Through the Glass Window Shines the Sun: an Anthology of Medieval Poetry and Prose edited by Pamela Norris

This is a little gem of a book that I got through Paperback Swap.  As I've mentioned before that is a site that allows people to trade books on an honor system.  

Not all the books are paperback, and while some of the books I've received have obviously been used, many of them arrive in mint condition.  Through The Glass Window is a hardcover and in excellent condition.  

Pamela Norris, the editor, specialized in Medieval Literature at Bristol University and has a master's degree in Renaissance Studies.  She compiled excerpts from many medieval books and also a great deal of contemporary art.  Each page contains either a poem or excerpt from a story or legend with a painting on the page next to it.  

Authors include Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, Sir Thomas Wyatt, Geoffrey Chaucer, Giovanni Boccaccio, Sir John Mandeville, Margery Kempe Sir Thomas Malory.    A good half of the poems are by that ever famous author, Anonymous.

The book is divided into four sections.  The first is devoted to "The Queen of Heaven", Mary the mother of Jesus.  The second is about earthly love between men and women.  The third section are writings about life during times of peace and during times of war and the last is titled "Marvelous Tales". 

That really sums up this book.  If you are a fan of this time period, it's a delightful little book to own and enjoy.

I'll include one poem of each section with the painting accompanying the poem.

I Sing of a Maiden

I sing of a maiden
That is matchless:
King of all kings
To be her son she chose.

He came also still Where his mother was,
As dew in April 
That falleth on the grass.

Mother and maiden 
Was never none but she:
Well may such a lady
God's mother be.
Anonymous

The Bride's Song

The maidens came
When I was in my mother's bower.
I had all that I would.
The bailey berath the bell away;
The lily, the rose, the rose I lay.

And through the glass window shines the sun.
How should I love, and I so young:  
The bailey beareth the bell away;
The lily, the rose, the rose I lay.

Anonymous

A Song for St. George

Enforce we us with all our might
To love Saint George, our Lady's knight.

Worship of virtue is the meed, 
Ad follow him ay of right;
To worship George the have we need,
Which is our sovereign Lady's knight.

In his virtue he will us lead
Against the Fiend, the foul wight,
And with his banner us over spread,
If we him love with all our might.

Anonymous

Jerome and the Lion

One day towards evening, as Jerome sat with his brethren listening to the holy lesson, suddenly a lion came limping into the monastery.  When the brethren saw him, at once they fled, but Jerome went towards the lion as he would approach a guest, an then the lion showed him his foot, which was hurt.  Then Jerome called his brethren and commanded them to wash the lion's feet and carefully to seek out and search for the wound.  That done, they found that the pad of the lion's foot was sorely hurt and pricked with a thorn.  Then this holy man set himself diligently to cure the foot and healed him and the lion abode ever after as a tame bast with them.

From Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend

Haiku Inspirations by Tom Lowenstein with Victoria James

This New Year's I went to the Gulf Coast to visit my parents and sister's family.  Needless to say we spent a lot of time on the beautiful beaches of Destin and Grayton Beach.  What can I say?  Miles of blinding white sand, sand pipers, sea gulls...no one but us because of the cold season-except a few crazy northerners braving the frigid water.  In the winter the sun takes an hour to set on the horizon and the colors are so brilliant.


I always like to go to Barnes and Noble afterward, which is on the way back home.

 
We arrive at the store. Derek, my son immediately loses himself in the aisle of graphic novels.  After I look at the bargain books, I treat my mother and myself to coffee where we visit.  This is our tradition every time I come home.  I tell her as I tell myself that, other than the half price Christmas cards, I'm not buying anything.  Nothing.  Nada.  I don't need any more books.  My mother laughed and sipped her coffee.  She knows me too well.

I almost made it.  I almost spent a pleasant couple of hours in a bookstore without buying any books. We were walking towards the exit when I saw it.   A beautiful hardback about one of my favorite forms of poetry:  Haiku Inspirations by Tom Lowenstein and Victoria James.  I left the store with it  (and a  hardback of Robert Frost's poems, but that's another post.)

On the way back to Texas I let Derek drive so I could read my treasure.  Even when we stopped at a Denny's for dinner, I brought the book in to read.  Haiku: Inspirations was even more than I originally thought it was.  Yes it is a book of Haiku but it contains even more.

 Lowenstein and  James divide into brief chapters the history of Haiku, the original authors of Haiku, and their different styles, the Buddhist and Shinto beliefs that inspired the art form, and the different reigning families  that supported and developed art and literature in Japan.

 From the Tale of Genji: Court Life

They also give a concise history of Japan, from their Chinese influences to where they eventually broke out into their own uniquely Japanese style.  We learn about Society and Court life, the symbols and different beliefs such as Zen, Koans, about suffering, transience pilgrimage and how these different beliefs affect Haiku writing.

They describe the development of arts and culture such as calligraphy, ink painting, Japanese gardens, tea ceremony and music, dance and theater.  
 


The chapters are accompanied by paintings and photos of Japan as well as Haiku.  The introduction gives a brief description of the structure and form.  For instance, Haiku can only use "essential words" and 17 syllables.  Classic haiku is three line long, with 5-7-5 "syllables".  Of course, some of the structure will necessarily be lost when Japanese is translated into English.  


 
Another attribute is "kigo".  This means "season word" which "suggests the mood and atmosphere governing the poem."    Sometimes the name of the season is included in the Haiku, other times it is implied when a seasonal attribute is mentioned, such as a flower that only blooms in summer or the rainy season, implying spring etc.



Here are a couple of samples:

Hazy morning:

as in a painting of a dream

the people passing.

Buson

Moon behind the grasses.

Wind blows through.

The cry of a cuckoo.

Shiki

Come to me:

let's play

little sparrow orphan!

Issa

The book is a delight both to the eyes with the paintings and photos and the ears and mind with its descriptions of Japanese history and culture and, of course, the Haiku which includes authors from different philosophies and time periods.

Black History Month: My Tribute to Langston Hughes

Before Black History Month completely escapes me, I want to pay homage to one of my favorite poets, Langston Hughes.  I first learned about Hughes in the fourth grade when the best teacher I ever had, Ms. Rogers, divided us up in groups and assigned us different people to research and make a display for the school's "Black History" exhibit held in the cafeteria.  My group got Langston Hughes and our exhibit was comprised of  some of his poems written on poster board with illustrations that we drew and colored.  I never forgot the beauty of those poems. 

So on the last day of February in celebration of Black History month, I am posting a couple of my favorite poems by Langston Hughes.

Winter Moon
How thin and sharp is the moon tonght!
How thin and sharp and ghostly white
Is the slim curved crook of the moon tonight!

Dream Boogie
Good morning, daddy!
Ain't you heard
The boogie-woogie rumble
Of a dream deferred?

Listen closely:
You'll hear their feet
Beating out and beating out a-

You think
It's a happy beat?

Listen to it closely:
Ain't you heard
something underneath
like a-

What did I say?

Sure,
I'm happy!
Take it away!

hey, pop!
Re-bop!
Mop!

Y-e-a-h!

Hughes' semi-autobiographical book, Not Without Laughter, is also well worth reading.  In his actual biography, The Sea, Hughes explains where the story and his own life actually diverge:

I wanted to write about a typical Negro family in the Middle West, about people like those I had known in Kansas. But mine was not a typical Negro family. My grandmother never took in washing or worked in service or went much to church. She had lived in Oberlin and spoke perfect English, without a trace of dialect. She looked like an Indian. My mother was a newspaper woman and a stenographer then. My father lived in Mexico City. My granduncle had been a congressman. And there were heroic memories of John Brown's raid and the underground railroad in the family storehouse.



But I thought maybe I had been a typical Negro boy. I grew up with the other Negro children of Lawrence, sons and daughters of family friends. I had an uncle of sorts who ran a barber shop in Kansas City. And later I had a stepfather who was a wanderer. We were poor--but different. For purposes of the novel, however, I created around myself what seemed to me a family more typical of Negro life in Kansas than my own had been. I gave myself aunts that I didn't have, modeled after other children's aunts whom I had known. But I put in a real cyclone that had blown my grandmother's porch away. And I added dances and songs I remembered. I brought the boy to Chicago in his teens, as I had come to Chicago--but I did not leave behind a well-fixed aunt whose husband was a mail clerk.