Ted Kooser, Career Choices, and Northerness

This is Ted Kooser, the recent Poet Laureate of the United States, serving two terms from 2004-2006. I had heard about him a while back when I was at NSA. In fact, I think that Aaron Wrench told me about him. Aaron is always interviewing some interesting celebrity and I think Aaron even asked Kooser to write him a recommendation to get into the creative writing MFA at U of I. So Ted Kooser stuck in my mind back then and I heard him again recently on NPR. Kooser writes poems that are both understandable, which I like, and poetic at the same time--Imagine that. Here's a quote in which he explains how he wants to be considerate to the "strangers of poetry," which I must admit that I mostly am:

"Every stranger's tolerance for poetry is compromised by much more important demands on his or her time. Therefore, I try to honor my reader's patience and generosity by presenting what I have to say as clearly and succinctly as possible .... Also, I try not to insult the reader's good sense by talking down; I don't see anything to gain by alluding to intellectual experiences that the reader may not have had. I do what I can to avoid being rude or offensive; most strangers, understandably, have a very low tolerance for displays of pique or anger or hysteria. Being harangued by a poet rarely endears a reader. I am also extremely wary of over cleverness; there is a definite limit to how much intellectual showing off a stranger can tolerate." - Midwest Quarterly, 1999

Another thing about Kooser that piqued my interest is that he worked in insurance for many, many years, I think until he retired, first as a salesman and then as the vice president of a company. And he was still able after all of that mind-numbing sales and administrative work to be creative. My passion is studying and interpreting history, but I often feel that my skills as a reader, teacher, writer and public speaker are not such as to earn me much of a living or allow me much time to give to a future family while earning it, therefore I take comfort that history and perhaps even some success in writing or teaching may be waiting for me when I retire from a more regular sort of job.

Here is just one poem of Kooser’s, which I pulled off his website, tedkooser.com, entitled "Flying at Night:"

Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.
Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies
like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,
some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,
snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn
back into the little system of his care.
All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,
tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his.

That poem is about what C.S Lewis called "northerness," the consciousness of great spaces or distances, the stars above and the earth beneath, even great caverns in the earth beneath and the molten core of the earth and the space on the other side and the fact that the earth is suspended in space. It's enough to give one vertigo. I wish that I would spend more time thinking about such things than I do. It puts career choices in perspective, a very healthy sort of thought. But of course, unless we are going to be ungrateful existentialists, the thought cannot stop there. The conclusion of such thoughts is that God is great. God can span all of those distances between his thumb and pinky.

The Importance of Chant

I went to disputatio today at NSA to hear Dr. David R. Erb--from Trinity Church in Kirkland Washington, a Reformed evangelical church--who is candidating for being NSA's new music professor and choir director. My first concern was whether there would be enough work at Christ Church for Mark Reagan to stay in town. Fortunately, there will be. If Erb is hired then Mark will focus on training the congregation. And if I know Mark, he will probably use the lighter workload to further pursue his education.

Anyway, this Erb guy seems like a good sport. He even came out to play at NSA basketball game. Erb spoke about chants, something very foreign to the vast majority of contemporary American churches, yet something integral to the Christian tradition. American church music today, stylistically speaking, is a no-man’s-land. It has no distinguishable features to relate it to the great tradition of western sacred music or even the music of the early church. However, one thing that all sacred music has had in common through the centuries, whether that of the early Christian synagogues or that of the medieval churches and monasteries, is chant. Chanting the psalms more directly connects the congregation with scripture than do most “praise choruses” and liturgical chants allow the service to proceed by singing, which is more glorious than just speaking. Erb began his talk by quoting Zephania 3:14-17.

(14)Sing, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel; be glad and rejoice with all the heart, O daughter of Jerusalem. (15)The LORD hath taken away thy judgments, he hath cast out thine enemy: the king of Israel, even the LORD, is in the midst of thee: thou shalt not see evil any more. (16)In that day it shall be said to Jerusalem, Fear thou not: and to Zion, Let not thine hands be slack. (17)The LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing.

God not only commands us to sing, but He himself sings about us. Thus, singing is extremely important for those who would be followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. Historically, Christian services were often entirely composed of singing. The creeds were sung. Scripture as well was chanted, not merely read, and even sermons were chanted. Martyn Loyd-Jones was the last of the Scottish sermon chanters.

Erb would like to see a revival of chant, not in the same way it was sung during the Middle Ages, but new renditions of the Psalms, which may be half sung and half chanted. We need to draw on the chants when putting the Psalms to music and knowing them will also make the music of the masters (Bach and Mozart and Durufle, etc.) much more relevant and understandible.

This is certainly not a perfect summary of what Dr. Erb said; nevertheless, I thought he was compelling. My guess is that they'll probably hire him.

First Logos Snow Day in 12 Years!

Hans and Noai Leidenfrost invited everyone to a sledding party on Robbinson Hill, but the ride to the bottom was so bumpy that Jeremiah L. and others began to build this fort. From left to right: Jeff M., Ben N., Noai L.


I have to admit that I felt somewhat guilty working on this fort when everyone else in town was laboring to get their houses and cars free from the mounds of snow! But hey, to everything there is a season.


Here is the fort as far as we were able to complete it on Thursday afternoon. The photo is grainy because I had to increase the contrast. The left wall is taller than I am (6'3"). Hopefully someone will finish the project. Way to go Jeremiah Leidenfrost for starting this fort!

18 Inches of Snow - Whump!

This is the view from the front of my small apartment complex. It's one of the most interesting places I've ever lived because all of the apartments are studios. Since everyone lives alone, we're all much more prone to make friends with each other than if we all had roomates. One particular guy named Matt is very, very cool, one of the most friendly people I've ever met. He enjoys watching the Simpsons whenever he's not sleeping and he always has his door open, so you can stop by and watch with him whenever you want. He and his buddies (about 5 of them) live here and give the place a dormatory atmospher. Anyway, these are my friends cars here after the snow. As you can see they haven't tried to dig them out and it's already been a day since it snowed.


Could it be that they were preoccupied with something else. Hey, what's that big, white lump there, about 30 yards away?


Wow! It's a fort! This is the coolest studio apartment complex ever! (Ouch, my tongue just got stuck in my cheek.)


As you can tell by the level of light in this interior photo, the snow and chickenwire ceiling on this igloo is not very thick. Fortunately, they built this column in the center to help hold it up.