, Heart Murmur and Still Life. He lives in Grove City with his wife and three children.

Kill me, Colonel Zack McClelland

Have you ever fought the bore of a gutted battle? Spears without. Men and women within circles— no enemy.

Trained and savvy, pitted by ghosts and landmines.

Suited fools. Meandering. Give us war! Blood, skin, a gun to pinch hearts.

Death to cheap songs and bad instruction. Hail, sir!

Sign my grave. Take us home—stiff trophies of your line. The drained, lost array.

Zack is a sophomoric troop of the English Regiment, but has not battled in any wars.

However, he has fought the bore of a gutted battle. Special salute to Troy, Dan and H.

Oaths

Dan Garner Youths are full of oaths. They sound Like Never again or Until death do us part, But enter their rooms and you’ll find bottles Swept under dust ruffles and fallback plans Scribbled on sticky-notes next to phones That were once The Next Best Thing.

Imagination lacks all conviction. And we Imagine everything, we youths. But when The contract doesn’t come, the concert stages Fade to automated water bills and dirty diapers, When we’ve done the same thing so many Times there isn’t any beauty in it, like a pianist Beating The Entertainer before his shift At Panda Palace, the promise cannot hold.

After all, we were not told, we did not Understand that all is not sex and smiles And moonlit fantasies. The old men Sit and sigh and tell us to hold fast, to hold On for they’ve been there too, all the while Mourning the moment of their becoming.

Dreams are no more than premature coffins.

Chrysanthemums rot while teethers are discarded And carved granite presumes that perhaps An oath made in ignorance is no oath at all.

Dan Garner ’14 declines to submit a bio.

Salem’s Last Confession Corrie McNulty

amned inconvenience, if you ask me.”

“Why is it an inconvenience, Salem?”

“I just put my own space on the market. What’s a thing like that going to do for my property value? And all I’ve got now is rubberneckers, stopping by to see the circus. If it isn’t them, it’s the police.”

The two men sat in large leather armchairs, a wooden end table with a bowl of peppermints between them. The one nodded his head and leaned slightly toward the other, but Salem only sat idly, his hands empty. In the fluorescent lighting, he was so pale and thin that he looked like a pile of dry bones propped up in his chair. It smelled like dead mouse under a heavy cloud of freshly-sprayed Febreeze.

“Do the police come by often, Salem?”

“Now and then. I keep telling them I don’t know anything.” He rarely spoke. When he did, words pressed from him in strings, like meat through a grinder. But this topic had him going. “No, I didn’t know her well. No, we weren’t friends. Doesn’t mean we were hostile toward each other. We just weren’t friends. No, I don’t know if she had enemies. We weren’t friends, remember? I’m just trying to sell my townhouse.”

The other man nodded, his head bobbing like a marionette.

“So you didn’t know her at all?”

Salem spread his hands open on his lap. “I knew her as well as you know the person who lives next door.”

“You never spoke to her?”

“Sure, I spoke to her. She lived next door.” His right toes started tapping slowly. “She had the corner townhouse.

Big bay window. I used to see her through that window eating her dinner.” The tapping stopped. “Wonder if that townhouse’ll be on the market now.”

“What was she like, Salem?”

Salem took a peppermint from the bowl on the table and twisted the two ends of the plastic until the mint came free. He set it on his tongue. “I’ve said I didn’t know her. She

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spot, you know—and she had it all decorated. I could see through that bay window.”

“What would you talk to her about?”

“This and that.” The peppermint wrapper crinkled like static on a radio. “We’d talk at the mailboxes sometimes.”

“And what would you—” “You know she got that house practically for free, even though she had that big bay window and the corner spot?

It was an inheritance.”

“Does that upset you, Salem?”

“Well, I just don’t think it’s fair, is all. Why should I pay so much more than her when hers is clearly nicer? And on top of that, she never even ran her heat—she just let mine seep through the vents and keep her house warm.”

“Did she tell you about her heat?”

“No.” The peppermint wrapper crinkled again. “I’ve got foundation troubles now—after that earthquake, you know. Shook some cracks into the concrete. Did you feel that earthquake?”

“Yes, I felt it.”

“Knocked my power out for a few hours too. Must have been a tree down somewhere. Which reminds me—that’s another thing. It used to be there was some kind of fruit tree in her yard with big branches that would shade my window, but then one day, I come home from work and she’s cut the damned thing down. Said it didn’t make any fruit. But do you think she asked me about cutting it down?

I call that just plain rude.”

The two men sat in silence now. The one waited to see if any more words would come, but Salem’s stream was done.

“What do you do for a living, Salem?”

He leaned forward, his forearms resting on his knees.

He cupped his hands and tapped his fingertips together.

“I’m an actor.”

“What sort of acting?”

“This and that.” It wasn’t a subject that interested

owned that townhouse is all. It’s a real nice house—corner

Salem.

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“Do you have family?”

“Not much.”

Silence again. Tiny sounds that might have otherwise gone unnoticed seemed to overtake the room—a ticking clock on the wall, Salem’s fingertips quickly tapping together, and from somewhere far-away—music.

“What was it that brought you here today, Salem?”

He gave a wily child’s grin. “What brings anyone here?”

“Is anything in particular weighing on you?”

“I’ll tell you what’s weighing on me. It’s this business about the townhouse. Doesn’t seem right to me.”

“What doesn’t seem right to you?”

Salem shifted in his seat, leaning toward the other man with a zealot’s intensity. “The prices! I’m talking about the prices! Me paying what I paid and her getting that corner spot for practically nothing. I work hard for mine, and she’s just carried on by, big bay window and all. I’d kill for a space like that at the price she paid.”

“What is it that bothers you in particular, Salem?”

“It’s the injustice!”

“It’s unjust because of the cost difference?”

“It’s unjust because of the principle of it! Why should that house be so freely given to her?”

“Freely given?”

And there was silence again.

“Well, I suppose it wasn’t really free, was it?” Salem said slowly. “It had its price, in the end.” He didn’t look at the other man. Instead, he studied a painting on the wall above the door—an image of a hen gathering her chicks under her wings. “I used to see her at that dinner table through the window,” he said, eyes still fixed on the painting. “I’d throw little stones sometimes, right at the window, just because I could. Just because I could see her there eating at that table, where I couldn’t go, no matter how much I paid.

So I’d throw stones sometimes—not big ones, only little pebbles—and run away before she’d see.”

“Salem, it sounds to me like you threw those stones because you—” “No, no. There wasn’t any meaning to it. I just threw them because I saw them on the ground and I saw her in

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that big bay window at her table and I wanted to.” A tiny ant crawled across the wooden floor as he spoke. Salem tried to smash it with his heel, but when he lifted his foot, it wiggled to life and began crawling again. He crushed it with his toe instead. This time, it did not move. “So be it,” he said.

The clock chimed the quarter hour mark, ending on an unresolved note. The other man watched Salem’s movements with a practiced eye. He chose not to speak.

“Listen,” Salem said, “I’ll tell you what it was like.” He leaned back and dug his fingernail into the leathery flesh of the chair’s arm. “It happened right before the earthquake.

No one noticed at first, you know, because of the darkness— from the power outage. But then suddenly, pop! Up come the lights and there was that big bay window, all smashed through and the curtain torn right down. And what a sight it was—that body on the dining room table, right where she’d been slaughtered, looking like a gutted lamb, blood running from her like a garden fountain. You can bet that keeps some neighbors up at night.” There was a hole in the arm now where he’d dug his nail.

“And what about you, Salem? Does it keep you up, too?”

Salem didn’t answer. Nor did he smile. He looked at the other man in blind confusion.

“It wasn’t me who did it, Father. It wasn’t me who killed her. I didn’t even know her.”

“Where does your guilt come from, Salem? Why have you come to me?”

“Guilt? I don’t have any guilt. You’re absolving me of it. Isn’t that how it works?” he said, standing up to face the other man. “Tell me how many Hail Marys I have to say and pray your prayer of blessing over me and let’s be done with it.” He held out a hand in expectation.

“You’ve made no confession, Salem.” The man uncrossed his legs, but did not stand. “You can’t be absolved of your sin until you confess it.”

“What’s that?” Salem looked past the man to the stained glass window above the large oak desk where Christ stood, arms outstretched in welcome, hands opened in

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pardon. “What sin? I’ve a clear conscience.”

“Salem—” The man stood up to stop him, the wings of his robe spreading wide.

“I’ve got a tour coming through my townhouse in an hour.” He was already in the doorway. “Damned inconvenience, if you ask me.”

Faint strands of music could now be heard more clearly through the open doorway. Out in the sanctuary, the choir was practicing for Saturday night’s program. Their song arose from that distant chancel, voices ascending like angels returning to Heaven.

“But when for our poor sakes He died A willing Priest, by love subdued, The soldier’s spear transfixed His side— Forth flowed the water and the Blood.

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Beneath the winepress of God’s wrath, To save our souls from endless pains, Still hour by hour His Blood pours forth Till not a single drop remains.”

The priest stood on the threshold of his office searching for a retreating figure, but Salem was nowhere to be found in that holy place. He turned away and shut the door, winged sleeves heavy at his side.

Corrie McNulty (‘14) is a Middle Level Education major who does her best writing while her sixth graders are at gym class. Just don’t tell her student teaching supervisor.

Dinner’s at Six:

Feeding the Body, Nourishing the Soul Laura Young

T

he Saturday after I moved into my first apartment, I happiness as eaters” (7). Why the need for such encoursat on my bed with three cookbooks strewn around agement? Do we not already eat “food”? Pollan argues that me, meticulously scanning the recipes for meals that would the key components of the typical American diet are not be easy to make after a long day at work. I decided on a actually food, but artificially engineered “food products.” basic chili which should feed friends that stopped by that Therefore in the following sections, he outlines the history evening and make lunches for the coming and consequences of the Western world’s In Defense of Food: week. How hard could it be? rapidly changing diet and suggests eating, An Eater’s Manifesto.

That afternoon, I crossed the threshold cooking, and shopping habits to combat

by Michael Pollan of the grocery store, armed with my shopthe negative health effects of an increasingly Penguin Books, 2009 ping list on my phone and completely oversimplified diet. whelmed by the unfamiliar aisles. I texted my mother no Pollan uses the advent of the Lipid Hypothesis and the less than ten times, asking questions like: “Ground beef or subsequent low-fat diet craze as his prime example. “The ground turkey? What’s the difference between garlic powder most important nutrition campaign,” he writes, “has been and garlic salt? HOW CAN I FEED PEOPLE CHILI TO- the thirty-year effort to reform the food supply and our eatNIGHT WHEN I CAN’T FIND CHILI POWDER?” ing habits in light of…the idea that dietary fat is responsible A few months later, I’ve started to improvise a little for chronic disease” (40). The result, however, created more and step away from the written recipes. Sometimes this harm than good. He cites a 2001 study which concludes has turned out well, and sometimes it…hasn’t. As I’ve that trans fats, which low-fat diet proponents supported as begun to navigate this world of cooking and hosting, to a substitute for saturated fat, is in fact the only dietary fat engage the permanent task of feeding myself and others, strongly associated with heart disease; and, in fact, total levI’ve found myself asking a key question: If health is more els of fat in the diet do not seem to affect the risk of heart than maintaining a full stomach and trim waistline, what disease as much as the ratio between types of fat.1 Further, does it mean to eat well? How can I nourish myself and my instead of decreasing total fat consumption, the average guests in our fast-paced culture of tight budgets, increasing American only ate more of other foods (usually carbohygrocery prices, and disordered eating habits?

Michael Pollan and Shauna Niequist address these questions, arriving at similar conclusions through vastly different styles. Together, they paint a picture of our collective eating disorder, explore the ideas and events which created this cultural landscape, and point the way forward towards healthy bodies and nourished souls.

In the introduction to In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, Michael Pollan distills his entire message into seven short words of advice: “Eat food. Not too much.

Mostly plants” (1). He offers this advice with the goal of empowering his readers to “reclaim [their] health and

drates). This trend, which began in the 1970s, may well be the cause of the current obesity and diabetes problem (50).

Why does all this talk of fats, carbohydrates, and proteins matter? A food industry focused on controlled, mass-produced products “has ushered a new creature onto the world stage: the human being who manages to be both overfed and undernourished, two characteristics seldom found in the same body in the long natural history of our species” (122). All the measuring of grams and counting of calories has not in fact made us a healthier society—neither 1 Frank B. Hu, et al., “The Types of Dietary Fat and Risk of Coronary Heart Disease” A Critical Review.” Journal of the American College of Nutrition, Vol. 20, 1, 5-19 (2001).

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in body nor in soul.

Pollan traces our cultural problem with food to a movement known as nutritionism, which he defines as “the widely shared but unexamined assumption [that foods] are essentially the sum of their nutrient parts” (28). This idea became official government policy in 1973, when the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) revised their regulations on imitation foods so that as long as a product had “the same quantities of recognized nutrients” as the natural food, it could be marketed without the “imitation” label (35). For example, rather than instructing American consumers to eat less red meat (a statement which could destroy a whole sector of the food industry), the FDA instead encouraged them to eat less fat—an invisible particle benign to the industry as a whole. This reduction of food to its nutrient parts results in a sort of dualism in which carbs, proteins, and fats are pitted endlessly against one another. It is no wonder that our food culture “is bound to promote food fads and phobias and large abrupt swings of the nutritional pendulum” (31). The dualist—and almost gnostic—nature of nutritionism causes Pollan to go so far as to label nutritionism an ideology which relies on the “quasireligious idea [that] the visible world is not the one that really matters, [and] to enter a world where your dietary salvation depends on unseen nutrients, you need plenty of expert help” (28).

Pollan links this ideological development to three key factors. First, food is so abundant in America that we take a good meal for granted. Second, our Puritan ancestors’ stereotypical disdain for sensual pleasure and carnal appetites create a cultural attitude of indifference to the foods that bring us pleasure. Third, he suggests that in the American cultural melting pot, the decision to base food choices on scientific rationality depletes food of ethnic significance so that nutritionism becomes a subtle defense mechanism to push for Americanization and “moralize about other people’s choices without seeming to do so” (58). However we got to this point, Americans are arguably unable to enjoy food. Pollan cites a study performed by psychologist Paul Rozin in which he showed the words “chocolate cake”

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to groups of American and French eaters, asking them to respond with their first word association. “Guilt” was the majority response among Americans; among the French, “celebration.” Our distanced, fearful, and shame-based relationship to food disconnects us not only from our bodies, but from the human experience at large.

Finally, Pollan dedicates his last section to a list of suggestions for changing one’s shopping (and eating) habits.

They include things like: Don’t eat foods with more than 5 ingredients, or ingredients that you can’t pronounce. Eat slowly and with other people. Avoid foods that make health claims. Pay more money for quality ingredients, and eat less of them. Shake the hand that grows your food (e.g., shop at farmer’s markets and use a CSA subscription) when at all possible. Each suggestion is relatively accessible so that while it may not be possible to implement all of them at any given time, the ideas taken as a whole create a framework for thoughtful cooking.

While I found Pollan’s writing style to be grating and hyperbolic at times,2 and I have not completely reformed my shopping habits after reading In Defense of Food, Pollan’s manifesto has made me more conscious of what I put into my body. I read ingredient lists now, not just the packaging descriptions. I decide when I am satisfied by how my body feels, not by how much is left on a plate. I put my phone down and taste my food. Food is becoming not so much an inconvenient necessity, but a means to tell a story. In that context, eating well means eating foods that are rich and vibrant, full of character and connected to relationships.

In Bread & Wine: A Love Letter to Life around the Table, Shauna Niequist illustrates through story and lived experience the cultural themes which Michael Pollan reports.

“My prayer,” she writes, “is that you’ll read these pages first curled up on your couch…and then after that you’ll bring it to the kitchen with you, turning corners of pages, breaking the spine, spilling red wine on it, and splashing vinegar across the pages, that it will become battered and stained as you cook and chop and play, music loud and kitchen messy” (10). Bread & Wine uniquely blends essay, 2 For example: “What the Soviet Union was to the ideology of Marxism, the Low-Fat Campaign is to the ideology of nutritionism” (41).

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spiritual memoir, and cookbook—a story and a reflection, followed by a story-related recipe—to highlight the sacredness of meals around the table, “[t]he particular alchemy of celebration and food, of connecting people and serving what I’ve made with my own hands, [which] comes together as more than the sum of their parts” (13). Just as food cannot be broken down into its nutrient parts without losing some essential element, the experience of a meal cannot be dissected to just the company, solely the wine, or only the entrée and dessert.

Why are nourishment of body and soul so inextricably linked? Niequist explains, “Food is the starting point, the common ground, the thing to hold and handle, the currency we offer to one another…Food is a language of care […and] food is what we offer in celebration” (14). Nearly all major life occasions are accompanied by meals: a birthday dinner, a wedding banquet, a pizza for the friends who assist in a move, a casserole left on the doorstep of new parents or soup on the back porch of the bereaved. Food is a universal language that communicates two countercultural statements: “I am needy,” and “I see you.”

In a culture where we try to do it all and be it all for everyone all the time, meals give us three chances a day to stop and pay attention to the needs we pretend we don’t have. Niequist writes, “To feed one’s body, to admit one’s hunger, to look one’s appetite straight in the eye without fear or shame—that is controversial work” (36). Not only that, but in times of stress our physical appetites (or lack thereof) often point to deeper, unrealized needs. In a later chapter, she reflects on an extended period of travel away from her family when she observed that as exhaustion and homesickness intensified, so did her appetites for comfort foods: “I could see by the way I was eating that my need to be fed was growing quickly into a way to nourish and love parts of myself that were frayed and starving…I was so tired I could only hear really loud music and taste really loud flavors—more, more, more” (69). Sometimes paying attention to our hunger—and satisfying it as we need, not as we crave—is the first step in tending to the needs of our whole self.

Summer 2014

If feeding ourselves is about acknowledging our own needs, feeding others is a way to honor the needs of others.

This, Niequist writes, is the heart of hospitality: “[C]reating space for someone to feel seen and heard and loved. It’s about declaring your table a safe zone, a place of warmth and nourishment. Part of that, then, is honoring the way God made our bodies, and feeding them in the ways they need to be fed” (114). Truly hosting a guest is not about competition, comparison, or entertainment; it is wholly about the needs of that guest. Hospitality may be as simple as combining the guests’ favorite flavors, or as challenging as creating a menu within the parameters of their dietary restrictions. Regardless of the challenge, making space at the table opens space in the hearts of host and guests alike for the intimacy which every person craves.

The one recipe in the book that may fully embody the core of hospitality is the magical white bean soup. Vegan, dairy-free, gluten-free, inexpensive, filling, and delicious—it truly lives up to its name. Magical. I made this soup for the first time in the middle of February on a weekend when I was home alone with the worst case of winter blues and Holly Golightly’s mean reds. I dragged myself from my bed to make this soup as a desperate attempt to create with my hands and get out of my own head. While the beans simmered, I curled strips of parmesan and ribbons of prosciutto. When I fell asleep that night, warm and satisfied to the core, the smell of rosemary lingered on my fingertips.

The next evening, my roommates returned home and a friend stopped by just to chat. Then another, and another, until we six sat around the table, all weary and hungry in our own ways. I put the soup back on the stove and prepared another plate of garnishes. “We’re not that fancy around here,” they snickered, but they stopped teasing when they tasted the balsamic vinaigrette against the soup.

We talked and laughed, releasing the load of our long week and the brutal winter for just a few minutes.

That is what hospitality does: It lifts the burdens of our individual lives and draws us together around our common needs for nourishment, for intimacy, for celebration, for comfort. Food can be the catalyst for all those things in our

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lives and communities.

In the end, the only way these things become fully possible, where our physical needs link to our spiritual needs, is if we allow our kitchen table (or cafeteria booth, or TV tray) to mirror the Eucharistic table. At both tables, we bring ourselves in all our need and are fed. We receive the strength and the grace to carry on our daily tasks. When we connect the reality of these two tables, then each meal becomes a moment to connect with God as provider and savior. It brings God’s goodness into the midst of our busyness and our mess. It allows the reality of a healed and sacred life to permeate our everyday, fragmented existence.

We live in a culture that teaches us that food is a necessary evil which we should associate with shame, fear, guilt, and weakness. We can embrace a better way: If we take a chance and come to the table, and if when we are there we are treated with respect and esteem and

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kindness, then that voice of shame recedes, just for a little while, enough to let the voice of truth, or hope, or Christ himself, get planted a little deeper and a little deeper each time. The table becomes a hospital bed, the place of healing. It becomes the place of relearning and reeducating, the place where love and value are communicated. (251) So, put down your backpack. Find a friend who’s been running too hard for too long. Tell them dinner is at six, and go eat food. Q

Laura Young ’13 will choose a slice of fresh baguette over dessert. Her favorite flavors are lemon, basil, cilantro, and coconut.

Morning

John Hermesmann

What stirs me each morn is neither Radiant sun nor birdsong sweet But innocent espresso sent to slaughter – Martyred for the cause of 100 mg caffeine.

The merciless battery-powered pulses Take no prisoners.

Their end signals My beginning.

They cry.

I rise.

Morning has broken.

Broken, too, the notion that Senseless sleep is to be preferred.

Because this is how day begins – Not with song, but with mo(u)rning.

John Hermesmann (’16) can lick his elbow

the

G

Chris Thile:

Man, the Myth, the Mandolin Jordan Carmichael

enre hopping is not easy to do. In fact, many nails it. His playing is as sharp and crisp as ever, and famous musicians have tried and failed. But he approaches each piece in a serious manner, unthere is one musician who seems to have it mastered. afraid of playing the most difficult parts. Thile shows Chris Thile is a world-class mandolin player who has off his quick fingers in remarkable fashion during played a large number of genres over his career includ- Sonata No. 1 in G minor IV and Partita No. 1 in B minor ing Bluegrass, Classical, Rock, Pop, IV, the presto songs on the album.

Bach: Sonatas and Partitas, Vol. 1 Jazz. But Thile’s most recent solo His speed coupled with his clean

by Chris Thile album is one of the hardest tasks he playing is really a thing of beauty.

Nonesuch Records, 2013 has taken on to date. Thile tackles Those who have seen Thile play can an assortment of Bach pieces written for the violin, picture him wiggling the upper half of his body as if which has the same tuning as Thile’s instrument, the the music was coming directly from him rather than mandolin. This new project of Thile’s comes as no from his instrument. He flies through these songs, surprise to his fans as he often plays one or two Bach barely giving the listener’s ears time to rest. pieces during every live show. Bach is Thile’s favorite However, it is not Thile’s speed alone that makes composer, and it shows through the way he plays both him such a special musician. The slower pieces on this during his live performances and in this album. album are crafted beautifully. Thile is a genius when Thile, age 33, was hailed as a prodigy while grow- it comes to playing the pauses, getting the most out ing up. At age thirteen he released his first solo album, of every note, and not missing a single nuance. The Leading Off. He is best known for his work as the lead- mandolin, which is not always the easiest instrument ing man of the groups Nickel Creek and The Punch on the ears, becomes soothing when in Thile’s hands.

Brothers. Winner of three Grammy awards and nomi- At times he plays very quietly and softly, allowing each nated for seven more, Thile has always managed to note to take up as much space as it needs. This is entertain and impress listeners with his amazing speed especially true on the first track of the album, Sonata and clean playing. In 2001, Thile was the IBMA Man- No. 1 in G minor I. There is a great variety of volume in dolinist of the year, and in 2012 he won a MacArthur just a single song on this album. This aspect of Thile’s Genius Grant for his ability to stretch the boundaries playing allows him to accentuate the climax of a song of his instrument and Bluegrass alike. Over the years, if it exists. It also allows Thile to create a flow between Thile has not been shy when it comes to playing with louder and softer parts of particular songs. His marvelother artists. Most notably, he has collaborated and ous technical ability, which is on display throughout recorded albums with Michael Daves, Alison Krauss, the whole album, makes it possible for him to seamJerry Douglas, Edgar Meyer, Glen Phillips, and Yo-Yo lessly go from one playing style to another.

Ma. It seems that everyone wants to play with Chris Chris Thile is one of the greatest musicians of his Thile. generation, and all fans of music should give him a But in Bach: Sonatas and Partitas, Vol. 1, Chris listen no matter what genres they prefer. This album Thile is by himself. It is just him and his mandolin. is honestly hard to get all the way through for today’s The sound is raw. There is no place to hide. And Thile modern listener, but it is well worth the time and focus

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it requires to finish. Thile shows us that Classical music still has a relevant place in the modern world and that good music, no matter when it was written, will always be good music. If the opportunity arises, going to see Thile play in person is a no-brainer. The album is fantastic, but nothing truly compares to watching Thile’s fingers fly up and down the mandolin as he awkwardly contorts and twists his body to the music.

Summer 2014

So even if the mandolin isn’t your thing, give Chris Thile and his new solo album a chance. He might surprise you.

Jordan Carmichael (’14) has never met Chris Thile, but has shaken hands with Noam Pikelny, who plays banjo in his band.

Medievalism:

Tennyson’s Revision of Malory Katie Koller

s one of the numerous facets of Romanticism, medievalism emerges in the nineteenth century through poetry of the Victorian period in England. The myth and tales of Arthurian legend in Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur from the fifteenth century played a significant part in this concept of medievalism for writers in the late 1800s. Alfred Lord Tennyson condensed Malory’s twovolume prose version of Arthurian tales into an epic series of blank-verse poems known as Idylls of the King. Following in this strain of medievalism, Tennyson highlights and enhances key qualities of Malory’s version through King Arthur and his knights.

Medievalism was not only a revived interest in the Middle Ages shown by writers in the nineteenth century, but also in Arthurian literature from the medieval period.

A Handbook to Literature defines medievalism as “a spirit of sympathy for the Middle Ages along with a desire to preserve or revive certain qualities of medieval life . . . It was nineteenth-century romanticism, however, that sponsored the most robust flourishing of medievalism” (310).

In the nineteenth century, writers like Tennyson became a part of what Inga Bryden calls an “Arthurian revival in Victorian Britain” which was, “part of a broader interest in medievalism” (368). According to Arthur Remy, this

A

little more than a boy, I first lighted upon Malory’” (Gilbert 196). Using Malory’s work as his primary source for Idylls of the King, Tennyson preserves and alters the mythic legend of King Arthur. In his literary work, Tennyson reflects and accents qualities Malory upholds from the medieval era. Medievalism shows through Tennyson’s revision and presentation of Le Morte D’Arthur in Idylls of the King. As a writer in the late 1800s operating within medievalism, Tennyson enhances and glorifies aspects of Malory’s tales throughout his epic poem, starting with Arthur.

Tennyson’s main focus in his work centers around a consistent, ideal Arthur, compared to Malory’s Arthur who changes throughout the book. Margaret Reid explains this inconsistency in Le Morte D’Arthur, “Drawn from so many sources, the picture of Arthur in Malory is not altogether unified. At one time he is a king in a fairy land, over which Merlin presides as the king’s helper . . . At another, he is a truly English king . . . In later books, the king is somewhat overshadowed by his knights” (28). Tennyson transforms Malory’s Arthur from this disunified image into a perfect king and knight who fights for justice, exercises humility, and commands with wise leadership. In order to accomplish this, Tennyson creates the waste land motif as a setting to introduce this renewed vision of King Arthur.

revival occurred due to the loss of medieval tales: “After the Renaissance, the Grail legend, together with most medieval legends, fell into oblivion, from which it was rescued when the Romantic movement set in at the beginning of the nineteenth century” (310). Reprinted copies of literature, such as Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur, started to circulate again, giving authors in this era older texts as inspiration for their works (Goodman 73). As a writer in this revival of medievalism, Tennyson developed his own preoccupation with Arthurian legend which began with Malory’s work.

He recalls this fascination in a letter to his son, Hallam Tennyson: “‘the vision of Arthur had come upon me, when,

Malory introduces the waste land only in connection to the Grail quest. Sir Galahad, Sir Percival, and Sir Bors find on their quest for the Grail that the land has fallen into decay due to the war between King Labor and King Hurlame, “and so befell great pestilence and great harm to both [of the kings’] realms . . . wherefore men called it, the lands of the two marches, the Waste Land” (334). Beyond this mention in Malory, the waste land remains unrelated to Arthur.

Instead of connecting the waste land to the Grail quest as in Malory’s book, Tennyson uses the waste land as a central part of his development of Arthur. From the beginning

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of the first Idyll, “The Coming of Arthur,” Tennyson casts the King as a conquering figure, bringing civilization to the countryside. The lands of Camilard have turned into a waste land. Nature has taken over; a growing number of wild beasts roam the woods, and a breed of wolf-men have become a threat to King Leodogrand’s people. Lacking the strength to bring order to his lands, Leodogrand seeks help from King Arthur. From the beginning, Tennyson builds Arthur’s image as the leader and king to conquer the waste land: And so, there grew great tracts of wilderness, Wherein the beast was ever more and more, But man was less and less, till Arthur came.

(10-12)

Tennyson borrows Malory’s idea of the waste land and makes it the setting for Arthur’s coming. He paints Arthur as a young king who “yet had done no deed of arms” (46), but responds to King Leodogrand’s call. He comes as a simple knight unmarked among his knights and: drave The heathen; after slew the beast, and fell’d The forest, letting in the sun, and made Broad pathways for the hunter and the knight.

(58-61)

Exercising justice as a king and chivalry as a knight, Arthur triumphs over the waste land and brings civilization back to the land. Tennyson’s waste land motif is the basis of Arthur’s reputation as a just king and leader. In Malory, Arthur comes to be king through drawing the sword from the stone, yet Tennyson never mentions the sword until later and concentrates on Arthur through his deeds and strength as a leader. Tennyson takes Malory’s idea of the waste land and places it as the central setting on which to portray “a portrait of Arthur as ideal man and ruler” (quoted in ed. Houghton 7).

In contrast to this ideal Arthur in Tennyson, Malory presents a less valiant and dominant view of Arthur in the first part of Le Morte D’Arthur. Arthur still stands as a great

warrior on the battlefield, yet his prowess and leadership is not the center of Malory’s narrative. P.J. Field notes Malory’s focus on characters and circumstances around the King: “The First Tale begins as a kind of history of court life, dynastic politics, international alliances, and military campaigns, interwoven with supernatural events, mostly brought about by the magician Merlin” (232). Arthur defeats several kings and knights, but Merlin takes a more central part in Malory’s tale as an advisor and mentor to Arthur. Malory’s Merlin directs and aids Arthur at every moment. At the end of the battle with King Lot and King Cardados, Malory displays Merlin’s influence on Arthur, “but all the kings held them together with their knights that were left alive, and so fled and departed. And Merlin came unto Arthur and counselled him to follow them no further” (9). Here Merlin plays an important role as part of Arthur’s image. Without Merlin, Arthur appears as a dependent king who lacks wisdom and strong leadership.

In addition to Merlin, the sword Excalibur creates another part of Arthur’s reputation in Le Morte D’Arthur.

Malory describes Arthur in the battle with King Lot and King Carados, “and always King Arthur on horseback laid on with a sword, and did marvelous deeds of arms . . .

Then he drew his sword Excalibur, but it was so bright in his enemies’ eyes, that it gave light like thirty torches. And therewith he put them on back and slew much people” (ed.

Sommer 9). Malory does not deny Arthur as a strong warrior, but emphasizes the sword as Arthur’s aid in winning the fight. Stripped of the sword and Merlin, Arthur stands as less of a warrior and king.

In the Idylls, Tennyson wanted Arthur’s reputation not to be grounded in magic, swords, or other characters, but on the essence of his character as a humble knight and strong leader. After Arthur defeats the waste land and restores order, he turns to battle the British kings. The King’s qualities as a bold knight and leader help him win the battle: till Arthur by main might, And mightier of his hands with every blow, And leading all his knighthood threw the

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kings. (108-110)

Tennyson’s Arthur defeats the kings through his own might and leadership. Tennyson transforms Malory’s depiction of Arthur, by removing any mention of Merlin or the sword until later in the tale. As the ideal leader and king, Arthur unifies the country in his defeat of the British kings: And Arthur and his knighthood for a space Were all one will, and thro’ that strength the King Drew in the petty princedoms under him.

(514-516)

Tennyson glorifies Arthur’s image by building his reputation through the worthiness of his kingship, his administration of justice, and unwavering leadership.

Continuing this thread of admiration and glorification of Arthur as a strong and wise leader throughout the Idylls, Tennyson displays Arthur’s wisdom when his knights answer the call to quest for the Grail. In Malory, Arthur is present when the Grail vision appears. He shows his sorrow at his knights leaving Camelot when addressing Gawain and Lancelot, “‘for never Christian king had never so many worthy men at his table as I have had this day at the Round Table, and that is my great sorrow’” (ed. Cowen 249). The King knows that many will not come back. Here Malory focuses on Arthur’s distress. In the Idylls, Tennyson’s Arthur shows sadness as well, but more displeasure at his knights’ decision and the gravity of their vow. When the vision of the Grail appears to the knights in Camelot, Arthur is not present, but away ensuring justice in his lands. Percival describes Arthur’s dark reaction to hearing of his knights’ rash vow to seek the Grail: This chance of noble deeds will come and go Unchallenged, while ye follow wandering fires Lost in the quagmire! Many of you, yea most, Return no more. Ye think I show myself Too dark a prophet. (318-322)

He acknowledges Galahad’s worthiness to seek the Grail along with Perivale, but would have prevented the

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others from vowing had he not been absent. He views the Grail quest as a dangerous task only for the most worthy, “What are ye? Galahads?—no, nor Percivales” (306). As a wise king, Arthur knows the gravity of the task, yet he recognizes his inability to keep them from fulfilling their holy vows. Tennyson draws out Arthur’s authority and wisdom as the ideal king and knight, by placing him out of the actual event and bringing him in afterwards. He still shows Arthur’s sorrow, like Malory, at the knights’ departure, but enhances Arthur’s reputation as the perfect king and knight.

Along with the idealized image of King Arthur, the qualities of holiness and chastity emphasized by Malory in the Grail quest knights display another thread of medievalism in Tennyson’s work. Each knight reaches a certain level of purity and holiness in both Le Morte D’Arthur and Idylls of the King. In Malory’s text, the knights are measured by strict standards: “The chief virtues are humility and sexual purity in its most severe form . . . Next comes pride, especially the pride which is aroused by successful combats” (Reid 133). The Grail quest accentuates the state of the knights’ real hearts and levels of virtue. When the vision appears, Malory describes the Grail as covered in samite cloth, thus none of the knights view the actual vessel.

However, Sir Gawain rashly swears first to the quest, yet in the end, comes back with his vow unfulfilled. Due to his pride, Gawain was unworthy of the quest. Sir Lancelot quests for the Grail, but cannot attain a vision of it. The hermit Nacien reveals the root of Lancelot’s failure, which springs from his unworthiness. He perceives Lancelot as, “not a man worthy to be so nigh the holy vessel, for he had been so defouled in deadly sin by the space of many years” (ed. Cowen 307). In contrast to Gawain’s and Lancelot’s faults of pride and sexual sin, the hermit describes Bors, Percival, and Galahad as “three knights in virginity and chastity, and there is no pride smitten in them” (ed. Cowen 306). Possessing chaste and holy hearts, Sirs Bors, Percival, and Galahad achieve the Grail out of all the knights who quest for the Grail.

In the Idylls, Tennyson accentuates the levels of these

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Summer 2014

knights’ chastity and holiness like Malory. He draws out Gawain’s pride and Lancelot’s failures echoing Malory’s text, but slightly changes the events surrounding Percival and Galahad. Their passion for the quest far exceeds the other knights. Percival swears his vow first, instead of Gawain: I found a voice and sware a vow.

I sware a vow before them all, that I, Because I had not seen the Grail, would ride . . . Until I found and saw it. (194-6, 198)

As the purest and holiest knight, only Galahad catches a glimpse of the vessel and hears a voice calling him to seek after the Grail, “I saw the Holy Grail and heard a cry— / ‘O Galahad, and O Galahad, follow me’” (291-292). Through altering the circumstances and Percival and Galahad’s responses to the Grail vision from Malory’s version, Tennyson places more emphasis on their noble qualities of purity and holiness. By drawing out the knights’ differing levels of

chastity and holiness in Malory, Tennyson retains threads of medievalism throughout his Idyll, “The Holy Grail.”

The revival of medieval literature in Victorian England gave Tennyson the materials to write his version of the legend of King Arthur. Inspired by Le Morte D’Arthur, Tennyson glorifies the image of Arthur to one of the ideal king and knight through his strong leadership, wisdom, and might as a warrior. He values the qualities of purity and holiness shown by the knights in his account of the Grail quest. Celebrating all these qualities of life from the culture of the Middle Ages, Tennyson brings his audience a renewed glimpse of Malory’s work within Idylls of the King.

Katie Koller is graduating this May 2014 and enjoys eating up almost anything that has to do with Arthurian legend and medieval tales while drinking loose leaf tea.

Conundrums Counting Cards Mudgin is a card game of very simple rules. You’ve actually never liked it much - it often becomes too political - but, for whatever reason, you’ve found yourself playing it with your good friends Al’ef, Beth, and Gimli. To play, only the cards nine through ace of each suit are used, and they are dealt out until each player has five (meaning that four are left over and discarded). Each round, the players will take turns laying down cards, and whoever has the strongest card will win that hand. An ace will win over a king, which will win over a queen, and so on down to nine. In a dispute (for example, when two players lay down an ace), the spade is strongest, followed by diamond, then club, and then heart at the bottom.

There are a few other rules, of course, but that is all you will need to know for now.

In this particular game, the cards are dealt out so that you have the ten of clubs, the queen of hearts, the jack of hearts, the ace of spades (good for you!), and the queen of clubs. You’ve decided to try your hand at counting cards, and so you take a mental note which, on paper, might have looked something like this: Round 1 Al’ef starts, Ten Beth wins

- Beth, King

- Gimli, Nine

- You, Ten

Round 2 Beth starts, Jack - Gimli, Jack - You, Ace - Al’ef, Ace You win (on quite a nice play, by the way… congratulations!)

Round 3 You start, Queen Al’ef wins

- Al’ef, King

- Beth, Queen

Round 4 Al’ef starts, King Beth wins

- Beth, Ace

- Gimli, Nine

- Gimli, Jack

- You, Jack

Before the final round, you notice that Beth has now won twice. Knowing that each player has one card left and that there are four unknown discarded cards, is it possible for you to win this last round and tie with Beth?

Submit your answers to SigourneyTS1@gcc.edu. The first person to correctly solve “Counting Cards” will receive a free book of their choosing. Correct answers will be published in the next issue.

In the published answer to the second conundrum in the previous issue, the arrows in the diagram ought to go counterclockwise rather than clockwise. We apologize for the oversight!

The Quad | Summer 2014 Volume 6 ♌ Issue 4 The Quad c/o Alice Hodgkins GCC #1881 200 Campus Drive Grove City, PA 16127