New music for the soul

Here is a video with an acoustic version of a song off of Ryan Adams’ just released “Ashes & Fire”.  I love Ryan Adams and had pre-ordered the CD which just arrived.  The song is entitled “Dirty Rain” and it reminds me of vintage Bob Dylan.  It’s a true poet’s account of a failed relationship: keep reading

 
Sun & flesh... living well in the body

One hundred and forty years ago, this very day, 16 year-old French poet Arthur Rimbaud penned a powerful, if troubling, poem entitled: Soleil et Chair (“Sun and flesh”).  Today’s post is about that poem. Rimbaud lived a wild, creative and short life, dying of cancer before his 37th birthday.  But he left a deep mark keep reading

 
Throw open the doors... of the Church

As long as the Church has been, she has struggled with the temptation to bar the doors to outsiders, the unclean, the heathens, the infidels, the unorthodox… the “Other”.  And at the same time, she has also struggled gallantly to heed the call of Jesus to “Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of keep reading

 
Wendell Berry and loving the land

Wendell is one of America’s great living poets.  I’ve been enjoying his latest book of poems entitled Leavings: Poems. In the tradition of Thoreau (though with a Christian perspective), Berry loves Nature.  In these poems from 2005 to 2008, alternately, he either extols its beauty or prophetically chastises man for being such a poor steward keep reading

 
A poem about enduring love

“If Thou Must Love Me, Let It Be For Naught”

 
You say you want to know

You say you want to know…

Well, drink up, my son,

Drink up the cup,

The cup of this humanity.

 
...there is a field...

Below is a poem by 13th century Persian poet & mystic Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi. I ran across it while working on a presentation on ethics.  The specific topic was  how a Christian ethic, informed by the story of Abraham, who left the comfort of the known, the security of home, the gods of his keep reading

 
Tiger:  Nothing good could ever come from this...

Another thought about the whole Tiger Woods affair… …Below are poignant lyrics from a song by Ron Sexsmith, a wonderful young songwriter in the tradition of Bob Dylan and the like.  The song is entitled “Nothing Good” and appears on his CD “Other Songs”. To me the words are a poetic rendering of the lonely keep reading

 
Long live Rock... rockers, not so much?

I have been thinking a bit about nostalgia and about music, trying to formulate a research study.  So I’ve been reading about music aesthetics, the psychology of music, etc…  I ran across this great–or should I say troubling?–poem by Scott Penney which appeared in 2007 in the Journal of Popular Music Studies. It seems every keep reading

 
"Death"

Sometimes, maybe often, poets need no interpreter…

“Death” by William Butler Yeats

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