A Heart Lost in Wonder: The Life and Faith of Gerard Manley Hopkins by Catharine Randall

A Heart Lost in Wonder by Catharine Randall is part of the far ranging Library of Religious Biography. Gerard Manley Hopkins poetry is unique and memorable, full of vivid images, but I knew little about his career as a priest or his life and how it affected his poetry.

Hopkins viewed everything through his faith, finding the divine in every tree and mountain.

Hopkins developed a personal and unique philosophy to explain the power of beauty in this world through the lens of faith. The draw of beauty was so powerful, he believed it might eclipse the divine. He would go weeks with his eyes fixated on the ground in self-denial.

Drawn by the traditions of the Catholic church he converted and he believed he was called to the priesthood. 

It seems like the absolute wrong choice that Hopkins would become a Jesuit--in effect, an itinerant teacher. I can personally attest that no one can who has not lived it can fully comprehend the sacrifices of itinerary, to be removed from a place that feeds one and set in a place that kills one's soul.

A perfectionist, he the work of grading papers and teaching wore Hopkins out and allowed no personal time for his poetry or an internal life.

He responded to the beauty of Wales and the rural assignments but the cities with their poverty and ugliness were soul-destroying. He denied himself poetry but rhapsodized in his journals.

Randall's book delves into the theologies that inspired Hopkins and shows how to interpret his poetry through the lens of his faith.  I am not Catholic and I am not deeply familiar with Newman or Loyola but she presents them very well. 

It is very interesting, but difficult to comprehend Hopkin's unique view of poetry. Cooper discusses the poems as vehicles for Hopkins's theology. 

Hopkins suffered a faith crisis in his later life and died an early death.

I enjoyed the book but do not feel I could comprehend it in one reading. It is dense and deserves a deeper study.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

A Heart Lost in Wonder: The Life and Faith of Gerard Manley Hopkins
by Catharine Randall
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
Pub Date 28 Jul 2020
ISBN: 9780802877703
paperback $22.00 (USD)

Frida Kahlo in America; The Creative Awakening of a Great Artist by Celia Stahr

In 2015, I saw the Detroit Institute of Art (DAI) exhibition Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit. I knew Diego Rivera from the DIA court murals but I had known little about Frida Kahol. Reading Frida Kahol in America by Celia Stahr, specifically about Kahlo's time in Detroit, I could clearly remember her painting of her miscarriage in Henry Ford Hospital. We listened to the story on headphones and studied the unforgettable painting. 

Although the exhibit included works by Rivera, it was Kahlo's that stuck in my mind. Rivera's painting of a flower seller was more accessible, 'prettier', but Kahlo's self-portraits grabbed my attention--those eyes, so direct and almost challenging, her self-confidence and self-acceptance revealed. 

Stahr shares that many who knew both Rivera and Kahlo said Kahlo was the better artist. She stood in the shadow of her husband's charismatic personality, diminished by the press, struggling to develop her artistic voice. 

Kahlo was in her early twenties when she married the older, famous artist, only twenty-three when they arrived in America. Her life had already been eventful, suffering polio, scoliosis, spina bifida, and the life-threatening bus accident when she was a teenager. Pain accompanied her every day. She was a Communist, she challenged society's prescribed sex roles, and had suffered heartbreak as a spurned lover. 

It was so interesting to see American during the Depression through Kahlo's eyes. The wealthy industrialists were her husband's patrons--they paid the bills. They also represented a privileged class Kahlo who found revolting. 

Kahlo wrote to her mother, "Witnessing the horrible poverty here and the millions of people who have no work, food, or home, who are cold and have no hope in this country of scumbag millionaires, who greedily grab everything, has profoundly shocked [us]."

Of course, I was very interested in the artists' time in Detroit. The city had been one of the hardest hit by the Depression, 50% unemployed. I was shocked to read about the Ford Hunger March. Ford had reduced salaries and laid off workers, and since the workers lived in Ford housing they became homeless as well. Four thousand marched in freezing weather to the gate of the Rouge River plant to be met by bullets and fire hoses, killing four people. River and Kahlo arrived a month after the event.

Stahr addresses each painting created by Kahlo, explaining the work and its symbolism in detail, including the self-portrait made for her estranged lover, the groundbreaking paintings about her abortion and the miscarriage that spurred a traumatic 'rebirth' as had her bus accident when she was eighteen years old.

Stahr addresses the duality "at the root of Frida's sense of self," part of her "search for a unification of opposites, as the Aztecs and alchemists espoused."

Kahlo's deeply personal art defied convention, delving into female experiences never depicted in art before. In comparison, Rivera's masterpiece murals at the Detroit Institute of Art look to the past, glorifying the pre-Depression industrial worker and the scientists and entrepreneurs who created industry.

Memorialized in Rivera's mural, Edsel Ford and William Valentiner
chose Rivera to paint the walls of the DIA courtyard 

These same industrialist millionaires were aiding Hitler, Ford a known anti-semite, and oil companies supplying fuel and poisonous gasses to the Nazis.

After Detroit, they went to New York City where Rivera was to create a mural for the new Rockefeller Center and a battle over a patron's control of an artist's content played itself out. It could have happened in Detroit, but the scandalous murals drew record crowds to the DIA and turned around their finances.

"Love is the basis of all life," Stahr quotes Kahlo. Love of country, for friends and family, sexual love, for home. Her relationship with Rivera was conflicted, their love affairs rending their marriage, resulting in divorce and remarriage.

This is a revealing and deep study of Kahlo that truly educated me while engaging me emotionally with its subject.

I was given a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Frida Kahlo in America: The Creative Awakening of a Great Artist
by Celia Stahr
St. Martin's Press
On Sale: 03/03/2020
ISBN: 9781250113382
hardcover $29.99; $14.99 ebook

Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait on the Borderline between Mexico and the United States of America (1932) 

Learn more about the DIA exhibit at
https://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/2015/03/diego_rivera_and_frida_kahlo_i.html

The History Behind American Ballads

Telling a story in song is one of our oldest human traditions. For hundreds of years people have sung ballads that told stories about murders, outlaws, romances, wars, tragedies, and hardships. During four visits between 1916 and 1918 British musicologist Cecil Sharp collected over 1500 American songs in the southern Appalachians.

At the same time Sharp collected old ballads new ones were being created as a response to events of the time. These new songs included responses to modern calamities involving railroad accidents, shipwrecks, and the treatment of workers and prisoners. 

Hear My Sad Story: The True Tales that Inspired "Stagolee," "John Henry," and Other Traditional American Folk Songs by Richard Polenberg explores American ballads based on historical people and events, explaining the events and persons who inspired them, and covering their first known performances, recordings, and publication. 

The songs in their categories include:

• St Louis (St. Louis Blues, Stagolee, Frankie and Johnny, Duncan and Brady)
• Lying Cold on the Ground (Omi Wise, Ballad of Frankie Silver, Tom Dooley, Poor Ellen Smith, Pearl Bryan, Delia's Gone)
• Bold Highwaymen and Outlaws (Cole younger, Jesse James, John Hardy, Railroad Bill, Betty and Dupree)
• Railroads (John Henry, Engine 143, Casey Jones, Wreck of the Old 97)
• Workers (Cotton Mill Blues, Chain Gang Blues, Only a Miner, House of the Rising Sun)
• Disasters (The Titanic, The Boll Weevil)
• Martyrs (Joe Hill, Sacco and Vanzetti)

Persons interested in folk music and its performers, American history, or music recordings will find this book informative and interesting. 

Here is a summary of the history of one song included in the book.

Tom Dooley as recorded by the Kingston Trio was all over the radio when I was a girl, selling over a million copies in a few months. It won the Grammy for Best Country and Western Recording. Everyone knew the words.

Tom Dooley was first recorded in 1929 with these words:

"Tom Dooley"
As recorded by Grayson & Whitter (1929)

(CHORUS)
Hang your head, Tom Dooley,
Hang your head and cry;
Killed poor Laura Foster,
You know you're bound to die.

You took her on the hillside,
As God almighty knows;
You took her on the hillside,
And there you hid her clothes.

You took her by the roadside,
Where you begged to be excused;
You took her by the roadside,
Where there you hid her shoes.

Took her on the hillside,
To make her your wife;
Took her on the hillside
Where there you took her life. (CHO.)

Take down my old violin,
Play it all you please;
This time tomorrow,
It'll be no use to me. (CHO.)

I dug a grave four feet long,
I dug it three feet deep;
Throwed the cold clay over her,
And tromped it with my feet. (CHO.)

This world and one more,
Then where you reckon I'll be?
Hadn't a-been for Grayson,
I'd a-been in Tennessee. (CHO.)

How many of us know that Tom Dooley was a real person, Thomas Caleb Dula, a handsome lady killer and Confederate soldier? After bedding two cousins, Ann (an old flame, now married) and Laura Foster, Tom discovered he had syphilis. So did Ann. But Tom blamed the disease on Laura. Ann blamed Tom. 

Tom Dula

Tom paid Laura several visits. Then Laura was found missing. Laura's father believed she was murdered and a warrant for Tom's arrest was issued. Tom had taken off. He turned up at a farm owned by Union veteran Lt. Colonel Grayson who hired him as a field hand. The posse tracked Tom down, but he'd high tailed it again...wearing new boots that hurt his feet. 

Tom was cooling his blistered feet when Grayson found him and brought him in. When Laura's body was found, Tom was indicted for murder, found guilty, and sentenced to death by hanging. An appeal was made, improper handling of evidence was proved, and Tom faced a second trial. He was again found guilty and his execution set for May 1, 1868.

Tom spent his jail time trying to cut his chain with a piece of glass--and getting baptized. Neither delayed his execution. On the fatal day a cheerful Tom insisted he was innocent and quipped, "I would have washed my neck if I had known you were using such a nice clean rope." He spoke for an hour to the crowd, maintaining his innocence and accusing witnesses of false testimony. The crowd wasn't buying it. The day before he'd written a note declaring "I am the only person that had any hand to the murder of Laura Foster."

By 1867 a song was being sung about the murder. An early folklore scholar noted the song was sung all over Watauga County. The first recording of Tom Dooley was made in 1929 by Grayson's nephew, Gilliam Banmon Grayson. Folklorists Anne and Frank Warner sang the song and recorded it in 1940. They sang Tom Dooley in every lecture and program. In 1948 Alan Lomax included the song in Folk Song:USA. Then in 1958 the Kingston Trio made the song a national sensation. NPR choose Tom Dooley as one of the most important songs of the twentieth century.

Hear My Sad Story was an enjoyable and informative read.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Hear My Sad Story: The True Tales that Inspired "Stagolee," "John Henry," and Other Traditional American Folk Songs

by Richard Polenberg

Cornell University Press

Publication Date November 17, 2015

ISBN: 9781501700026

$26.00 hard cover