pupSandbox: 2013

brother of Romulus, legendary cofounder of Rome

Uncle Remus, legendary story teller in books by Joel Chandler Harris

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teaching today in puptrax
Bending the Lens
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2004 a.Building from Belief: Advance, Retreat and Compromise in the Remaking of Catholic Church Architecture (Liturgical Press)
2013:professor of fine arts and director of the Honors Program at Gannon University in Erie PA. He writes widely as a designer/consultant on Catholic church architecture.

prayer

This is why prayer seems to me to be not just an emotional comfort or a ritual necessity, but a practical means of staying sane in a world like ours. If I were an outright atheist, I would still pray, by imagining what God would be like if there were a God, and inexorably concluding: “A heck of a lot better than myself.” - Sarah Ruden A Higher Power cw2013May17p31

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Lost Poets of the Great War

{IMG SRC="cover.gif" ALT="Lost Poets of the Great War, Created by Harry Rusche, Emory University"}

{A HREF="ThePoets.html">The Poets{/A>
{A HREF="Chronology.html">Chronology of the War{/A>
{A HREF="Casualties.html">The Human Cost{/A>
{A HREF="Bibliography.html">Bibliography{/A>

Harry Rusche is the author of Lost Poets of the Great War, a hypertext document on the poetry of World War I; his address is the English Department, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322; he can be reached by e-mail at enghr@emory.edu. return to: .Poems. .poetry. .index L.

John_McCrae_1

From Robert Giddings, The War Poets, pp. 55-6.

On 6th December 1915 an anonymous poem, "In Flanders Fields," was published in Punch. Written by John McCrae, a Canadian medical officer during the second battle of Ypres, it became the best known poem of the First World War, its images becoming part of the collective memory of the war. Its influence is perpetuated in the Annual Festival of Remembrance [in the United States, Veterans Day on November 11] with its numerous poppies and the selling of poppies as a means of raising charitable funds for war disabled. . . .

As Paul Fussell has pointed out in The Great War and Modern Memory, it manages to accumulate the maximum number of established motifs and images, which it mixes in a mood of autumnal pastoralism. Each image accurately triggers off its expected emotional response. We have the red flowers of traditional pastoral elegy--which go back to Milton (and beyond); the crosses which suggest the idea of Calvary and sacrifice; the sky as seen from a trench; the larks singing in the midst of the horrors and terrors of man's greatest folly; the contrast between the song of the larks and the voice of the guns; the special significance of dawn and sunset with the anticipated echoes of Gray's Elegy; the conception of soldiers as lovers; and the antithesis drawn between beds and graves. The poem sails across the imagination laden with literary associations ransacked from the riches of the past.

WWI

World War I

Lost Poets of the Great War

John McCrae

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John McCrae

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

{img src="..\..\poem\img\McCraeJohn.jpg" align="right" vspace="0" hspace="5" alt="McCraeJohn.jpg"}The name of John McCrae (1872-1918) may seem out of place in the distinguished company of World War I poets, but he is remembered for what is probably the single best-known and popular poem from the war, "In Flanders Fields." He was a Canadian physician and fought on the Western Front in 1914, but was then transferred to the medical corps and assigned to a hospital in France. He died of pneumonia while on active duty in 1918. His volume of poetry, In Flanders Fields and Other Poems, was published in 1919.

{A HREF="JM-Responses.html"}Responses to the Poem{/A}     
Critical Comment    
{A HREF="Christian.html"}Christian Imagery{/A}     
interpretive use of this poem †

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Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats. - Voltaire

Rejoice that you have come so far. - Phil Cousineau

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K

Immanuel Kant
Emil Kapaun
kindness

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kindness

Always be kind, for everyone is fighting a hard battle. - Plato

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Antoine de Saint Exupery

vision

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vision

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye. - Antoine de Saint Exupery

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