Review: "An Exaltation of Larks," by James Lipton

1993 Edition

50 Collective Nouns to Bolster Your Vocabulary

http://mentalfloss.com/article/33580/50-collective-nouns-bolster-your-vocabulary

 

Lucas Reilly

January 18, 2013

Collective nouns may seem like quirky ways to describe groups, but 500 years ago, they were your ticket to the in-crowd. Most collective nouns, or “terms of venery,” were coined during the 15th century. Many were codified in books of courtesy, like the 1486 classic Book of St. Albans. St. Albans was a handbook for medieval gentlemen, and it contained essays on hawking, hunting, and heraldry. Appended to the hunting chapter sits a list of 164 collective nouns, titled “The Compaynys of Beestys and Fowlys.” (Contrary to the title, many terms actually describe people—a biting example of ye olde satire.)

 

As silly as some sound today, the phrases were formal and proper descriptions. St. Albans was, after all, a vocabulary-booster, a primer designed to help gentlemen-in-training avoid the embarrassment of “some blunder at the table.” Over the next century, the book’s popularity bloomed. Similar courtesy handbooks caught on, and by the end of the 16th century, a slew of collective nouns had entered the lexicon.

 

Some have achieved widespread currency and acceptance, like a “flight of stairs,” “a board of trustees,” and a “school of fish.” Others, like a “murder of crows,” barely cling on. However, a handful of obscure phrases have made a comeback, thanks to James Lipton’s wonderful compendium of collective nouns, An Exaltation of Larks. Here are a few from Lipton’s book that you should add to your repertoire.

 

1. Business of Ferrets

2. Labor of Moles

3. Mustering of Storks

4. Shrewdness of Apes

5. Gam of Whales

6. Smack of Jellyfish

7. Host of Angels

8. Fusillade of Bullets

9. Baptism of Fire

10. Quiver of Arrows

11. Tissue of lies

12. Murder of Crows

13. Unkindness of Ravens

14. Dule of Doves

15. Clowder, Cluster, or Clutter of Cats

16. Kindle of Kittens

17. Mute of Hounds

18. Pass of Asses

19. Ostentation of Peacocks

20. Team of Ducks (when flying)

21. Paddling of Ducks (when on water)

22. Trip of Goats

23. Sloth, or Sleuth, of Bears

24. Charm of Finches

25. Hill of Beans

26. String of Ponies

27. Hand of Bananas

28. College of Cardinals

29. Shock of Corn

30. Band of Men

31. Knot of Toads

32. Wedge of Swans (when flying)

33. Parliament of Owls

34. Superfluity of Nuns

35. Abominable Sight of Monks

36. Untruth of Summoners

37. Doctrine of Doctors

38. Damning of Jurors

39. Sentence of Judges

40. Rascal of Boys

41. Gaggle of Women

42. Gaggle of Gossips

43. Impatience of Wives

44. Tabernacle of Bakers

45. Poverty of Pipers

46. Fighting of Beggars

47. Neverthriving of Jugglers

48. Herd of Harlots

49. Worship of Writers

50. Hastiness of Cooks

 

According to Lipton, the terms above “are authentic and authoritative. They were used, they were correct, and they are useful, correct—and available—today.”

 

 

1991 Edition

Synopses & Reviews

http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-9780140170962-1

Publisher Comments:

An "exaltation of larks"? Yes! And a "leap of leopards," a "parliament of owls," an "ostentation of peacocks," a "smack of jellyfish," and a "murder of crows"! For those who have ever wondered if the familiar "pride of lions" and "gaggle of geese" were only the tip of a linguistic iceberg, James Lipton has provided the definitive answer: here are hundreds of equally pithy, and often poetic, terms unearthed by Mr. Lipton in the Books of Venery that were the constant study of anyone who aspired to the title of gentleman in the fifteenth century. When Mr. Lipton's painstaking research revealed that five hundred years ago the terms of venery had already been turned into the Game of Venery, he embarked on an odyssey that has given us a "slouch of models," a "shrivel of critics," an "unction of undertakers," a "blur of Impressionists," a "score of bachelors," and a "pocket of quarterbacks."

 

This ultimate edition of An Exaltation of Larks is Mr. Lipton's brilliant answer to the assault on language and literacy in the last decades of the twentieth century. In it you will find more than 1,100 resurrected or newly minted contributions to that most endangered of all species, our language, in a setting of 250 witty, beautiful, and remarkably apt engravings.

 

About the Author

 

James Lipton is the creator, executive producer, writer, and host of Inside the Actors Studio, which is seen in eighty-nine million homes in America on the Bravo network, and in 125 countries, and has received fourteen Emmy nominations. He is the author of the novel Mirrors, which he then adapted and produced for the screen, and of the American literary perennial An Exaltation of Larks, and has written the book and lyrics of two Broadway musicals. His television productions include Jimmy Carter’s Inaugural Gala, the first presidential concert ever televised; twelve Bob Hope birthday specials, reaching record-breaking audiences; and The Road to China, the first American entertainment program from the People’s Republic. He is a vice president of the Actors Studio, is the founder and dean emeritus of the Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University, has received three honorary PhDs, is a recipient of France’s Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and has been awarded the Lifetime Achievement Emmy by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

 

 

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Amazon.com - Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 

5.0 out of 5 stars

A Delight of Words

April 4, 2001

By F. Hamilton

Format:Paperback

 

Here's a real gem! AN EXALTATION OF LARKS (Ultimate Edition) is the culmination of more than two decades of Lipton's research of "nouns of multitude," which he prefers to call "terms of venery." (noun archaic usage - the practice or sport of hunting; the chase; more commonly the gratification of (sexual) desire.)

 

Many of these terms are commonplace: plague of locusts, pride of lions, litter of pups. Imagine, though, hearing these expressions for the first time. Lipton invites us to "sharpen our senses by restoring the magic to the mundane."

 

Lipton traced a number of these terms back to the 1400s, specifically to THE BOOK OF ST. ALBANS, printed in 1486. In addition to today's ordinary terms, he discovered some that had a fresh sound, precisely because they had not made the 500-year journey to our modern era.

 

Lipton identifies six sources of inspiration for the terms. He lists these "Families" with the following examples:

 

1. Onomatopoeia ("a formation of a word by imitation"): a murmuration of starlings, a gaggle of geese.

 

2. Characteristic (by far the largest Family): a leap of leopards, a skulk of foxes.

 

3. Appearance: a knot of toads, a parliament of owls.

 

4. Habitat: a shoal of bass, a nest of rabbits.

 

5. Comment (pro or con depending on viewpoint): a richness of martens, a cowardice of curs.

 

6. Error (in transcription or printing; sometimes preserved for centuries): "school" of fish was originally intended to be "shoal."

 

Lipton enthusiastically joined the "game" of coining terms, which had been in progress for more than 500 years. In 1968 he published his first EXALTATION OF LARKS, which contained 175 terms -- some from Middle English, some original. Neither the hardbound nor the paperback edition went out of print before the Ultimate Edition (with more than 1,000 terms) was published in 1991. As Lipton puts it, textbooks and various media "used the book like sourdough to leaven new batches of terms."

 

Lipton believes that a pun or a play on words detracts from the vigor of a term. Alliteration, likewise, is unnecessary. Rather the success of the term hinges on identifying the "quintessential part" of the group of people or things and allowing it to represent the whole: a blur of impressionists, a brood of hens, a quiver of arrows. (Lipton's research on this last item revealed that as early as 1300 a poetic soul rejected the available words "case" and "scabbard" and turned "quiver" into a noun.)

 

AN EXALTATION OF LARKS includes a few pages detailing Lipton's lexical odysseys and triumphs. Most of the book comprises the lists themselves. The origin of some of the terms is explained, and more than 250 of the terms are illustrated with witty engravings by Grandville, a 19th Century French lithographer. More than half the book lists terms in 25 categories, such as professions (an aroma of bakers), daily life (a belch of smokestacks), and academe (a discord of experts).

 

Lipton includes several versions of games in which players coin new terms. His index lists his 1,000+ terms with a blank replacing the first item, which is the source of a term's poetry. The reader is thus encouraged to discern the essence of the thing collected. The page number facilitates the comparison of newly coined terms with existing ones.

 

AN EXALTATION OF LARKS is indeed "a word lover's garden of delights."

 

 

 

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Images of Engravings by Grandville

Go here for many more images

 

~ click any image below to enlarge ~

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Repost: Should You be a Writer or an Editor?

Should you be a writer or an editor?

Part I: The writers.

http://www.theopennotebook.com/2013/01/15/should-you-be-a-writer-or-an-editor-part-i-the-writers/

 

Posted by Christie Aschwanden on January 15th, 2013

 

Are you an editor or a writer? How do you know? What are the crucial differences between the two specializations? The question arose when Slate science editor Laura Helmuth was visiting a class that Ann Finkbeiner teaches at the graduate program in science writing at Johns Hopkins University. Ann, hoping to help her students figure out whether they were natively editors or natively writers, asked Laura about the difference between writers and editors.

 

Laura punted.

 

Ann didn’t know, either.

 

After the class was over, Ann and Laura gave the question some more thought and then enlisted other writers and editors to help them answer it. We’ll run their answers in two separate posts today and tomorrow. Today, the writers.

 

Freelance writer Ann Finkbeiner:

 

I’m almost purely a writer. When I first started writing, my superb editors—people like Warren Kornberg and Tim Appenzeller—astounded me because they could say things like, “take the last sentence of every paragraph and make it the first sentence,” or because they could see the structure of a story that in my head was just a bunch of buzzing flies. “Wow,” I thought, “such seriously smart people.”

 

I still think they’re seriously smart, but I also think that’s what editors do: They stand back and analyze. I was busy trying to understand the science in the first place, then get it right, then write it so that readers could see how beautiful it was, then rewrite it 6,000 times for clarity, accuracy, concision, and elegance. An editor looks at the thing as a whole, analyzes its structure, and moves the boxes and connectors around until the story is logical, seemly, and stable.

 

So then what do writers do? They walk around with their recorders permanently set to “on,” listening for scientists using words oddly, for scientists saying they’ve just heard the strangest things, for scientists talking excitedly to other scientists about something the writer has never heard of and doesn’t understand anyway. They ask around and search the Internet to see whether this odd, strange, exciting thing might be a story, whether it makes that “click” that stories make. They go through the odds-against struggle of convincing an editor to feel the same click. If they don’t succeed, they try another editor. If they do succeed, they begin the joyous process of talking to scientists and understanding 100 times more about this story than they need to know. And then they try to structure it and almost can; and then they start to write it and they absolutely cannot, but they do it anyway.

 

My best example of the difference between writers and editors is when a writer-friend and I were having identical problems with our editors. We just had some neato little anecdotes (skinny physicist crawls around on Mexican border at midnight) and neato sentences (“Rumor had it she was a whore from Pahrump”) and neato people with neato quotes (“Pardon the expression, but I point the fucking telescope at the sky and see what’s out there”). And the editors were insisting on meaningful context (why were they trying to ban atmospheric tests?) and big thoughts and implications (does the nation need science advisors?) and beginnings, middles, and ends.

 

We all won, of course. Without the Mexican border and whore from Pahrump, the story has no flavor or color or sound, and the reader no point of personal contact. Without the context, implications, and structure, no one would even know it was a story.

 

Independent writer and editor Deborah Franklin:

 

Probably everyone skews at least a little bit more one direction than the other. I consider myself a writer who also edits.

 

A Writer:

 

* Paints with words. Walks through life making connections between disparate things, noticing splashes of color, snatches of conversation. Remembers what was said and what people look like. Has a vision. Sees a blank page as fun, as permission, as a place to let go and just try things. Is willing to imagine. Not afraid of working alone, struggling alone with a problem for long stretches at a time. In fact, enjoys it.

 

* Loves language and writes things that people love to read.

 

* Would rather watch a movie than act in one. At a party, would rather sit on the stairs and watch and listen to people than be the one in the middle of the room holding forth.

 

* Is curious. Asks good questions. Is not afraid to ask obvious or embarrassing questions. Is a good listener, and a quick study who thinks well on his/her feet. Has enough spidey-sense to recognize a good quote or idea or scene and knows to record them in some way. Is a voracious reader.

 

* Has internalized the ethics of journalism: Accuracy, fairness, no plagiarism. When it’s you and the source in an interview, you’re on your own; if you haven’t internalized those rules you will someday fail in a big way.

 

* Doesn’t mind long, unpredictable work hours. Knows how to make deadlines and will stick with a task until it’s done, until the story has a beginning and a middle and an end. When you’re an editor, you can stop and walk away when the time runs out. When you’re a writer, the task’s not over until you have a complete story on the page. Must be able to live with, and maybe even thrive under pressure and insecurity.

 

* Can live on a shoestring, at least at first, and/or periodically throughout your career. These days, staff writing/reporting jobs are few and far between. Freelance writers who make a substantial income have an excellent combination of talent, luck, experience, flexibility, and the ability to identify side jobs to make it work. It’s very hard these days to raise a family on one writer’s income.

 

Slate columnist and former science editor Daniel Engber:

 

I don’t think this is a binary variable, that you’re either a writer or an editor. It’s a spectrum, perhaps like being gay or straight, and (for those who care to do so) there’s room to maneuver in between the ironclad identities. I would probably call myself a writer who edits, or a writer who can edit, or a writer who has edited. Likewise, there are lots of amazing editors who write, or editors who can write, or editors who have written. And there are lots of jobs that are well-suited to intermediate types, or types who scoot around the spectrum from one year to the next. (Slate happens to be an excellent place for people who hover near the middle.)

 

So how do you know which activity you prefer? You have to try out both and see how they each inspire and annoy you. If you need a hint, there are some broad personality traits that might align with your placement on the spectrum. Editing jobs are both collaborative and hierarchical, and so invite a certain adherence to a higher goal and respect for external authority. Writing jobs tend to be more conducive to an individualistic mindset, and one that bristles at group directives.

 

New Scientist correspondent Bob Holmes:

 

Like many people who’ve been around for a while, I’ve spent time at both ends of the editorial hatchet. In the end, though, I’m a writer at heart. When I analyze why, I come up with three main reasons:

 

1) I prefer depth over breadth. (If I really meant that, of course, I’d still be doing science instead of writing about it. But given that all journalists are dilettantes, I prefer deeper rather than broader dilettantism.) I’m always impressed by how much editors know about so many different subjects, because they range widely over the stories written by many different writers. When I was a features editor for New Scientist a decade ago, I liked that sense of seeing the whole landscape. But the downside is that when you do this you rarely get to explore the finer topography of any particular topic.

 

Now that I’m a writer again, I particularly enjoy the feeling of knowing that I’ve spoken with every important source on a story and have all the information I need to understand the subject. (I don’t get to that point with every story, of course, but it happens often enough to keep me going.) That’s a satisfaction that editors rarely get—instead, they generally have to trust their writers on the legwork.

 

2) I prefer doing over helping. Editing has its own highs, such as the joy of sitting down in the morning with 4,000 words of meandering, flabby prose and getting up at the end of the day with a tight 2,400-word story without having cut anything of substance. But even then, the writer gets credit for scoring the goal; the editor only gets an assist.

 

I’d rather be the main mover on fewer stories each year instead of a helper on many. Looking back over the years, my most memorable stories are all ones that I’ve written, not ones I edited.

 

3) I prefer a freelance lifestyle over a steady job. Of course, writers can have steady jobs too, and editors can freelance. But for the most part, editing work seems more constant, more institutional. Every week has its quota of words to be tuned up and stories to be commissioned. Usually, editors work in an office, with colleagues, schedules, regular paychecks, and a clear career ladder to climb. That has many advantages, and for many people it’s exactly what they want.

 

But I’m happier with the greater flexibility of a writer’s life. When a deadline is looming, I work harder and longer than I ever did as an editor. On the other hand, I can also walk my dog in the middle of the day or knock off early to go skiing. I can make bread or start a pot of soup during breaks between interviews. And I’m here when my son gets home from school. All this unpredictability would no doubt drive some people nuts—but for me, it’s one of the big attractions of the job.

 

*Image by Shutterstock.

 

 

Are you an editor or a writer?

Part II: The editors.

http://www.theopennotebook.com/2013/01/16/are-you-an-editor-or-a-writer-part-ii-the-editors/

 

Posted by Christie Aschwanden on January 16th, 2013

 

 

Writers and editors work together all the time, but the two clans are somewhat mysterious to one another. Mutually suspicious, even. How do you know which career path you should specialize in? And how do editors become editors, anyway? Ann Finkbeiner and Laura Helmuth asked several journalists to describe the differences between writers and editors. In an earlier post, writers explained what it is they do. Today, the editors weigh in.

Scientific American online news editor Robin Lloyd:

I didn’t choose editing over writing so much as it chose me (same goes for journalism and science writing). As a reporter, a few of my superiors mentioned over the years that they saw me on an editing track, so I just kept saying “yes” when I got offers to do fill-in editing. Then I got an offer to be a writer/editor, and I said yes. Then I got an offer to be an editor, and I said yes. And so on. Over time, I have gained confidence in my ability as a short-form editor, though I still have much to learn, especially with long-form editing. I have an ear for prose that “sounds right.” I find that not everyone has that. One of my editors once told me I have good syntax. So I looked up “syntax” and thought, “Yeah, I do have good syntax.” I also did well in grammar class in 10th grade.

More seriously, my motivation as an editor is clear, compelling communication for the reader. Delivering that is my first job. Readers are looking at every word for an excuse to bail out—to stop reading a story. My job is to prevent that and to keep them reading this story by focusing on clarity, pacing, logic, arc, and sparkling prose (rewards). Also, I enjoy teaching and helping people.

I like reporting and writing on deadline, and I did it quite a bit for more than a decade, but I find editing on deadline a bit more relaxing and rewarding. It’s about the right size for my ego and skill set for now. Based on my experience, of course, I think that one becomes a better editor after a good chunk of foundational years as a writer.

I’ve seen many edits by many people who are paid as editors. A handful of them are great editors. I quietly learn from them.

Independent writer and editor Deborah Franklin:

Not every writer can edit, nor every editor write, but it sure does improve both sets of skills if you find yourself fortunate enough to spend at least a little time wearing each hat. I started out as a writer (for magazines and newspapers) and never sought to be an editor (for magazines and radio)—in fact fought it for many years—but the time I’ve spent editing has definitely improved my writing and my life!

An editor:

* Is good at puzzles, at seeing the flecks of green in several scattered puzzle pieces and understanding that they fit together to form the green hillside at the top of the story/painting, not the puddle of green algae at the bottom. Is thoughtful and analytical; good at spotting holes in arguments and seeing through well-written hand-waving. A voracious reader.

* Is more of a team player than a loner. Sociable. Likes dealing with different types of people (e.g. the infographics expert and the physics writer and the psych reporter).

* Is verbally articulate on the phone as well as in person. Can write a good, conversational email that makes the writer feel understood, appreciated, liked, and motivated to make the story better.

* Is part therapist; knows how to talk friends (or writers) through tough spots, and doesn’t hold their insecurity against them.

* Has good parenting skills. Knows to first point out some specific things you like about the writing and the story before being negative about things that don’t work. Not a pushover; knows the value of discipline, and knows how to deploy it.

* Knows that only one part of the job is working with the writer. Doesn’t mind being interrupted; is organized, can multi-task gracefully, and is able to quickly switch gears during a tough day.

* Finds meetings tolerable, maybe even fun.

* Can manage up as well as down in an organization. Understands how to represent the reader in fiercely defending the story, whether to the writer, the top-editor, the fact-checker, the copy-editor, the art director, the photographer, the illustrator, the social media czar, the publisher, or the advertising director. Is honest and kind and empathetic. Not a stick-your-finger-in-the-air-to-see-which-way-the-wind’s blowing kind of manager who just tells people what they want to hear. Rather, a calmly firm and compassionate listener/leader who has a strong enough ego to make and defend a good argument, but not an ego so big that it sucks all the air out of the room.

* Prefers/needs to work hours that are more easily contained. Editors often work long hours, too, but it is easier to walk away from the job at the end of the day as an editor than as a writer.

* Does not mind that the writer often gets the credit for a collaborative effort. Is able to take a parent’s pride in a successful, beautiful, groundbreaking piece.

Slate science editor Laura Helmuth:

My editing muse is Charlie Watts, the drummer for the Rolling Stones. For 50 years, he’s been the least famous or recognizable member of the band. In videos, you glimpse him only briefly as the camera pans across the stage to focus on Mick Jagger as he struts or Keith Richards as he snarls. Charlie sits behind his drums with a slight smile, nodding his head as he watches the real rock stars entertain the crowd. Charlie doesn’t wear spandex or eyeliner or weave beads into his hair, which is gray. He never had a drug problem or stole his bandmates’ girlfriends. He is easily the most boring musician of his generation—steady, calm, and resolutely not in the spotlight.

Editing requires most of the same skills writing does, but it also demands, if you’re going to be a good editor, a huge dose of humility. You will never and should never get the credit for a great story. Editors who seek recognition for their work are mostly bad editors—the Phil Collinses of the editing world, people who may be fine as solo artists but should really never work collaboratively. Other editors think they can write better than anyone else—and maybe they can, but then why are they working as editors? Those are the Keith Moons of the editing world. They will drown out their writers’ words and then vomit all over the stage.

An editor’s job is to make writers sound better, sound more like themselves. You cannot be proud and be an effective editor. The best writers don’t need much from you, and the worst ones may not appreciate how much you’ve helped them. If you edit well, your work will be invisible to a reader and as unnoticeable as possible to the writer. If you suggest a metaphor or joke or perfect transition that your writer uses, you should be satisfied even though no one will ever know it was yours (even writers forget where things came from, as they should, those clever magpies).

You cannot be jealous. If you are sitting in an office all day and you send someone to India to write a story about tigers and he emails one morning to say that he finally saw a tiger, an email full of exclamation points, you must be genuinely and purely delighted for him, to the point that you have a stupid smile on your face for the rest of the day. Imagine this: You have a great idea for a story and suggest it to a writer who then writes a terrific story, better than what you could have written. If you can imagine this being the most satisfying part of your job, you should be an editor.

Editing is like match-making. Perhaps the most important part of your job is knowing your audience. What writers would your readers fall in love with? Which stories should they sit next to at a dinner party? What fields of science would surprise and amuse them? You have to think about what your readers know they want and satisfy those desires, but you also have to keep introducing them to unexpected treats. And you’re constantly trying to attract new readers.

You have to think long-term. Every story you edit should be a pleasure to read, but the mix of stories you publish in a given day or month or year should build its own form of pleasure. You have to follow a lot of fields at a shallow level and know when they’re ripe for coverage, which may be years from now. You have to say no to a pitch in a way that makes writers want to keep pitching you when they find that perfect story in the future. You speak to journalism classes in the hope that one of the students will come to you someday with a scoop.

Editing isn’t as creative as writing, and it lacks the thrill of pursuit of reporting; it’s more business than art sometimes. You have to think about budgets and how your publication is funded and who the competition is (and how to smash them). You have to be conversant in marketing-ese and sit in on a lot of meetings. You’re basically a project manager, working with the art department, copy desk, publication staff, and technical development department on individual stories and long-term strategies.

There are actually a lot of good reasons not to be an editor, now that I think about it. But the best thing about being an editor is getting to work with writers. When they’re performing, you have the best seat in the house.

*Image by Shutterstock.

 

Select Poems by Sir Thomas Browne



Sir Thomas Browne · Religio Medici and Urne-Buriall

 
There is therefore but one comfort left,
that though it be in the power of
the weakest arme to take away life,
it is not in the strongest
to deprive us of death.

— Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici.

  

 

An Evening Prayer
by Sir Thomas Browne, c.1605-1682

THOU whose nature cannot sleep,
On my temples sentry keep;
Guard me ’gainst those watchful foes,
Whose eyes are open whilst mine close;
Let no dreams my head infest,
But such as Jacob’s temples blest.
While I do rest, my soul advance;
Make me to sleep a holy trance,
That I may, my rest being wrought,
Awake into some holy thought;
And with as active vigour run
My course, as doth the nimble sun.
Sleep is a death. Oh, make me try
By sleeping, what is it to die!
And as gently lay my head
On my grave, as now my bed.
Howe’er I rest, great God, let me
Awake again at last with Thee!
And thus assured, behold I lie
Securely, or to wake or die.


... from Religio Medici, the Second Part, Section XII, 117, ed. Pickering

XII. We term sleep a death; and yet it is waking that kills us, and destroys those spirits that are the house of life. ’Tis indeed a part of life that best expresseth death; for every man truely lives, so long as he acts his nature, or some way makes good the faculties of himself. Themistocles, therefore, that slew his Soldier in his sleep, was a merciful Executioner: ’tis a kind of punishment the mildness of no laws hath invented: I wonder the fancy of Lucan and Seneca did not discover it. It is that death by which we may be literally said to dye daily; a death which Adam dyed before his mortality; a death whereby we live a middle and moderating point between life and death: in fine, so like death, I dare not trust it without my prayers, and an half adieu unto the World, and take my farewell in a Colloquy with GOD.

 

... “In fine, so like death [is sleep], I dare not trust it without my prayers, and an half adieu unto the world, and take my farewell in a colloquy with God. [Here follows the poem.] This is the Dormitive I take to bedward; I need no other Laudanum than this to make me sleep: after which I close mine eyes in security, content to take my leave of the Sun, and sleep unto the Resurrection.”

 

 

Portrait, Sir Thomas Browne
English Classic Poet

 

 

Religio Medici [excerpt]

by Sir Thomas Browne, c.1605-1682

Search while thou wilt, and let thy reason goe
To ransome truth even to the Abysse below.
Rally the scattered causes, and that line
Which nature twists be able to untwine.
It is thy Makers will, for unto none
But unto reason can he ere be knowne.
The Devills doe know thee, but those damned meteours
Build not thy glory, but confound thy creatures.
Teach my endeavours so thy workes to read,
That learning them, in thee I may proceed.
Give thou my reason that instructive flight,
Whose weary wings may on thy hands still light.
Teach me to soare aloft, yet ever so,
When neare the Sunne, to stoope againe below.
Thus shall my humble feathers safely hover,
And though neere earth, more then the heavens discover.
And then at last, when holmeward I shall drive
Rich with the spoyles of nature to my hive,
There will I sit, like that industrious flye,
Buzzing thy prayses, which shall never die
Till death abrupts them, and succeeding glory
Bid me goe on in a more lasting story.



The skull of Sir Thomas Browne
resting on two volumes of Religio

 

Amazon.com - http://www.amazon.com/Religio-Medici-Urne-Buriall-Review-Classics/dp/1590174887/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1358309416&sr=1-1&keywords=sir+thomas+browne#_

 

 

Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Browne

 

Portrait of Sir Thomas Browne, Classic Poet, 17th Century
Born	19 October 1605London
Died	19 October 1682(1682-10-19) (aged 77)Norwich
Nationality	English
Fields	Medicine
Alma mater	Pembroke College, Oxford, University of Padua
Known for	Religio Medici, Urne-Burial and The Garden of Cyrus, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, Christian Morals
Influences	Francis Bacon, Kepler, Paracelsus, Montaigne, Athanasius Kircher, Della Porta
Influenced	Jorge Luis Borges, W. G. Sebald, Samuel Johnson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Herman Melville

 

 

 

Biography (from All Poetry.com)

http://allpoetry.com/Sir_Thomas_Browne

 

The son of a silk merchant from Upton, Cheshire, Browne was born in the parish of St Michael, Cheapside, in London on October 19, 1605. His father died while he was still young and he was sent to school at Winchester College. In 1623 he went up to Oxford University.

 

Browne graduated from Pembroke College, Oxford in 1626 after which he studied medicine at various Continental universities, including Leiden, where he received a M.D. in 1633. He ultimately settled in Norwich in 1637 where he practiced medicine and lived until his death in 1682.

 

His first well-known work bore the Latin title Religio Medici (The Religion of a Physician). This work was circulated in manuscript among his friends, and it caused Browne some surprise and embarrassment when an unauthorised edition appeared in 1642, since the work contained a number of religious speculations that might be considered unorthodox. An authorised text with some of the controversial matter removed appeared in 1643. The expurgation did not end the controversy; in 1645, Alexander Ross attacked Religio Medici in his Medicus Medicatus (The Doctor, Doctored) and in fact the book was placed upon the Papal index of forbidden reading for Catholics in the same year.

 

In 1646, Browne published Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or, Enquiries into Very many Received Tenets, and commonly Presumed Truths, whose title refers to the prevalence of false beliefs and "vulgar errors." A sceptical work that debunks a number of legends circulating at the time in a paradoxical and witty manner, it displays the Baconian side of Browne—the side that was unafraid of what at the time was still called "the new learning." The book is significant in the history of science because its arguments were some of the first to cast doubt on the widely-believed hypothesis of spontaneous generation or abiogenesis.

 

In 1658 Browne published together two Discourses which are intimately related to each other, the first being Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial or a Brief Discourse of the Sepulchral Urns lately found in Norfolk, occasioned by the discovery of some Bronze Age burials in earthenware vessels found in Norfolk. These inspired Browne to meditate upon the funerary customs of the world and the fleetingness of earthly fame and reputation.

 

In 1671 King Charles II, accompanied by the Royal Court, visited Norwich. The courtier John Evelyn, who had occasionally corresponded with Browne, took good use of the Royal visit to call upon the learned doctor of European fame and wrote of his visit: His whole house & garden is a paradise and Cabinet of rarieties & that of the best collection, amongst Medails, books, Plants, natural things.

 

During his visit to Norwich, King Charles II visited Browne's home. A banquet was held in the Civic Hall St. Andrews for the Royal visit. Obliged to honour a notable local, the name of the Mayor of Norwich was proposed to the King for knighthood. The Mayor, however, declined the honour and proposed the name of Browne instead. Thus, technically speaking, Thomas Browne was only Sir Thomas from 1671 until his death eleven years later in 1682.

 

Sir Thomas Browne died on his 77th birthday, October 19th 1682. His skull became the subject of dispute when in 1840 his lead coffin was accidentally re-opened by workmen. It was not re-interred until 4th July 1922 when it was registered in the church of Saint Peter Mancroft as aged 316 years.

 

A statue of Sir Thomas occupies the centre position of the Haymarket beside the St Peter Mancroft and not far from the site of his house.

 

A Related Note of Interest

"If thou couldst empty all thyself of self" is poem commonly attributed to Sir Thomas Browne but should not be. Apparently another "Brown" (no last "e") by the name of "T.E. (Thomas Edward) Brown" from the same 19th century wrote that verse:

"The poem is in fact "Indwelling", published in Old John and Other Poems (1893); it was first published anonymously in 1875 in the serial Plain Talk under the title "No Room". You may find a few of Brown's other poems at Poems of T.E.Brown, a site in development (but inaccessible the last time I checked), and a lot of them at Poems of T.E. Brown, a site nearly complete."

Many thanks for the heads up on this oversight. For more please go to: A Different Brown: A Poem not by Sir Thomas.

 

Repost: Poetry Magazine's Editor Christian Wiman Discusses Faith

Exclusive: Christian Wiman Discusses Faith as He Leaves World's Top Poetry Magazine

Wiman's Baptist faith lay dormant until love and cancer unearthed it.

 

Interview by Josh Jeter

posted December 7, 2012

 

 

In the afternoon of his 39th birthday, less than a year after his wedding day, poet Christian Wiman was diagnosed with an incurable cancer of the blood. Wiman, who announced Wednesday that he will step down in June as editor of Poetry magazine, the oldest and most esteemed poetry monthly in the world, had long ago drifted away from the Southern Baptist beliefs of his upbringing. But the shock of staring death in the face gradually revived a faith that had gone dormant (a story he first told publicly in a 2007 article for The American Scholar).

 

Wiman's new book of essays, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), took shape in the wake of his diagnosis, when he believed death could be fast approaching. These writings come from someone who is less a cautious theologian than a pilgrim crying out from the depths. They divulge the God-ward hopes (and doubts) of an artist still piecing together a spiritual puzzle. San Francisco-based lawyer and author Josh Jeter corresponded with Wiman about his new book, his precarious health, and the ongoing challenge of belief in God.

 

How did you arrive at your Christian faith?

 

I was raised in West Texas as a Southern Baptist, in a culture and family so saturated with religion that it never occurred to me there was any alternative until I left. Then it all just evaporated in the blast of modernism and secularism to which I was exposed in college. Or, it didn't evaporate, exactly, because I never would have called myself an atheist. But religious feeling went underground in me for a couple of decades, to be released occasionally in ways I never really understood or completely credited—in poems, mostly.

 

'There's no question that illness has brought a great urgency to my work:

One speaks differently when standing on a cliff.'

- Christian Wiman

 

Then about 10 years ago I fell into despair. There is no other way to say it, really, nor do those words do anything but hint at the abyss. Whether it was cause or effect, I went through a writing drought unlike anything I had ever known—three years of it. In the midst of this—miraculously, it now seems to me—I fell suddenly and utterly in love with the woman who is now my wife. I still couldn't write, but the despair was blasted like a husk away from my spirit.

 

We found ourselves saying little prayers together before dinner. They were almost jokes at first, and then, increasingly, not. We'd been married about eight months when I got a surprise diagnosis of an incurable cancer, and the encroaching darkness demanded that the light I felt burning in me acquire a more definite and durable form. One Sunday morning we wandered into a church. A couple of days later I started to write. I don't think it's quite accurate to say that I had a conversion or even a "return" to Christianity. I was just finally able to assent to the faith that had long been latent within me.

 

You have three vocations: poet, editor of Poetry magazine, and, most recently, spiritual essayist. How did you decide to begin writing spiritual essays?

 

I've always written prose, and I can now see how God's absence—or, more accurately, my refusal to admit his presence—underlies all of my earlier work (poems as well).

 

But you're certainly right to point out a change. My work—prose and poetry—is still full of anguish and even unbelief, but I hope it's also much more open to simple joy. The theologian Jürgen Moltmann once wrote that all theology, especially a theology of hope, had to be conducted "in earshot of the dying Christ." Abundance and destitution are both aspects of God—or, more accurately, aspects of our experience of God.

 

Soon you will release a set of essays. How has your turn to faith shaped or influenced these essays?

 

After my diagnosis, I wrote a short piece trying to make sense of all that had happened to me. It was published in a relatively small magazine, The American Scholar, but the response to it was pretty overwhelming. I began to realize there was an enormous contingent of people out there who were starved for new ways of feeling and articulating their experiences of God. I wanted to have a conversation with these people.

 

I also wanted to figure out my own mind. I knew that I believed, but I was not at all clear on what I believed. So I set out to answer that question, though I have come to realize that the real question is how, not what. How do you answer that burn of being that drives you both deeper into, and utterly out of, yourself? What might it mean for your life—and for your death—to acknowledge the insistent, persistent call of God?

 

You have had some very difficult health issues the past few years, and according to one essay, have recently been "close to death." How is your health now? And what have your health struggles meant for your work?

 

I've been through a multitude of treatments, culminating in a bone-marrow transplant last fall. There's no question that illness has brought a great urgency to my work: One speaks differently when standing on a cliff. Then again, I have always had little patience for art that is not elemental, art that doesn't take on the major questions of our existence. Perhaps my own inclinations have simply been intensified by my illness.

 

As for that illness, it's gone. For now. I haven't felt this healthy in eight years. I hope I am now faced with the difficult task of learning to live without my familiar miseries. "Our torments also may, in length of time, Become our elements," says John Milton. "[T]hese piercing fires [a]s soft as now severe." There is always some devil in us—that's a demon speaking the lines above—who makes us think we love or need our pain.

 

Sometimes your essays feel like you are arguing with yourself. Do you write them for yourself or others?

 

I've never thought of my essays like this, but I see immediately that you're right. W. B. Yeats defined rhetoric as the quarrel we have with others. Poetry, he said, comes out of the quarrel we have with ourselves. Prose isn't poetry, obviously, but I've always felt the two arts to be raveled up with one another for me.

 

I read a lot of theology, even though I am almost always frustrated by it. Thomas Merton once said that trying "to solve the problem of God" is like trying to see your own eyes. No doubt that's part of it. There is something absurd about formulating faith, systematizing God. I am usually more moved—and more moved toward God—by what one might call accidental theology, the best of which is often art, sometimes even determinedly secular art.

 

I am moved by works of art that don't so much strive to make meaning as allow meaning to stream through them: Bach, certain poems by T. S. Eliot, the novelist Marilynne Robinson, the late work of the American sculptor Lee Bontecou, even less conventional religious writers like Simone Weil or Sara Grant. People can occasionally embody and enact this kind of meaning as well—we are, after all, works of the very greatest Creator's hands.

 

How much is spiritual experience—prayer, solitude, and the like—a part of your artistic process?

 

I think poetry is how religious feeling survived in me during all those years of unbelief, and it remains the most intense experience I have of another order of being entering my own. But poems are not contemplative or peaceful times for me; they're chaotic and can wreck my life for a while. They're also few and far between, and you can't (or I can't) build a spiritual life on that kind of intermittent intensity.

 

So I try to pray every day, usually in a little chapel near where I work, sometimes in a cathedral because I like the huge estrangement of it, the volatile silence. I feel no connection between prayer and poetry, except for the poems that I have written as prayers. Poetry is a much more powerful experience for me than prayer, but I feel this to be a weakness in me. I'm still just learning how to pray.

 

In your essays, you often appeal to the work of Christian mystics (like Meister Eckhart, Thomas Traherne, George Herbert, Marguerite Porete, Weil). What draws you to the mystics?

 

Partly I feel envy. I want to be taken over by God. I want to have the kind of disciplined inwardness that allows the ego to be annihilated. I want the kind of revelation that precedes all doctrine and dogma, is the reason for all doctrine and dogma. Christ's life is one long revelation; everything after that merely grows up from it.

 

But then, too, all of these writers have an artistic consciousness. I understand the language they speak, though I don't quite speak it myself, or maybe speak a different dialect. The energy of art may be prior to religion, but religion, paradoxically, is a way of sustaining and surviving the psychic storm of that original energy (just as ritual and doctrine are ways of stabilizing and preserving the awful power of mystical revelation). Art for its own sake, art that has no answering "other," will eventually eat you alive.

 

You have written that one measure of a genuine spiritual experience is the extent to which it "demands uncomfortable change." What kinds of "uncomfortable changes" have you experienced in your life?

 

That's what my wife always asks me!

 

I would like to think of this new book as a viable answer to your question, but solitary writing is quite natural to me, and we should be suspicious when God's call conforms so neatly to our own inclinations.

 

More relevant, maybe, are the many speaking engagements, including sermons, I have taken on at religious schools and organizations in the past few years. This is new to me and, while very gratifying, has at times been quite discomfiting. I have also become deliberate about being open and honest about my thoughts of God. Maybe not so honest in secular settings. That, too, has provoked some useful but uncomfortable exchanges.

 

Still, the question is a thorn in my brain. I feel that I spend too much time agonizing over what faith might mean, rather than simply acting in accordance with my instincts. Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote that only the person who obeys believes. It is a hard road, but the right one. I will probably end up as a preacher after all.

 

Your faith does not come across as breezy in your essays, which you occasionally grace with levity. For example: "If I ever sound like a preacher in these passages, it's only because I have a hornet's nest of voluble and conflicting parishioners inside of me." Does your faith ever express itself as peace?

 

Rarely, which I see as a weakness. I do feel that some people may be called to unbelief—or what looks like unbelief—in order that faith may take new forms. Emily Dickinson is a good example of this, or Albert Camus. But I also believe that God requires every last cell of yourself to bow down.

 

Or perhaps that verb, requires, is wrong, or that it's God doing the requiring: It's more like your nature requires, in order to be your nature, that every last cell of yourself bow down. There is still some satanic pride in me, for which I pay a high price.

 

And yet, I have certainly experienced peace in poems that in their sheer givenness seemed to reveal something of God to me. I have written poems that begin in great anguish and explode into joy. As psychically difficult as the poems may have been to write, certainly I have felt peace and presence in their wake.

 

There are other moments, too, which are simply moments of life. Simply! I think of the poet Paul Eluard: "There is another world, but it is in this one." I have 3-year-old twin daughters. It would be disingenuous in the extreme for me to pretend that they don't at times drive all thought of God out of my head and make me want to write a series of sonnets in praise of celibacy, but it would be equally insane for me not to acknowledge that they are the source of my greatest happiness. Father Zossima, in The Brothers Karamazov, defines hell as "the inability to love." I have known that hell, and I should probably spend my remaining days thanking God that I am free of it.

- CT

 

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Relevancy22 - Faith & Theology

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/

 

 

 

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 Amazon Listings

 

Christian Wiman's books and editorial contributions -

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=christian+wiman

 

 

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January 2013

Google Listings

 

The American Scholar: Mortify Our Wolves - Christian Wiman

Tere comes a moan to the cancer clinic. There comes a sound so low and unvarying it seems hardly human, more a note the wind might strike off jags of rock ...

 

The American Scholar: Gazing into the Abyss - Christian Wiman

Though I was raised in a very religious household, until about a year ago I hadn't been to church in any serious way in more than 20 years. It would be ...

 

The American Scholar: My Bright Abyss - Christian Wiman
And there the poem ends. Or fails, rather, for in the three years since I first wrote that stanza I have been trying to feel my way—to will my way—into its ending.

 

The American Scholar: Hive of Nerves - Christian Wiman
It is time that the stone grew accustomed to blooming, That unrest formed a heart. —Paul Celan. During a dinner with friends the talk turns, as it often does these ...

 

Christian Wiman's Remarkable Essay in The American Scholar ...
Oct 31, 2012 – Back in April, we blogged about Christian Wiman, a member of the Washington and Lee Class of 1988, for two pieces of news. He had just won ...

 

Evil Is What Humans Do: An Interview with Christian Wiman: The ...
Mar 12, 2012 – Christian Wiman is one of America's most important poets. ... year reading your essay “Gazing into the Abyss” from the American Scholar and it ...