Wordsworth Condemns False Liberty

Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room;
And hermits are contented with their cells;
And students with their pensive citadels;
Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells;
In truth the prison, unto which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,
In sundry moods, 'twas pastime to be bound
Within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground;
Pleased of some Souls (for such there needs must be)
Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
Should find brief solace there, as I have found.

-William Wordsworth

Traditional Catholics rightly complain about the distorted misconceptions of liberty that have played so great a role in the destruction of culture and the loss of souls. Many would be surprised to find an ally in Wordsworth, a poet who is typically associated with pantheism and with the Romantic desire to shatter all limitations placed on the spirit. Indeed, the young Wordsworth was an ardent supporter of the French Revolution, and his writings influenced popular pantheistic movements for generations including the Transcendentalists of our own New England. However, his early admiration for Liberty did not last. Wordsworth changed his mind after he learned of the mass murder that had been done in the name of "Reason." This change is on the one hand related to the cult of the passions normally associated with Romanticism, but it is also related to a revival of interest in medieval culture and religion, and thus we often find that Romantics will favor Catholic over Protestant symbolism. Obviously we cannot confuse this with a true revival of Catholic thought or morality in England, but someone who can help others recognize the Catholic Faith as being esthetically, culturally, and psychologically well-ordered within the walls of apostate England and despite the influence of the Revolution is worth considering. Though pantheism and passion-worship may be the primary influence of Wordsworth, indirectly the movement of which he was the head had a significant influence on the Oxford Movement as well as on the later literary revival we know primarily through Chesterton. For his part, Wordsworth became more and more conservative as his life went on, but the subtlety I feel distinguishes him from the stereotypical Romantic can be seen even in this early sonnet.

Concerning the poem itself: I like that it begins with the high vocation of religious life, then moves to intellectual works, manual labor, and even into the natural world, allowing us to see that the same principle is at work throughout all of nature. In applying the principle to his own task as a poet, he ultimately makes a convincing case against the chaotic tendencies that would later develop into literary modernism.

This article by Joseph Pearce is of related interest: http://www.univforum.org/pdf/378_Pierce_Revival_1003_ENG.pdf

Sustainability Will Further Alienate Us From the Land

From Josef Pieper's Essay "Learning How to See Again."

You may argue, perhaps: true, our capacity to see has diminished, but
such loss is merely the price all higher cultures have to pay. We have lost, no
doubt, the American Indian's keen sense of smell, but we also no longer need it
since we have binoculars, compass, and radar. Let me repeat: in this obviously
continuing process there exists a limit below which human nature itself is
threatened, and the very integrity of human existence is itself endangered.
Therefore, such ultimate danger can no longer be averted with technology alone.
At stake here is this: How can man be saved from becoming a totally passive
consumer of mass-produced goods and a subservient followerbeholden to every
slogan the managers may proclaim? The question really is: How can man preserve
and safeguard the foundation of his spiritual dimension and an uncorrupted
relationship to reality?

The capacity to perceive the visible world 'with our own eyes' is
indeed an essential constituent of human nature. We are talking here about man's
essential inner richness-- or, should the threat prevail, man's most abject
inner poverty. And why so? To see things is the first step toward
that primordial and basic mental grasping of reality, whic constitutes the
essence of man as a spiritual being. [...]

The diagnosis is indispensable yet only a first step. What, then, may
be proposed; what can be done?

We already mentioned simple abstention, a regimen of fasting and
abstinence, by which we would try to keep the visual noise of daily inanity at a
distance. Such an approach seems to me indeed an indispensable first step but,
all the same, no more than the removal, say, of a roadblock.

A better and more immediate remedy is this: to be active oneself
in artistic creation, producing shapes and forms for the eye to
see.

In this essay Pieper observes the increasing speed at which we are coming to interact with the world exclusively through various instruments, and therefore less directly through our own five senses. While he is no primitivist-- that is to say he does not oppose technology as such or propose a "return to nature"-- he does argue that we have come to a limit at which this process has ceased to be simply the development of helpful tools and has begun to undermine the natural proportion between man and the world. Let us reflect for a moment on how these principles might be applied to environmentalism today.

Many people I talk to seem to feel something similar to what Pieper describes, though it remains on the level of intuition. Especially among those interested in the rise of organic farming there seems to be a desire not simply to have healthier food, but to go out and interact with nature in one's own body. This often seems to be an unconscious and unreflective conviction. If it's only a matter of saying "I like how it feels to see and touch things in my own body," then it is perfectly fine for it to remain so. Pieper goes a step further in pronouncing our inability to see with our own eyes to be a danger to human nature.

To say this problem involves anything like a danger to human nature requires us to affirm that there is an established natural order that is intentional. If not, we simply have two different ways of perceiving the world, and do not have grounds for saying anything more. If it's only a matter of preferring one mode of perception, then we could aim at creating drugs to make people stop caring just as well as we could aim at teaching them to see with their own eyes again. Though many people with a newly discovered green mentality seem to feel we must get back to interacting directly with nature, such a claim is only possible if we suppose man is meant to be in this world, that there is a proportion which must be preserved. If not, then any solution, even one which further alienates us from our environment, is acceptable so long as it is sustainable. Very likely the most sustainable possibility is the option of complete alienation not only from our environment but even from our own bodies: life inside the computer.

Thus the concept of sustainability, taken on its own, could logically lead to the opposite of where the green movement expects it to take us. If there's no intention in the natural order, then the harmony between man and his environment proposed by many environmentalists is no more sensible than a total alienation from our environment. The ultimate realization of this principle would be hooking one's brain up to a computer and letting the body die, but there are any number of intermediate stages which could be proposed. These ideas are no longer pure science fiction, but are increasingly being seen as real possibilities for the future. If it's only the practical question of sustainability we are interested in, a cyber utopia along these lines might be preferable to direct interaction with the environment. It might be more efficient. It might be less harmful.

The fact that so many environmentalists seem to feel it is good not simply to make human life less damaging to the earth, but also to have people experience nature directly, suggests to me we ought to be reflecting more on these topics. If it is good, then there is an objective order to life that must be preserved, and not just the practical question of survival. Ultimately this means that only theology can truly support this mentality. It falls apart when viewed materialistically. Once we admit such an order in the world we also realize that this is a matter of preserving the integrity of a fastly distorting human nature, not simply an environmental question.

Sadly, most people who believe in natural law have focused their intention on a handful of moral controversies and completely ignored these more subtle shifts in mentality. On the other hand, many environementalists feel intuitively that there is a proportion between man and his environment which should be preserved, but lack the philosophical foundation to make this anything more than a sentiment. Soon, as the green movement becomes increasingly mainstream and our lives become more dominated by video screens we will be forced to take a hard look at these questions. Hopefully we will have the good sense to admit there are controversies here that are more than practical, but are metaphysical and moral.

If this makes any sense to you, I reiterate Pieper's advice: limit your use of technology, especially as used for inane entertainment, and engage in creative activity.

The Pope speaks on rural life: http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius12/POPRURAL.HTM

Is Poetry Song?

The fact that poetry originated as song is referenced often and for many reasons. Some poets use this fact as an affirmation, as if it automatically makes their writing more profound or magical. “Can’t you see what I’m doing is not mere words on paper? I am weaving the Song of the Universe!” Sometimes it is brought up by people who find poetry difficult, boring, or static. From their perspective, poetry on the page is at best a helpful form of record-keeping, but ultimately an aberration when it replaces the sung or spoken word.

The right way of understanding the relationship between poetry and song is not difficult to discern. First of all, music is clearly the more fundamental art. Arguably it is the most fundamental art. All children sing. Infants have some understanding of rhythm even in the womb. A culture without music would be unnatural, a thing much worse than an illiterate civilization. Poetry is an art necessary for any fully literate people, but is secondary relative to music. I certainly have no desire to encourage illiteracy, but it would not be an assault on human nature to lose writing.

What we call poetry, arguably, was originally just lyrics written down. This origin story does not define poetry completely, but it does help us to differentiate poetry from other genres of writing. In the case of rhymed and metered poems, whether it is the normal English method of counting feet or a looser structure such as I use, there is obviously a connection to sound and rhythm more fundamental than in a work of prose. The connection to rhythm becomes more obscure in the case of free verse, but the heightened awareness of the sound of language generally remains. Thus poetry is more connected to song and speech than other forms of writing. This does not, however, mean that a written poem is a mere imitation of something that properly should be recited or sung. I give two reasons. The first is the manner of reception. A song or a recitation is always a public event, even if it’s a small public. The reading of a poem is private. Even if it is not done in physical seclusion, it is an event that takes place primarily in the mind. It may enter the mind through the eyes by reading, but it is not aimed at ocular stimulation. While retaining some significant connection to song through its heightened awareness of sound, poetry has also evolved its own use of language in a way appropriate for private meditation. Despite its being a rather poor definition, Wordsworth’s famous line about recollection is a wonderful recognition of this point. The second reason is connected to the first. Because poetry is primarily an event in the mind, and not a stimulation of the senses like other arts, its use of language also tends to be far more intricate than song. Many older forms of song, Scottish ballads for example, are more poetical than most modern music. Even so, I do not think any song tradition quite approaches the intricate language games we find in more sophisticated poetry. Poetry is connected to song not only historically but formally and can be distinguished from other literary genres by this connection, but it also has its own principles which distinguish it from song.

Lastly, I would like to point out that these distinctions rest on a continuum rather than in perfectly arranged categories. The deep musicality of a poet like Dylan Thomas begs to be read out loud, but the effect of a writer like Rilke is perhaps best understood in silent recollection, even physical solitude.

[A note about the above comment about music being the more fundamental art: Our own culture is more musical than any other in the sense that we are being almost constantly bombarded with music at work, at stores, on television, and elsewhere. Because it is through recordings the average person is actually much less musical than he would be in a more primitive situation. We are more saturated with music and less connected to it than ever before.]

Pope Blames Moral and Aesthetic Degeneracy on Liberal Priests

"Then unbelieving priests reform'd the nation,
And taught more pleasant methods of salvation;
Where Heaven's free subjects might their rights dispute,
Lest God Himself should seem too absolute:
Pulpits their sacred satire learn'd to spare,
And vice admired to find a flatterer there!
Encouraged thus, Wit's Titans braved the skies,
And the press groan'd with licensed blasphemies.
These monsters, critics! with your darts engage,
Here point your thunder, and exhaust your rage!"

-Alexander Pope, from Part II of the Essay on Criticism

In this passage Pope is reminding critics to be unafraid to attack poetry full of monstrous vice. This point is well worth remembering. Criticism of any art cannot limit itself to stylistic analysis, but must also take into account the likely effects on the observer and on society. Art should not be reduced to its barest moral meaning, and criticism therefore must do much illuminate the purely aesthetic, but this can never be separated from concerns about truth and goodness.

What's particularly interesting about this passage is the suggestion that degeneracy in art follows "unbelieving priests" failure to condemn vice out of a desire to make the work of salvation "pleasant" and a fear that "God Himself should seem to absolute." If we want to beautify our civilization we cannot simply love pretty things but must learn not to spare that "sacred satire," and to pray that our priests will not spare it either.

The Poet and the Philosopher

I missed the weekend by a couple days, but now I'm back with another post discussing the nature of poetry. This is going to be somewhat briefer because I'm still in the middle of editing two books, and preparing to host a young adult philosophy discussion on Thursday.

In the essay The Vocation of Poetry that appears in my book I have a section that differentiates poetry from other arts through its affinity with philosophy. This post will be a summary of that argument.

• Poetry is uniue among the arts because it does not work directly on the senses (supposing we're talking about printed poetry or poetry read in a normal voice, rather than a sung ballad). Flute-playing, architecture, painting, and baking all achieve their effects through a specific sense which they exploit. Poetry may be received either through the eyes by reading or the ears by being read to, but it does not have its full poetic effect until the imagination re-presents the images in the mind. Thus poetry is in a sense the most intellectual of the arts.
• Poetry also is a more intellectual art because it can use abstract language directly. A figure representing Justice may appear in a painting, but a poet may write an ode to Justice directly. By saying poetry is the more intellectual art I do not mean to depreciate any other medium. On some level is is to the disadvantage of poetry, because it makes it less visceral, less immediate in its effect.
• Because poetry is the more intellectual art, it is closer to philosophy.
• Because poetry is an art that by its nature is close to philosophy, it forms something of a bridge between the mind and the heart. In my essay I also describe it as "the mode of expression in which the inner unity of beauty and truth is made manifest."
• The poet and the philosopher should not try to do each other's jobs. The result turns out to be bad. We ruin poetry on the one hand by reducing it to versified philosophy, and philosophy on the other hand by undermining its need for systematic analysis. They compliment each other, but still have different ends as well as means.

I'll close this with a quotation from The Man Who was Thursday, "if the Secretary stood for the philosopher who loves the original formless light, Syme was a type of the poet who seeks always to make the light in special shapes, to split it up into sun and star. The philosopher may sometimes love the infinite; the poet always loves the finite. For him the great moment is not the creation of light, but the creation of the sun and moon." In my essay I discuss why this is not quite accurate, but it remains a lovely meditation and a reasonable summary.

Tennyson on the overdone Love of Letters

I should hopefully be able to get back to longer posts on literary ideals this weekend. I'll be busy arranging a presentation on scholastic psychology for a young adult group next week, as well as working on poetry, but I should have time to write another post. In the meantime, I want to share this clever little poem by Tennyson titled 'Poets and their Bibliographies':

Old poets fostered under friendlier skies,
Old Virgil who would write ten lines, they say,
At dawn, and lavish all the golden day
To make them wealthier in his reader's eyes;
And you, old popular Horace, you the wise
Adviser of the nine-years-ponder'd lay,
And you, that wear a wreath of sweeter bay,
Catullus, whose dead songster never dies;
If, glancing downward on the kindly sphere
That once had roll'd you round and round the sun,
You see your Art still shrined in human shelves,
You should be jubilant that you flourished here
Before the Love of Letters, overdone,
Had swampt the sacred poets with themselves.

If I have a problem with this poem, it is only that it turns poetry into something of a religion. In the essay "Christianity and Literature" printed in The Seeing Eye C.S. Lewis points out that there is a common tendency in our history to make a religion out of poetry in absence of true religion. The other side of this is that true religion on the one hand exalts poetry by declaring the Beautiful to be a true object of love ultimately suggesting Divine Beauty, and on the other hand lowers poetry to the level of a human craft by putting the burden of revealing truth and mystery elsewhere. That is to say, it puts poetry in its proper perspective.

Beyond that, I find this to be a delightful little meditation. The body of it is a somewhat run-of-the-mill restatement of the old (and still useful) norm of reverence for ancient authors, but what makes it very interesting to me is the sudden criticism of "Love of Letters, overdone," in the last two lines. I occasionally hear poetry defined in terms of a love of language, a concentration on the sound of words. This is true enough, but becomes very problematic once the love of the sound of language is put in opposition to the content of language. Certainly the form and content together form the meaning, and to love both is a true love of language. I do not know exactly what Tennyson means by "Love of Letters, overdone," but interpreting it as a self-absorbed estheticism certainly explains how it could "swampt the sacred poets with themselves." Another possibility would be that he's referring to excessive criticism at the expense of creative activity, by which process an exaggerated love of letters buries poetry in writings about poetry (I will address this problem in a later post asking whether or not poets ought to be educated). I will not claim to know exactly what Tennyson is getting at, but self-indulgent estheticism was certainly a concern of his. He makes this point brilliantly in the narrative poem 'The Palace of Art,' in which the palace crumbles after separating Beauty from Truth. On the other hand, the reference to "bibliographies" in the title suggests that he may be thinking of excessive learning about poetry by poets who should be sticking to the classics. All of these possibilities can certainly be claimed to be matters of concern for Tennyson, regardless of the exact intention of this poem.

Lastly, I think the description of Virgil is quite a lovely account of the importance of reverence for nature in forming one's talents (I would extend this to all talents, though only poetic gifts are referenced in the poem). Compare Virgil writing just ten lines in the morning to the frantic typing of Kerouac or other peddlers of unedited garbage.

Overcoming the Barbarism of Modern English

This is the first of many posts explaining in brief the theory of poetry proposed and practiced by Gravitas Press. In my book Poetry Against the World I take up the question of poetry as a vocation-- what it means for a person to be called to a life dedicated to poetry as opposed to simply being interested in it-- and along the way I do a good deal to define the purposes and ideals of poetry itself. I hope on this blog to consider some of these same questions in a more general way.

To begin with, let's talk a bit about the barbarism of modern English. Why is modern English barbarous? That's a question with too many answers. Regardless of the reasons, this barbarism is a manifest fact that cannot be explained away. Anyone who listens to the lyrical rhythms of middle English will quickly become aware of it. One need not be a linguist or a philologist to hear the difference. Thus it is not surprising that modern poets who are seeking a more lyrical expression-- as opposed to poets who want their writing to sound like everyday speech-- sometimes draw inspiration from older forms of our language, or from Scotch and Irish dialects.

This could be greatly expanded, but for now I'll list only a few of the many reasons for our modern linguistic barbarism:

1. Excessive Egalitarianism: When educated people, song writers, politicians or other public speakers, feel they must avoid an elevated style as to not sound too far above the common man, the language quickly sinks into the mud. Ideally high and low culture ought to remain distinct, but also influence and correct each other. High culture corrects and purifies what is vulgar and simplistic in folk traditions, whereas the earthiness of low culture helps to balance the superficiality that develops among people with an excess of leisure.
2. Little Use of Word Endings: Word endings matter less in English than in many other languages. In itself this is not much of a problem. There are many techniques such as alliteration and assonance that do not rely on word endings. It is, however, a problem for us because so many of the well-known verse forms do involve end rhyme.
3. Abbreviation and Acronym: Obviously there is some utility in shortening words or reducing common phrases. It is not an evil in itself, but has been taken to incredible extremes in our age of mass marketing and digital communication. Some ways of shortening words actually make language more lyrical, as when a poet replaces a syllable with an apostraphe to preserve a steady rhythm. Excessive shortening of words and phrases in modern English not only makes the language clunky, it also creates a mindset in which language is reduced to a practical tool for exchanging knowledge. Clearly language is such a tool, but the universal presence of poetry in all civilizations should make it obvious that language also has an important esthetic quality that ought to be cultivated. (By the way, though I do not normally recommend him, Heidegger has some brilliant meditation on this subject in his later essays.)

Now that the problem is more or less outlined, I will tell you the solution Sean and I, the main authors for Gravitas Press as of now, have arrived at. To overcome modern linguistic barbarism there must be a living connection to older use of English. When I say living connection I emphatically do not mean scholarly knowledge, but mean honest enjoyment of older works and an openness to influence. That being said, merely attempting to imitate the past is not enough. What worked in the past worked because of the way English was used in the past. It will not work today, at least not in exactly the same way. It is not that I would refuse to write a sonnet. I would gladly write one. The problem is that the sonnet and other set forms have not been received as a tradition, they have not been truly handed down to us. Furthermore, many young writers today find that older forms do not fit language as they have come to understand it. The solution I have found is what I call "ordered free verse." By that I mean poetry that could be called free verse in the sense that it follows no defined and consistent pattern, but which echoes the tones, rhythms, and expressions of an older lyricism. Rather than trying to write as if I live in a period other than my own I can begin with the obvious fact that I am alive today and allow my own modern English to search out patterns that fit it's own peculiar qualities. Thus my poetry in general would be categorized as free verse, but much of it can be scanned intelligibly, and makes use of rhyme and alliteration. I cannot say whether this will eventually evolve into definite poetic forms such as we had in the past, but it definitely seems to be a way forward that neither takes the deformity of modern English as normal nor holds too rigidly to older forms.

Beyond purely literary concerns, there is also a broad philosophical background to all of this. Language changes for countless reasons, but many of the changes in modern English are a result of our changed way of viewing the world. It is not a coincidence that the attitude which supposes language is a purely mechanical means of transmitting knowledge appears at the same time as mechanistic and utilitarian philosophies. It is not a coincidence that the desire of poets to write according to the laws of everyday speech appears in an age distrustful of all aristocratic institutions. Thus the true poet must be philosophically, and beyond that even religiously, anti-modern. A mere love for the sound of language is not enough.

I hope that is of some interest to someone somewhere. Soon I will have several follow up posts outlining other problems Gravitas Press has set out to overcome. I believe my next posts will be on the forgotten role of the poet as historian, and on the pros and cons of scholarly studies for the would-be poet.

Preface to "The Minaret."

Preface

The present poem dates back to the months following the end of my protracted undergraduate education. During this time I had lived with Eric Brooks, and we had quickly become spiritual fell0w-travelers in the way young people will always become fellow-travelers. We also struggled together to find the means to constitute a brilliant new literary movement, and meanwhile had many adventures I would not have credited before the fact.

In the hope of somehow launching a program to build a literature, the terrible task we had set ourselves, I wrote The Minaret over about four years. For some time prior to this period I had been powerfully impressed by the passage of life in time and of the episodes in the world's and my own daylong life, and the possible meanings of all this as against my own and the world's hopes, visions, divisions and attachments. In beginning this poem I hoped to wed these stirrings and impressions with my own growing desire to unfold an ambitious new work that would serve for my own quizzical words to the world, even if I failed to produce anything else afterward. Beyond this smaller desire, though, I hoped to also produce something that would advance the "cause" and jostle itself into the current epoch of letters like a new and strangely formed animal. At that time I already had a rough idea of how the thing would go, but in the succeeding seasons and years I only infrequently returned to The Minaret with new ideas for a passage or a whole "canto." Of the nine pieces with their Roman numerals that make up the poem, the first two are older than the next two by more time than I'm happy to say, and so on to number IX. I made difficult progress, insisting I'd carry through this work while doubting I'd ever have the ideas that would move it along.

The image of the minaret first arose from my memory of a structure built by the Liechtenstein family on one of their former estates in the present-day Czech Republic. At the time I was studying field archaeology in Moravia. This "minaret" is a central feature of the sprawling castle gardens at Lednice. Of course it is not a "working" minaret, and was never part of the religious life of any community. Having set down this testimony I would like to also clarify that while the tower in my poem points heavenward, I do not intend for the image of this minaret to sally forth and establish an apologetic or polemical position. There is in this poem no discussion of the differences between the world's great religions, or of questions of religious experience or practice, of the ill-used "way(s) to God," or of the destiny of social and civilisational history, and nor do I express here my own views on the vexed questions that have come down to us. I have likely kept all this too far out of mind while slowly adding to the poem in recent years.

We read that we are each to work out our own salvation with "fear and trembling," and my present poem is largely about the "fear and trembling" that precede the fear and trembling of this verse. It is also at pains to make sense in verse of a number of personal impressions and memories, with reference to some favorite haunts in my own reading. Naturally these "cantos" found their own themes and preoccupations, their own diction and imagery, over time, so that I'm about to back off from the labyrinth-in-an-otherworld that grew up around the poem, and can only hope that something true and real catches your eye in its windings.

-Sean (Patrick) Kater

Updates

I apologize for not having updated this blog for so long. We have been doing a lot of practical work getting things ready to print our first books. I also found out near the end of January that my wife is pregnant. Busy times, but Gravitas Press has been coming together.

We obviously have not kept to our original deadlines, but the business has gone through more of an organic development through discussions between myself and other writers/contributors/friends. We're getting close now to publishing our first books, and I already have some shorter essays prepared that will be published as pamphlets.

Here's what's happened: we are (both for cost reasons, and because we promote decentralized economies) trying to keep production in house as much as possible. We recently purchased a large high-powered laser printer, which will more than match our presently low demand. The binding will be done by hand on wooden binding rigs-- actually the same process by which most perfect-bound paper backs are put together, except it's not automated. This is cost effective, allows us direct control over our product, and allows us to do on-demand printing. In the next week we will be getting a laminator to increase the durability of our covers. Thus these books will be "perfect bound," meaning a folded cover glued to the spine as is seen on most paper backs. Some of the shorter works may simply appear as staple bound pamphlets.

We have two books which are nearing completion:

The Minaret by Sean Kater. This medium length narrative poem weaves American Indian Folklore and classical mythology together with the author's own experiences. The poem is all written, so now it just needs some editing, an introduction, footnotes, and then we'll print it.

My first book, Poetry Against the World, is also nearing completion. This book contains an essay on the nature of poetry as vocation (rather than as hobby, art, diversion, field of study, etc.), followed by a collection of my recent poems.

My longer work The Legend of St George will still take some time to complete, but I'm hoping to have it finished by the time my child is born in late September. It's developing nicely, but also slowly as I have given a lot of time to other shorter works along the way.

I also have a number of essays that are ready to print as pamphlets. I'll give the topics rather than the titles: one takes a philosophical approach to environmentalism, arguing that a appraoch that does not involve a clear philosophical conception of human nature and our relation to the natural order may be able to counter certain problems of environmental destruction but cannot offer an alternative ideal of what constitutes a normal or healthy relationship between humans/civilization and nature. Next, I have an essay giving the basic philosophical arguments in favor of local economies, against both the centralization of private corporations and public institutions. I also have a dialogue defending metaphysics as a legitimate field of study. This dialogue is fairly non-technical, and straightforwardly answers many of the claims of various modern schools of thought which have made claims about the "impossibility of metaphysics," or even the "death of philosophy." These three works are implicitly based on principles from Catholic philosophy, but are written in an open "common sense" manner so to appeal to a broader audience. Lastly, I have a work on Christianity and Buddhism in which I demonstrate how the Buddha's refusal to discuss the origin of the world in the Four Nikayas (the earliest Buddhist texts in existence) are ultimately the foundation for all the other more subtle distinctions between Buddhism and Christianity, and explain why a Buddhist who already admits an "unconditioned" reality (to use the term of the Buddha himself) should also admit the doctrine of creation and all that comes with it. These four shorter works need a little bit more editing, but they're basically ready now if anyone is intereted in them.

If everything continues at the pace it's going now, those two books of poetry should be available within a few weeks. Sooner or later we'll have to set up a paypal account, but just keep it personal and email me if you're interested in any of the above. Now that things are getting rolling, this blog will hopefully be updated more often.