We live in a world of art. Bad art, but still: art. Art, entertainment, celebrity, accoutrement, style, fashion, design, innovation, the interweb, the YouTube, the everything all it once with an awesome soundtrack.

Christians love to bemoan the death of the culture and the ubiquity of depravity. Western Civilization is crumbling around us, and whose fault is it? Is it the fault of all this art? Does art – does every form of romantic self-expression – lead to a loss of innocence and a spreading of depravity? Is Britney Spears the child of Nabokov’s Lolita (a book with language so beautifully written, with figures so astounding to the imagination, I had to keep reminding myself it was about pedophilia)?

Roger Sandall believes so. And so do many Evangelicals, in a way. But it’s nice to hear someone from outside the ghetto saying it, too. Read his argument here.

Given all the poems today, it was providential to come across this Slate piece on a new translation of the oldest poetry anthology in the history of Western Civilization: namely, The Psalms. Growing up in the church, having been exposed to this thing called The Bible for all my life, my reading of scripture can quickly become cliched and boring, where I don’t really read with open eyes. I too easily fall back on conventional understandings, on dead metaphors of meaning, and I am no longer impressed or moved by the figurative language of Holy Scripture. This is a problem of reading and one that must be combated with all the good tools of crticism and language and translation. So I enjoy reading other people’s interpretations of scripture, including non-believers, who, while casting much in shadow, also stumble across new light from time to time.

Robert Alter (what a great name for a translator of poetry, especially Biblical poetry) says this:

The poetry of Psalms draws on a traditional and even formulaic repertory of images, but on the whole it is remarkable for its powerfully succinct and intense passion about God and human existence, and for the way it anchors the life of the spirit in the palpable experience of the body. The sundry English translations, from Renaissance to contemporary, have in certain ways obscured key strengths of the Psalms. My dissatisfaction with them led me to attempt my own translation.

(more…)

One final poem to last the fall.

“The Months” by Linda Pastan

music; the earth
shivers and
turns towards
the solstice.

Another poem for the fall.

“The Finality of a Poem” by Michael Anania

is placed and what
it is that’s ending.

Today is really Saturday, and it is cool in Savannah for the first time in a long time, and I am feeling like three poems today. O you haters of poems, your comments are unwelcome. Away with you!

These are all poems of fall.

“A Sunset of the City” by Gwendolyn Brooks

Somebody muffed it? Somebody wanted to joke.

Marvin Olasky this week wonders what happened to the George Bush who stood up to bureacrats:

My first close look at Governor Bush in action came in 1995. That’s when Texas state officials tried, with bureaucratic nincompoopery, to shut down an evangelical organization, Teen Challenge of South Texas, that had helped to free hundreds of young men from alcoholism and drug addiction.

I wrote columns in WORLD and The Wall Street Journal about the attack and soon received a call: Could I meet with the governor and suggest ways out of the mess? Sure—and Bush responded right away with an order to his bureaucrats to shut up and sit down. He also convened a citizens’ task force that recommended legislative changes to keep officials from circumscribing religious freedom.

So why isn’t W standing against the feds’ hare-brained new prison library plan?

“I had been awake since 1 a.m., which is earlier by two hours than my usual waking time. It was the last stretch of a 32-hour fast in concert with a friend, we petitioning for the sleep that has become a stranger to my bed since March of 2005. God’s response: silence — and less sleep.” This week, Andree Seu grapples with unanswered prayer.

In his column this week, WORLD founder Joel Belz updates readers on big changes coming at the magazine:

In our issue dated July 14, I used this space to tell you about some radical increases that the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has just thrown our way. Our postage bill was jumping by $1,000 a day for the coming year! And from some reliable sources, we were warned to be ready for still more increases next year.

Yet I told you readers bluntly that retreat was not an option. No way were we going to cut editorial content, move WORLD exclusively to the web, or print fewer pages.

I asked you instead in my column that week: What if we could find a way to send you a better, thicker, more comprehensive magazine—but to send it every two weeks instead of on our present schedule? What if we sent you 26 jumbo issues a year instead of 48 issues of the current standard size?

I know we posted that question here, too. Click here to find out what more than 5,000 readers said.

In Isaiah 1, God offers a stark choice…

Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord:
though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red like crimson,
they shall become like wool.

If you are willing and obedient,
you shall eat the good of the land;
but if you refuse and rebel,
you shall be eaten by the sword;
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

Isaiah 1:18-20

Happy Saturday!

Today’s movie line: “And our bodies are earth. And our thoughts are clay. And we sleep and eat with death.”