Member Post

 

Just a very short note:  I notice some people here on Ricochet don’t consider what they read very often (sometimes at all?), others think about what they read.  Maybe it’s the fault of the author. Sometimes I’m in the former camp (read without consideration) but I try not to be.  There are also those who […]

Join Ricochet!

This is a members-only post on Ricochet's Member Feed. Want to read it? Join Ricochet’s community of conservatives and be part of the conversation. Join Ricochet for Free.

“Shiloh: A Requiem,” By Herman Melville

 

In honor of Memorial Day, I wanted to present a poem that captured the ultimate sacrifice of our military, and this poem by Herman Melville was intriguing and fit the bill.   Yes, this is the famous Herman Melville, author of the great—and to some—greatest American novel, Moby Dick.  Melville, after early success with his romanticized sailing adventures—which were a comingling of biography and tall tale—turned to serious fiction, and though in retrospect he has been revised to be considered one of the great American novelists, in his day was met with both critical and financial rejection.  It was not until almost thirty years after his death that he was reassessed to receive the stature he deserves.

After about a decade of writing novels, and being rejected, Melville turned to poetry.  That too was met with critical and financial rejection.  He is not as widely known as a poet, but some of his poetry is impressive.  In some ways, Melville’s poetry is the opposite of his prose.  Melville’s prose is mellifluous, rhythmic, and at times reaches the heights of Shakespearean poetry.  His poetry is noticeably the opposite: hard, minimalist, and bare.  In the 1860s, with the country torn apart by the Civil War, Melville decided to visit some of the battlefields and capture something of the war in poetry.  Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War was the book that came out from it, a collection of 72 poems.

Clay at Trafalgar

 

C. S. Forester has been imitated many times since he invented the concept of a novel serial centered on the career of a naval officer. Horatio Hornblower has numerous counterparts, both at sea and in space.

“Clay and the Immortal Memory,” by Philip K. Allan, is the latest entry in one of the more successful series in the maritime genre. It is the tenth book and latest in a series tracing the adventures of Alexander Clay, a fictional Royal Navy officer during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.

The book opens in at the end of 1804. Clay commands the frigate Griffin, returning from India after a three-year commission in the Indies. He, his wardroom and his crew have been together longer than that. His officers and a chunk of the forecastle hands are followers, men who follow a trusted captain from ship to ship. Yet all everyone aboard wants right now is home and leave.

Member Post

 

I like Jeopardy. They read the answer and you respond with the question? That’s crazy. Backward games fascinate me. I like the “get to know the contestants” segment after the first round of plaintiff lawyer and Rinvoq ads. Ken Jennings or Mayim Bialik, depending on who’s turn it is to be unfairly compared to Alex Trebek, […]

Join Ricochet!

This is a members-only post on Ricochet's Member Feed. Want to read it? Join Ricochet’s community of conservatives and be part of the conversation. Join Ricochet for Free.

Member Post

 

This quote comes from Section II of T. S. Eliot’s great poem, The Waste Land.  The poem was published in October of 1922, which means it recently had its hundred year anniversary.  It’s typically considered the greatest poem of the 20th century in English, which is certainly debatable.  What’s not debatable is its influence upon […]

Join Ricochet!

This is a members-only post on Ricochet's Member Feed. Want to read it? Join Ricochet’s community of conservatives and be part of the conversation. Join Ricochet for Free.

A Quest to Restore Magic

 

Jack Damian is the Outsider. He protects the world from supernatural evil. His job makes him a real outsider. He walks alone and unattached to anyone or any organization. Then he meets Amanda Fielding.

“For Love of Magic,” a fantasy novel by Simon R. Green, opens with Jack Damian called to London’s Tate Gallery by Britain’s secret Department of Uncanny Inquiries. His services are required.

Twenty-two people disappeared during the premier viewing of a new painting, “The Faerie War.” It is a newly discovered work by a brilliant, criminally insane artist of the previous century. Although it is a world of science, magic keeps leaking in around the edges and through the cracks. Jack seals those cracks.

Member Post

 

I don’t want to alarm anybody, but our kids are on the cusp of vacation, assuming they paid attention in biology class and don’t have to repeat that fetal pig desecrating nightmare stuck in a lab all summer while their friends jeep blissfully to the lake to see what the girls in class look like […]

Join Ricochet!

This is a members-only post on Ricochet's Member Feed. Want to read it? Join Ricochet’s community of conservatives and be part of the conversation. Join Ricochet for Free.

A Texas Beowulf and Its Creator

 

Donald Mace Williams is a Texas poet and former newspaperman. His best known poem is “Wolfe,” which recasts Beowulf as a Western. He recently celebrated his ninetieth birthday.

“Wolfe and Being Ninety: Old West Monsters and A Texas Poet’s Life,” by Donald Mace Williams collects Williams’s poem and a memoir of his life in one volume.

“Wolfe” updates “Beowulf.” Set in a Texas Panhandle ranch during the 1890s, the ranch house replaces the king’s hall, the ranch owner, the aged king, with ranch hands serving as thanes. Williams substitutes iambic quadrameter (commonly used in cowboy ballads) for Beowulf’s Old English meter. He updates the Dark Ages character names with modern American equivalents. This campfire song transformation of Beowulf works remarkably well.

Member Post

 

Today we salute the unsung heroes of POETS Day. The Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday promise of freedom, relaxation, and entertainment ushered in a few hours before the official start of the weekend would go unfulfilled were it not for those willing to work while we play. To the bartenders, Uber drivers, ticket takers, and […]

Join Ricochet!

This is a members-only post on Ricochet's Member Feed. Want to read it? Join Ricochet’s community of conservatives and be part of the conversation. Join Ricochet for Free.

Tress of the Emerald Sea

 

Fans of Brandon Sanderson know about his incredible Kickstarter campaign last year that became the biggest of all time, doubling the previous high, for his Four Secret Novels project. The first of those novels has been released and is now available on Amazon.

Contributors to the campaign received their electronic and audio copies at the beginning of January. Tress of the Emerald Sea is Brandon’s most profound novel, for a very simple reason: Page after page, chapter after chapter, it displays Brandon’s wisdom, all within a deceptively simply story that reads like a light and humorous fairy tale.

Member Post

 

Nobody expects POETS Day! Our chief weapon is obfuscation… obfuscation and a willingness to gleefully trespass norms…  a willingness to gleefully trespass norms and obfuscation… Our two weapons are a willingness to gleefully trespass norms and obfuscation… and irresponsibility… Our three weapons are a willingness to gleefully trespass norms, obfuscation, and irresponsibility… and an almost […]

Join Ricochet!

This is a members-only post on Ricochet's Member Feed. Want to read it? Join Ricochet’s community of conservatives and be part of the conversation. Join Ricochet for Free.

Quote of the Day: Francis Parkman

 

“If any pale student, glued to his desk, here seeks an apology for a way of life whose natural fruits is that pallid and emasculate scholarship of which New England has had too many examples, it will be far better that this sketch had not been written. For the student there is, in its season, no better place than the saddle, and no better companion than the rifle or the oar.”
American historian Francis Parkman (1823-1893)

My favorite era of American history is the first. Europeans arriving on the shores of a primeval wilderness, wondering if it’s a second Eden or a green hell. Native Americans stumbling upon pale creatures in bizarre clothes rowing to shore from floating wooden islands.

The earliest historian to fully document these encounters is Francis Parkman, a Harvard-educated Boston scion who set aside Yankee comforts to tramp over snowcapped mountains and muddy battlefields.

Adventure and Magic in Renaissance Europe

 

Catarina Rinaldi was the wife of the ruler of San Florian, a city-state in 15th Century Italy. He was murdered by a rival faction in San Florian. She could become its new ruler – if she can put down the rebellion. Gian Bracciaforte leads a fifteen-man posta of mercenaries. A man with a past, he and his men are unemployed, and he is seeking employment.

In “Shadow of the Crescent,” a historical fantasy novel by Margaret Ball, their lives will become entangled.

As the novel opens, Caterina’s husband is slain by townsmen irate at new taxes raised by him. Taken captive, she and her son become pawns in the game of determining San Florian’s new ruler. That involves marrying Caterina and disposing of her son. Using audacity, fortune and her magical spells she triumphs over the Borghini family, which has led the rebellion, leaving her in uneasy control of the town.

A Murder in Yorkshire

 

Bess Crawford was a nurse during World War I. She served in forward aid stations and survived the sinking of the hospital ship Britannic. The war is over. Discharged from her duties in Queen Alexandra’s Nursing Service, she is at loose ends at her parents’ home in Somerset. A letter from her cousin Melinda asks Bess to go to Yorkshire to nurse Lady Beatrice, an acquaintance of Melinda’s.

“The Cliff’s Edge,” a mystery by Charles Todd, follows the result of Bess accepting the request. Lady Beatrice’s surgery goes well, but then there are complications, but not with Lady Beatrice.

While recovering, Lady Beatrice gets a message. Gordon Neville, her godson, was injured in a fall near his home. He lives in a remote estate in isolated Scarfdale. Lady Beatrice still cannot travel. Worried about Gordon’s health, he asks Beth to check on him. Since Lady Beatrice is well enough to manage without Bess and the message implies Gordon’s injuries were severe, Bess goes.

Introducing Great Books to Children

 

The decay of the American public school system has parents rightly worried. Public education’s abandonment of the western canon of literature and its replacement with woke substitutes has many parents homeschooling or supplementing their children’s education.

“Before Austen Comes Aesop: The Children’s Great Books and How to Experience Them,” by Cheri Blomquist, offers a roadmap for parents looking to supplement their children’s literary education. Blomquist goes beyond the traditional canon of great books of Western literature aimed at adult audiences. She argues that a subset of great literature was written for or adapted to children. She maintains young readers profit by studying age-appropriate great books before delving into books too mature for them to understand.

Blomquist opens the book developing and defending her thesis. Children better appreciate literature by starting with children’s classics, especially important classics as indicated by literary history. She expands this by explaining how and why children benefit from this approach. She outlines how parents can guide their children’s literary education.

Member Post

 

We might not be able to give ours the full name that Fidel Castro gave to Cuba’s, The Special Period In Peacetime. But we could otherwise imitate it. First, though: what WAS Cuba’s? Its patron the U.S.S.R. collapsed, and Cuba having completely failed to mature in the 31 years that Castro had been in power, […]

Join Ricochet!

This is a members-only post on Ricochet's Member Feed. Want to read it? Join Ricochet’s community of conservatives and be part of the conversation. Join Ricochet for Free.

Member Post

 

It´s a question I have to ask in order to not look like the complete ignoramus I am concerning such things as unit command structure and decision making when weighing risks. In terms of service eligibility, I am what used to be called a 4F on multiple counts. Yes, I asked…35 years ago. No branch […]

Join Ricochet!

This is a members-only post on Ricochet's Member Feed. Want to read it? Join Ricochet’s community of conservatives and be part of the conversation. Join Ricochet for Free.

Home on an Alien Range

 

Travis McClure is a cowboy, all he ever wanted to be. But he wants be at his family’s ranch on Earth, not under the twin suns of Aletha Three. Debts led his family to join a terraforming project there.

“Space Cowboy,” a science fiction novel by Justin Stanchfield, opens with Travis discovering traces of an animal that should not be on Aletha Three. It is killing the cattle he, his family, and the trail drive team they belong to are herding.

Travis is 16 and has lived on Aletha Three since he was 11. A working cowboy, he is on a new kind of frontier. The cattle they are driving are helping transform the planet from a desolate, arid waste to a fertile second Earth. Their droppings and their hooves churning the soil they pass over help jump-start fertilizing the soil.

Member Post

 

The Paraguay Reader remained thought-provoking to the end, though maybe more about the country’s commentators than about the country itself. What’s it mean when one calls another “perceptive but humorous”? Thanks a lot, pal. Strictly about the country itself, I didn’t know that until 1991, mayors were all appointed by the president. Since Stroessner was […]

Join Ricochet!

This is a members-only post on Ricochet's Member Feed. Want to read it? Join Ricochet’s community of conservatives and be part of the conversation. Join Ricochet for Free.

A  Look at the Ultimate Detective

 

Sherlock Holmes is one of the world’s best-known fictional characters. Holmes became more famous than his creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, the first in modern literature to become so. Created in the 1880s, Holmes continues to fascinate today.

“The Science of Sherlock: The Forensic Facts Behind the Fiction,” by Mark Brake takes a deep dive into the Sherlock Holmes phenomena and the realities behind Holmes’s detection methods.

The opening chapter starts at the end – the death of Sherlock Holmes at Reichenbach Falls.  Brake introduces the Holmes phenomena, explaining how Holmes kicked off the modern world of literary fandom. Brake explains how and why the fandom phenomena occurred. He shows why it disconcerted Holmes’s creator to the point where Doyle literally killed off his most popular character.