Monthly Roundup VII: Till we have built Jerusalem
The Mansion on Bear Lake
Welcome to the monthly roundup for April, 2024 at Silver Door, where perusal-worthy articles and poetry related happenings from Substack and beyond are highlighted alongside recent SD news and posts.
This month it’s our pleasure to publish the impressive debut poem Bear Lake Encyclical by S.D. Higgins. As one commenter put it: “This poem is sweet honey and nostalgic car-rust and takes place on the Earth that you and I currently inhabit.”
I continue to be impressed by the quality of our readers and contributors and only ask anyone who enjoys this work to share Silver Door as you see proper.
Around The Web
: Poetry and Posterity IV: Poetry and Leviathan—Part IV of Nik’s mindbending series demands of its reader as much, if not more, than parts I-III, which is really saying something. But don’t be discouraged. There is real gold in this series. Settle in to this bad boy with a cup of strong coffee or a glass of wine.The role of Poetry in our eternal cosmic enterprise is multifaceted. Poetry is a record of action, is both an end and beginning of contemplation, and importantly, provides translational typology for the corporal hierarchy. Translational typology must navigate the symbolic transference which occurs across the bodies of existence so that men may be endowed with a cohesive and meaning-laden cosmology. It is therefore important that Poetry be simulated and subsumed into the occult bodies lest men begin to actualize Poetry’s true purpose. We can see, across multiple levels, the domain of poetry; And why it is threatening to the project of the great becoming. Poetry utilizes both Logos and Beauty. It transcribes action and inspires action. It provokes contemplation and expresses contemplation. Poetry is both Word and Voice. In its higher modes, it blossoms as both Contemplative Praise and Divine Mania; Each being a phenomenon which is incomprehensible to Abolition. Finally, in poetry we can find the reconciled man, as in the Psalms. The reconciliation of being is detestable to the spirit of the world because reconciliation is anti-becoming. All creation groans not to Become, but to commune with what Is.
The good people at
interviewed the poet Scott Cairns: How Poetry Opens Up the Uncontainable—I’ve become increasingly convinced over the years that you can’t separate the artist from the work.JJ: The poet Rainer Maria Rilke, in his Letters to a Young Poet, makes a connection between the art of poetry and the art of living. Do you see a connection between these two endeavors?
SC: I think that our primary art must be the shaping of ourselves. I also think that any endeavor that we can rightly call a vocation is best understood as a means to better apprehending who we are and what we are called to become. So, yes, for those called to the art of poetry, that calling is utterly connected to the art of living, of living well and in a way that enhances our own spiritual journeys, even as it enhances the journeys of others.
Success in the art of poetry and in the art of living depends on a deeper development of the art of prayer. Early on, I tended to resist the associations of poetry with prayer, but, in my dotage, I have given up that resistance.
Silver Door Posts
“What better sword has man to hand than that of poesy to shear away the falsehood of that ugly hermeneutics which is suspicious even of God?”
“What better sword has man to hand than that of poesy to shear away the falsehood of that ugly hermeneutics which is suspicious even of God?”
Screenshots & Bookmarks
“The artist is a conductor, a lightning-rod, a midwife. In one medium or another, he has become a master of articulation. While this confers on him no especial value in and of itself, if it (his power of articulation) should be emissary of a deep heart, then God can bless the world thereby.”
A Heavenly Mansion, Raging in the Dark
Poems on Silver Door
Written by S.D. Higgins