I took the border collie out for a short walk at dusk. Susan was inside reading aloud to the boys. Outside the clouds were thick, illuminated from the inside. The pastures are all green now, some trees starting to leaf, others in blossom. The winter quiet is gone, not noticed until spring frogs and crickets sound everywhere. I enjoy the music and recall another of Kodojin's poems:

Fertile fields enrich my household;
a good wife completes my home.
Auspicious trees grow along my paths;
wonderful books fill my carts. (Trans. Jonathan Chaves)

This post is still getting hits from search engines. If you came here looking for information on Billy Collin's "Paradelle for Susan" I should advise you that my comments below are, to put it simply, dead wrong. The "paradelle" is Collin's own invention, a kind of gentle satire on elaborate verse forms and facile technique. Go here to listen to an interview with Collins that lets the more dense of us in on the joke. The ironic thing though, is that others have since picked up the form and written fine poems in it, making my point in a kind of backhanded fashion. In any event, as the person who corrected my error pointed out, a gag that takes on a life of its own is a thing of wonder in itself.

I have been reading Sailing Alone Around the Room: New & Selected Poems by Billy Collins, our current Poet Laureate. Collins is, by current standards, an enormously popular and critically respected poet. Or, as his agent puts it: "Billy Collins is an American phenomenon. No poet since Robert Frost has managed to combine high critical acclaim with such broad popular appeal." Big words, and, truth be told, Collins can be a good read, judging by this volume. Nevertheless, I put it down feeling vaguely unsettled. Collins' work, while head and shoulders above what passes for poetry in most small magazines, still shows the signs of one of the great illness of modern poetry; the loss of craft. Exhibit number one is a piece called "Paradelle for Susan." The note at the end of the poem says that "The paradelle is one of the most demanding French fixed forms . . ." Collins' poem turns what should be a tour de force into a clumsy mess that follows form only by abandoning grammar. Perhaps it is meant as parody. Perhaps the breakdown in grammar itself is meant to be a poetic statement. Perhaps it is simply that the form is beyond the poet's technical competence.

I do not mean to be unfair to Collins. He has preserved more of a sense for meter (or at least stress and accent) than most of his contemporaries working outside traditional forms. He is not above the occasional use of rhyme. Far too often however the conventions of typography substitute for the craft of verse. Sometimes this is no hindrance. I quite liked the poem "Japan," on reading and re-reading a haiku. Haiku, a seventeen syllable Japanese form, meant to be spoken, in English is more a visual form; its three line break, one short, one long, one short, as typographically distinct as a sonnet is metrically. The poem begins:

Today I pass the time reading
a favorite haiku,
saying the few words over and over.

It feels like eating
the same small, perfect grape
again and again.

The image, while a little precious, is exactly right. The two stanzas look like haiku, even have a haiku feel. But the syllable count and the line breaks are wrong. The poem works, but only at the cost of abandoning the true form of its subject.

Too many poems in this volume are prose with line breaks. The only way to read it as verse is ponderously, dragging out syllables, or rushing here, inserting an accent there, even if it is not found in the verse itself. As Robert Frost put it in his poem "How Hard It Is To Keep From Being King":

Free verse leaves out the metre and makes up
For the deficiency by church intoning.
Free verse so called is really cherished prose,
Prose made of, given an air by church intoning.
It has its beauty, only I don't write it.

I don't mean to be unduly negative. There are good things here. "Osso Buco" made me ready to abandon Lent after one reading. "Man Listening to Disc" is a fine evocation of the joys and ironies of technologically assisted modern life. Read Collins. After all, he is our Poet Laureate, even if he is no Robert Frost.

The cold front that brought yesterday's snow left clear skies last night on it's way passing through. My older son, James, and I took the telescope out for some star-gazing. While neighbors with floodlights are creeping closer, we still have skies with as many stars as I remember from street-light free days as a child. Standing there in the cold looking up, I was reminded of the protagonist in a poem by Robert Frost who

. . . mingled reckless talk
Of heavenly stars with hugger-mugger farming,
Till having failed at hugger-mugger farming,
He burned his house down for the fire insurance
And spent the proceeds on a telescope
To satisfy a life-long curiosity
About our place among the infinities (The Star-Splitter)

Our own telescope came as a gift, saving me from any similar temptation. Though with the year's farm records off to the tax preparer, I know a little of how Frost's character felt. So much work; some done well, some done badly and certainly not done for the money. It makes a man wonder about the larger picture. Despite having a good telescope and a clear night, I cannot say I satisfied my curiosity about our place among the infinities. For that I look to faith, and sometimes, art. What the telescope does show, is that we do live among infinities, and that they can be beautiful. Even for a lawyer and "hugger-mugger" farmer.

While Western churches have Easter behind them, Orthodox Christians are still in the midst of Lent. Here is a fine collection of Resources for Orthodox Great Lent.

I have been pondering the nature of morality lately. Underpinning the question of the nature of morality is the issue of the existence of order and beauty in the universe. An editorial essay in Image: A Journal of the Arts and Religion--Issue #33, touches on this in the context of praise and artistic expression.

This is the second month of the Chinese Lunar Calendar. The following by the Japanese poet Kodojin (1864-1944) seems particularly appropriate this morning:

Things Seen

Second month, and still spring chill:
only the plum blossoms open their faces.
This morning, I'll just try opening the door--
light snow falling over green mountains.

(translation by Jonathan Chaves)

Snow this morning! Only a dusting, and that disapearing quickly, but more on the mountain. Susan's car is covered, and the front porch is frosted over, snow between the boards.

Here is a haiku by the Japanese poet Issa (translation by Stephen Addiss):

Stickily stickily
clinging to everything---
spring snow

I was sent the following excerpt from the work of Carl Sandburg in response to my comments about the lack of verse about sheep.

Thousands of sheep, soft-footed, black-nosed sheep--
one by one going up the hill and over the fence--one by
one four-footed pattering up and over--one by one wiggling
their stub tails as they take the short jump and go
over--one by one silently unless for the multitudinous
drumming of their hoofs as they move on and go over--
thousands and thousands of them in the grey haze of
evening just after sundown--one by one slanting in a
long line to pass over the hill--

I am the slow, long-legged Sleepyman and I love you
sheep in Persia, California, Argentine, Australia, or
Spain--you are the thoughts that help me when I, the
Sleepyman, lay my hands on the eyelids of the children
of the world at eight o'clock every night--you thousands
and thousands of sheep in a procession of dusk making
an endless multitudinous drumming on the hills with
your hoofs.

I showed this to Susan, and she shared my first reaction: nice poetry, but the thought of sheep "going up the hill and over the fence" is a recipe for instant insomnia. For a shepherd, good sleep comes when there is no reason to think of sheep at all!

I don't watch "The Jerry Springer Show." There is nothing he could put on stage that would top the human comedy of General District Court. This morning we had a woman who was protesting a speeding ticket, because, after the ticket was issued, the trooper failed to notice and provide assistance when her window wouldn't roll up. Somehow this was all complicated by the fact that she was transporting a terminally ill cat. In the afternoon we had a prisoner who was brought over for tearing his blanket. He tore the blanket because the jailors wouldn't let him write on the walls with crayons. The interesting thing is that these people seemed otherwise sane.

When I crossed the second cattleguard this evening I saw small sheep everywhere. Susan, the boys and her father had moved the ewes with lambs from the large pen behind the house to the front field. The ewes seemed both delighted by the new grass and annoyed at the break in routine. The lambs, as usual, had scattered like little drops of mercury. At least a dozen had discovered that they could limbo under the fence around the yard and were happily munching rose bushes in the back garden.

A lingering, varicolored sunset this evening. There is still a scattering of light and it is almost 7:00 p.m. The longer days of spring are just as welcome as the new grass or warm weather. It is hard to express the pleasure of having chores finished before dark. The curse of the part-time farmer is that every job gets crammed into time around paying employment. By late December that means feeding by lantern or flashlight while the temperature drops around you. It means cracking ice on water troughs in the morning while the sun is still trying to haul itself up over Skyline Drive. With the non-negotiable demands of court dockets on my time, the bulk of the daily work falls on my wife, who has her own off-farm responsibilities as a part-time teacher. She embraces the return of warm weather and longer days with a passion that starving men reserve for food or castaways for rescue. Our life is "pastoral" in the most literal sense, but that does not mean that it is easy or gentle. If I had to pick fitting soundtrack music, it would be one of those pieces by Charles Ives where bands are playing in different keys in each corner of the hall. The academic year, the calender of the criminal courts, the needs of two growing children and the biological cycles of livestock all make seemingly irreconcilable demands. Nonetheless it is a life with beauty and its own sometimes inexplicable satisfactions.

As a prosecutor I struggle daily with the question of how a Christian should respond to the evil actions of his fellow man. The "just war" tradition works out this issue on a larger scale. Lutheran theologian David Yeago has an excellent examination of just war thinking in our current context in this article from the journal "Pro Ecclesia".

The March issue of First Things magazine contains a reaction by Father Neuhaus to a talk by Prof. John Erickson of St. Vladimirs' Seminary on the Orthodox retreat from ecumenism. I may have some comments later, but in the meantime, here is a link to the full text of Erickson's remarks.

The set of people interested in both Orthodoxy and sheep farming is vanishingly small. Here, however, is a page from an Orthodox sheep, resident at the Holy Myrrhbearers convent in New York state; Maude's Page!

Here is another Lafferty page that perhaps gives a better introduction:
Great SF&F Works: Books by R.A. Lafferty

Those of you who are older, and widely read in obscure literary science fiction, will be sad to know that R. A. Lafferty has died. He was one of the few truly original stylists in the genre. A Lafferty story was as distinct in voice as a poem by Hopkins, another great Catholic eccentric. His writing was uneven, but at his best he could break your heart or crack your ribs with laughter, sometimes both at once. There is not much about him on the web. Here is the largest site I could find:
R.A. Lafferty: Devotional Site

Most of his work is out of print, or available only in small press pamphlets. If you want someplace to start, try "900 Grandmothers", a story collection, or "Past Master" a novel both absurd and touching, about what happens when an honest man is put into Utopia.

With the coming of coyotes to the Shenandoah, sheep farmers are turning to a variety of guard animals for protection. We use llamas. If sheep are a neglected subject in English verse, llamas are more so. Here, however, is an ecumenically "incorrect" poem on the subject by Hilaire Belloc:

The Llama is a wolly sort of fleecy hairy goat,
With an indolent expression and an undulating throat
Like an unsuccessful literary man.

And I know the place he lives in (or at least-- I think I do)
It is Ecuador, Brazil or Chile-- possibly Peru;
You must find it in the Atlas if you can.
The Llama of the Pampasses you never should confound
(In spite of a deceptive similarity of sound)
With the Llama who is Lord of Turkestan.
For the former is a beautiful and valuable beast,
But the latter is not lovable nor useful in the least;
And the Ruminant is preferable surely to the Priest
Who battens on the woful superstitions of the East,
The Mongol of the Monastery of Shan.

While the English literary tradition is chock full of pastoral themes, oddly, there is little verse directly on the subject of sheep. Here is a contemporary effort, courtesy of Ploughshares, the literary journal

Greetings on a rainy Easter morning. This site will contain periodic comments on things that interest me. I am a full-time prosecuting attorney in a small town in the Shenandoah valley of Virginia. I am also a part-time sheep farmer, living on property that has been in my wife's family for the past hundred years. The intersection of those two lives will provide most of the material for these posts. In addition to the weekly farm report, there will also be comments on books, music, movies, politics and religion. As to the last, I am a convert to Orthodox Christianity. Periodically I may try to share some of the wealth of that tradition. By doing this, I make no claims to special insight or sanctity. In describing my own spiritual condition, I can do no better than the little girl in Flannery O'Connor's story "Temple of the Holy Ghost"; "She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick."