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The Folio represents the efforts of the English Department of Holy Family College. The magazine is a journal of contemporary artistic expression of both the faculty and the student body of Holy Family College. Contributions are also accepted from students and faculties of in stitutions other than Holy Family.
Copyright Š 1976 by Holy Family College, Philadelphia, Pa. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the consent of the publisher.
CONTENTS RAINBOW COLORED SKY.......................... Page 3 by Kate Britt RUST-STREAKED, DE-APRILED, AND SUNDOWNED THE DAY ..................... Page 5 by Phyllis Brown THE OWL AT THE MANGER ....................... Page 6 by Mary C. Szumila and Maxine M. Polocz AN EXPLICATION OF "NO MAN, IF MEN ARE GODS, BUT IF GODS MUST" ................. Page 8 by Elizabeth R. Warner GOOD FRIDAY, 1973............................... Page 14 by Cecelia Johnson THE WEAYING OF THE YEARS................... Page 16 by Sister Florence Tumasz, C. S. F. N. , Ph.D. KEY................................................ Page 18 by Sheila Mary McLaughlin GOODBYE ......................................... Page 18 by Sheila Mary McLaughlin ETUDE: NUMBER THREE ......................... Page 20 by Thomas F. Lombardi, Ph.D. NEBRIAN NIGHTMARE........................... Page 22 by Virgina Keane THANKSGIVING AS SEEN BY A CHILD.......... Page 25 by Diane Shapiro ILLUSTRATIONS by Frances Capriotti, Sister Susanne, Frank Smith, Sister Jude, Helene Von Rosenstiel and Roberta Fox
KATE BRITT
RAINBOW COLORED SKY rainbow colored sky dipping s I p
p
n g twixt the fingers of the trees blue and white daisies catch them one and two floating swaying to and fro with the breeze clouds wind sunlight see them scramble to each other grasp the warmness of thine heart for life's twilight shall awaken and the sun must soon depart
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PHYLLIS BROWN
RUST-STRE AKED, DE- APRILED, AND SUNDOWNED THE DAY Bloodstained the maples, glistening with rain Tiared, frail morning -- smouldering death, The smoke sounds of autumn descend from the west.
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MARY C. SZUMILA MAXINE M. POLOCZ
THE OWL, AT THE MANGER Of all the tales ever told This one is most ignored, How on that night so long ago The Owl beheld the Lord. In piercing cold, in deep of night The animals all slept, While in the rafters all alone The Owl his vigil kept. Chorus:
The Owl at the Manger Was the only one awake, When Joseph and Mary Their refuge did take.
While Mary and Joseph slumbered there On the crib the Owl did rest, And seeing that the babe was cold He plucked his downy breast. Like ermine lay his feathers warm, Like snow they fluttered soft, And when the child in sleep did smile, The Owl's heart soared aloft.
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Chorus:
The Owl at the Manger Was the only one awake, When Joseph and Mary Their refuge did take.
Three strangers came from distant lands To seek the newborn king, The gentle Owl's low lullaby To the stable did them bring. He welcomed them to the cradle's side In the rays of the new day's sun, Then fluttered to the rafters high; He had seen The Kingdom Come.
Chorus:
The Owl at the Manger Was the only one awake, When Joseph and Mary Their refuge did take.
Much wiser now the Owl did sleep To know the part he played, In bringing Christ to all mankind On that first Christmas day. Of all the tales ever told This one is most ignored, How on that night so long ago The Owl beheld the Lord.
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ELIZABETH R. WARNER
An Explication of ''no man, if men are gods, but if gods must"
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A poet is man and more-than-man. Man is and lives and acts; the poet is and lives and acts. In common experience of grief and special joy, man exhibits the measure of his greatness of being. In spirit shared with other beings-the fiend, the angel-greatness of being expands to greatness of living-truth and self-"burning." Humankind's individuality, then, expresses itself in the balance of "burning" or self-expression, in distinctive unities of grief-joy and truth-light. To champion, to manifest, and to celebrate, freely, fully, responsibly, joy and visions of truth, to personalize the whole creation and thereby be creator, a poet plunges and soars as man and more-than-man. In "no man, if men are gods; but if gods must," along a life-line of being and faith(both self-formulated yet each encompassing and engaging all of a poet's self and all of man), a personally cosmic resolution of life (divinity, humanity, and nature alike) evidences. Convictions can only illuminate and not define, evolve, even as a mustard seed, as simplistically complex and complexly simple. A mustard seed itself, the initial line of E.E. Cummings' "no man, embryonically breathes the sonnet's thematic intensities: man, gods, possibilities(" if'), being(" are"), the duty of activity ("must"). Only the concept "no" dissolves completely in the poetic essay on humankind, for creation, not negation, motivates the poet-man to fullness of self-expression and self expressability. "if men are gods," humankind as a whole cannot be; for if men revel in self-assigned divine rights, humanity's true being and fullness are compromised. Further, because only in the inherent indefinability of life and living is there fullness, absolute equations, such as "men are gods" close the openness necessary to growth and evolution. A negation, a death, occurs: perfect affinity of natures, uneqivocable definitions limit the illimitable, thereby compromising and killing. Just as the poet in "no man" illuminates rather than defines, man ought to be "shown" and not "told" in dogmatic definitions. "the sometimes only man is this": true man receives. aspires, strives; true man in the now-and-then-ness of fullness of humanity ("sometimes") dwells forever in romantic vagueness.
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Resurrecting, then, from the death of absolute equations, man in his indefinable trueness of nature becomes"gods," but not abso lutely so. "but if gods must/be men" reveals that the divine in mankind must be all-pervasive, in man, not in men as individuals. If gods must inspire individuals to ceative divinity, then these individualities (the poets, here) must be a god to, in, and through ("through, with, and in") the wholeness of human beings. Not the individual, then, but man or humankind in him functions as creator. Human divinity of creation and the attendant omnisci ence, omnipresence, omnipotence evolve from man's fullness of being. "(most common, for each anguish is grief;/and, for his joy is more than joy, most rare)": man personalizes human experience through feeling. In a kind of "collective unconscious" the whole ness of "anguish" does not diminish, rather man concentrates the feeling-experience, condenses, and thereby intensifies and unites with man through personally active involvement. Likewise, the intensity of pleasure expands. Commonality and rarity of human kind and humanness, then, encompasses concentration and ex pansion, a complete exuberance of depth, height, and breath of the inner and outer worlds, of feeling and inner feeling, in flux. Grief and joy, however, in "common" are separate, unequal, for a semi-colon divides what is "common" from the "more than" common, the "most rare." Spirituality transports man from being to activity, from "is" to "does." Moreover, spirituality in man evidences as doubly qualitative: fiend-ness and angel-hood. The fully vivified human meaning of the commonality of grief couples with the rarity of joy; duality in preternature blends-man is the best of heaven and hell. Thus, the dividing line between the divinity-feeling quatrain and human activity-personality quatrain emanates self-communication: "a fiend, if fiends speak truth; if angels burn." If in demonic life truth speaks, man-as-fiend allies as the de vilishly true nose-thumbing satirist. Concurrently, "if angels burn/by their own generous completely light,/an angel" unleashes a strong self-emanating blaze of lyric sentimentality in man. "Truth" and "light" revise to reflect man: because labeling man
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in unhuman realms of absolute evil or absolute goodness would result in the killer "no," necessary qualifications arise. Unifica足 tion with the nether worlds evinces from "speak" and "burn." Only in communication and actualization does the "being" of man unite with the Good and the Bad. Hinging on the "or" of the activity-personality, man strives. "(as various worlds he'll spurn/rather than fail immeasurable fate)" couples with the sonet's first parenthetical statement to contrast and blend being and doing, the personal world with the communal world. In the world of the many unknowns ("various worlds"), in the force-field of the indefinably present ("immeasurable fate"), the tested man strives against defeat. Moreover, man acknowledges and thereby overcomes: "he'll spurn." Hope and activity, here, advance the spiritual to the human spirit; and man, self-motivated, "speaks" and "burns" against the ever-presence of non-vital, anti-human chances. Against "immeasurable fate" all of mankind strives, however differently, distinctively. The varied blends of grief and joy and demon and seraph, all strive. The coward's surrender to inactivity and irresponsibility and non-fulfillment, through inaction, illus足 trates the potency of action. The clown, emanating equally grief足 joy and joy-grief, motivates man to a peaceful catharsis, however fleeting. Traitor and beast in active anger struggle forcibly toward self-assertion, self-revelation. As idiot, man's irresoluteness and irresponsibility, stem from an inescapable inexpressibility of self. Dreaming man lives and strives within the self and advances motion to inner-activity; the imagination elevates inner-activity to certain self-sensed grief-joy truth. "coward, clown, traitor, idiot, dreamer, beast-/such was a poet and shall be and is": The poet is all this. In the poet "if's" and "or" dissolve; the verb "to be" heightens and deepens in mean足 ing. "Being" in the initial stanza forms with the supernatures in godly liasion. "such was a poet and shall be and is" revives the doxology " As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be" to periodic form. The ultimate poetic emphasis celebrates the "is"-the present. Here the verb "to be" does not characterize, but rather fulfills singularity. The oneness, godliness encompasses the responsibilities and freedoms of all the many and varied
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strivers-the world of the poet is the worlds of man. Further in singularity, "a" not "the" reechoes the unlimited natures of man and poet. A poet is illimitable and therefore fully capable of " spurning" the equally "immeasurable" of the "various worlds." Man, the uncommon creature ("most rare"), grows to fullness of self in the poet, the uncommon man. In the poet the integrated dissimilarities of humanity and life celebrate themselves. Power fully positive, the poet rejoices in the indefinable mystery of in separability; the poet's faith refines life and living, then reveals self and the self-same-ness of humanity and human divinity. -who'll solve the depths of horror to de fend a sunbeam's architecture with his life: and carve immortal jungles of despair to hold a mountain's heartbeat in his hand Artistically scientific, the poet-craftsman will decipher the pro found, will unveil an ever-deepening anguish-grief of man ("hor ror"). Craftily humanitarian, the poet-artist will sculpt the inor ganic to personal life. In performance, the poetic ability to see-more rightly, to feel-above, beyond, into, unto invisible realities metamorphoses the initial generality of grief-joy to a uni versal specificity: one must champion and communicate his own singular truth. The poetic truths of "a sunbeam's architecture" and "a mountain's heartbeat" antithesize each other: the delicate struc ture of warmth and light underwhelms; the loudness and largeness of mountain-movement overwhelms. Warmth and cold, smooth ness and roughness, flow and permanence, the contrasting in herencies of sunbeam and mountain reinforce the significance of the symmetrical and diametrical in man. Both the ethereal and the stable in nature, the poet-man pro tects, upholds, cherishes, personalizes. His being, moreover, must be active, will strive, does risk itself always to make evident the matter which is invisible and the "heart" ("a mountain's heart-beat") of that matter. Self-surrender to self-formulated be liefs, then and godliness infuses order and sense into "immeasura ble fate." Mentionable faith tames fate with subjectivity.
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Everyman 's grief to the poet feels as nigh-overpowering "depths" and "jungles." Solve and carve, one may, but eradica足 tion seems an impossibility-the jungles are "immortal." Again, the definitive, the absolute of man iri a human equation abstracts as an impossibility. Statements of poetic fact penetrate why and how a thing acts, reacts, counteracts: the "is-ness" celebrates and is self-evident. Introspection and inspection reveal all of nature-man, sunbeam, mountain-as joyfully harmonious. Harmony, in activity and in verbs, progresses in being through communication to creation: "are," "must be," and "is" activate through "speak," "burn," and "will spurn" to the personal crea足 tion of "solve," "defend," and "carve." Thus, from being man, to living man, to acting man, to More-than-man, to living-acting as fully man, an affinity between man and nature mystically identifies itself as magical, as joy-in-all. As joy, as god-man, as holding nature in his hand, the poet becomes a redeemer. As a chosen one ("gods must be men"), the poet transcends the ordinary "to defend" and "to hold," to com足 pliment and to complement. Faith as that which one would bet his life on reflects and re-creates the eternal: the beginning of the poem is an end ("no"), while the conclusion of the poem is a constant beginning of life by dying to self. The truth of awakened impulses, of heightened consciousness, of celebration of spirit, and of self motivates the poet to piece together the "various worlds" and "carve immortaljungles of despair." This same truth designates the poet as lord of the horror of anguish and the more足 than-joy. Along a life-line of being ("such was a poet and shalJ be and is") and faith ("to defend ... with his life"), a personally cosmic resolution of life evidences.
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CECELIA JOHNSON
GOOD FRIDAY, 1973 He is dying somewhere else today, not on a rootless tree at three, not while trident chants expose a plastic Jesus in afternoon liturgy supplanted by a Lector's closing words: "the new 50-50 drawing starts Monday." He is dying somewhere else today, in the men's room of a gas station and Pilate is an owner who hands a key indiscriminately. He is dying somewhere else today, in the kids on the grass, smoking grass, They look to a Church supplanted by a balance sheet. functionaries, sophistry condoned by the dead ones who understands Golgotha ... the ... place who weep, kissing plastic feet. No mystery there, and no rising from a wall-to-wall vinyltop thing-sealed tomb, to embrace the world in liberated, spaceless joy.
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SISTER FLORENCE TUMASZ, CSFN, PH.D.
THE WEAVING OF THE YEARS To commemorate the Centennial of the Founding of the Con gregation of the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth in Rome, the First Sunday of Advent, 1875. Weave now, 0 Century, Your many-hued tapestry! 0 weave the silver gray Of the cloistered day, Of little words, of common deeds In power grown and magnificence When offered on the paten of the Mass.
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0 weave the red of charity By Paul defined As patient, kind, The healing touch, the gentle word To the sick, the lonely, and the old, The witnessing to the Lord. Weave, too, the green of hope In services to youth, Setting before them beauty, love, and truth, Of hope that sees the harvest in the seed, In the small acorn, the majestic tree, Of growth unto maturity To the fulness of the Christ. And weave the white Of virgin souls like lilies pure Upon the altar banked, Of hearts and minds mature In child-like joy, in the serenity Of full dependence on His Holy Will. The black of contrast, weave, Of misunderstanding and discouragement, Of human error. Weave the darker thread Of sorrow, the Gethsemane of grief. Embellish all with gold, The gold of harvests lying in the sun, The gold of gratitude coined exultingly In humble praise to Jesus, Mary, Joseph, The Holy Family. Weave now, 0 Century, your many-hued tapestry!
First Sunday of Advent, 1974
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SHEILA MARY MCLAUGHLIN
KEY You held the key for a while and felt how cold it was from lying in my pocket I took it from you and felt its warmth holding it until it left its impression in the palm of my hand.
GOODBYE! She slipped out with a slight smile head half-bowed and laughed a little bright sing-song laughter catching on the crisp breeze footsteps falling gently upon paved ground the sun forcing jagged arrows through the trees "Goodbye!" the breeze took her greeting and blew it against the wall-Â not strong enough to go through.
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DR. THOMAS F. LOMBARDI
ETUDE: NUMBER THREE An ever-gradual
misty
August mountain's windy eclipse phantoms midnoon to midnight And we
cuddled -in the storm-centerwarm water arms, enraptured, sleep in dusk's dark paradise.
Beyond the cold rain's applause A-sudden, 0, comes Love's
flash-flood!
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VIRGINIA KEANE
Nebrian Nightmare The child within her surged into sudden movement, and she knew that she must reach the safety of the caves to give him birth, for the invaders would not tolerate the giving of life in the midst of their death-bestowing vengeance. She was one of the last to escape, and in her haste she found the passage difficult. The rain of the past few hours had coated the craggy boulders and fallen rocks like the slime of a broken egg, making any hand-hold slippery. Mud ran underfoot in dirty rivulets which created pools of foulness to trap an unwary traveler. The climb was dangerous, but the panic gripping her soul was a catalyst to her upwarcl progress. The island of Nebre had been isolated from human intercourse for centuries after the Atomic War, and they were surprised by the arrival of men. The leaders of the community had been brutally slaughtered in the first overpowering attack since the Nebrians were not prepared to defend themselves. Once, the Nebrians would have been safe in the compound below, but the fortifications of a sPcure military establishment had atrophied during the centuries of a false serenity. Had there been warning, they could have fortified themselves. Resistance was futile. Flight was their only salvation. "The caves! Must reach them soon," she panted, "or they 'II get me, too." Her heaving lungs screamed for a brief respite, but she could not stop even for a moment. She knew that they were hunting for stragglers, and darkness would be no deterrent to the search. Sharon saw torches spring to life below and quickened her frantic pace.
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"Sharon! Over here, quickly." A low voice urged attention. "Jordon! Thank God! You must help me. The baby is coming, and I can't go another step." "Give me your hand," he said. "There's a place of safety just above this ledge. It's not far, but the footing is bad." Deftly, he assisted her, and his strength bore them without haste to the aperture of a natural cave. "In here," he said. "Where?" She felt along the rocky surface. "I don't see any thing but a pile of rocks." "Follow me, then. And be careful. You'll have to go through on your hands and knees. There's no other way." The opening was marginal, but once inside, the interior of the cavern was honeycombed with small off-shooting passages. He led her to the rear of the excavation, navigated several twisting tunnels, and guided her to a carefully shielded fire. The warmth it afforded was meager, but it signified shelter, safety, and a dry place for birth. Jordon rummaged through a pile of hastily dumped goods which he had carried with him in his flight, segregated a damp blanket, a half-filled canteen of water, an old penknife, and a piece of frayed string from the clutter, and bore this paraphernalia to the side of his laboring companion. "Guess this will have to do," he said. "How do you feel?" "Oh, Jordon," she sobbed, "why did it have to happen like this? David's dead. Our home is in ruins. All of our people are running for their lives." She wiped the tears from her face with the back of a grubby hand. "There's nothing left. What birthright does my child inherit in this chaos?" "Life, Sharon," he said. "And your love." 'Tm so afraid, Jordon. What if they find us?"
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"Don't worry about that now, Sharon. Why don't you lie back and try to relax. It will help to ease the pains." Jordon threw several more twigs on the fire and arranged his gear, while Sharon, wrapped in the blanket, moaned at the onset of each contraction. The vigil was not long, and in due course, the child was born. He announced his arrival into the cold night and his displeasure in it by a lusty wail, and Jordon laid him, a tiny, wet, dark-haired, wrinkled infant, on his mother's abdomen. The miracle of birth occupied them fully, shutting out all thoughts of a marauding army of crazed lunatics beating every bush for prey; for the moment, it was enough.
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DIANE SHAPIRO
Thanksgiving as seen by a child The family had just sat down to dinner when the youngest child, a girl, wanted to tell them the story of Thanksgiving. "Daddy, I forgot to tell you all about Thanksgiving." "Tell me now," said her father. "Well, there were ten pilgrims, and they wanted to leave England because it was too big." "Are you sure there were only ten?" asked her father. "My teacher told me." "Well, go on." "The boat was so small that they all had to stand up the whole way," said the little girl. "How do you know that?" "My teacher was on the Mayflower." "She was!" "Daddy, stop." "I'm sorry, go on." "Well, because the boat was so small and they were standing, when they hit a rock, two fell over into the water and drowned." "A rock in the middle of the ocean?" asked her father. "A giant turtle," she said. "Then when the pilgrims got here, they met eight Indians who showed them how to get food." Father said, "How did they show them to get food?" The little girl thought for a minute, and then she replied in a sure voice. "First, you take corn seeds and turkey seeds and then you plant them in the ground." Her father looked at her in disbelief. "Turkey seeds in the ground!" The little girl was serious. She looked at her father. "When the trees get big, the pilgrims shoot the turkeys out of the trees." After this remark everyone at the table laughed hysterically. "Why are you laughing at me?" asked the little girl. "We're sorry," said her father. "Are you sure that's the story you' re teacher told you?" "Yes, daddy," said the little girl. "Just you ask my teacher." 27
CONTRIBUTORS Kate Britt, author of "Rainbow Colored Sky," is a senior mathematics concentrator. Sister M. Florence Tumasz, "The Weaving of the Years," is a member of the English Department at Holy Family College as is Dr. Thomas Lombardi whose poem "Etude: Number Three" appears in this issue. Phyllis Brown, Maxine Polocz and Marcy C. Szumila are former students. Elizabeth Warner marks her second appearance in Folio with her essay, "An explication of 'no man, If Men Are Gods, But If Gods Must." Returning, too, is Sheila McLaughlin through her poems "Goodbye" and "Key." Virginia Keane's vignette "Nebrian Nightmare" establishes the literary craft of this English major as does Cecilia Johnson's Poem "Good Friday". Mrs. Johnson is an art concentrator. "Thanks giving as Seen by a child" was written by Diane Shapiro, an Economics major.
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HOLY FAMILY COLLEGE, TORRESDALE, PHILA., PA. 19114 AP10105