HEADNOTE Sometimes it is necessary to "drop names" all over the place. What better way for a minor poet to make himself a bit more cheerful than to link himself to others far better known?
In 1972 I published the poem below in The New Laurel Review. Prestigious little magazine! Not quite as much oomph as getting something in Poetry, but it's not a bad place to be seen. But, on to the names!
Published in that issue were:
* Carlos Baker -- the Princeton professor who did the standard biography of Hemingway and who has published poetry in most of the prestigious magazines.I wrote the poem about the time that Pope John XXIII abandoned Latin as the language of the Catholic mass. And, although as a junior high schooler, I was very deeply into being an altar boy and feeling cool because I could actually understand what was being said, by the time I wrote the piece I was more of an occasional visitor to Catholic churches than a serious communicant. There is, however, still something cool about the Old Roman Church, but I have never forgiven Pope John for getting rid of the Latin.
* Calvin Claudel -- a member of the French Academie and the son of the French poet Paul Claudel.
* Richard Harter Fogle -- the primo scholar on Romanticism in American Lit and holder of the title "Distinguished Professor of the University" at Chapel Hill.
* Laurence Perrine -- the scholar and poet so many of us know from his little book Sound and Sense.
* Warren O'Rourke -- "Alabama poet and teacher, is a widely published southern writer."
St. Monica's Chapel Revisited
The chipped and peeling statues still suggest
The form that was.
The altar step where I once knelt
Has cracked,
Perhaps beneath the weight of years,
But still invites some part of me.
Memory of clinking censer, cruets filled,
The tiers of candles lit,
A scarlet chasuble.
This aging priest
For whom the wine once more becomes
A savior's blood
Despite the Englished incantation
Elevates some fragments
Of the past --
Et introibo ad altare Dei.
Ad Deum qui laetificat
Juventutum meum.
These fragments still suggest
The form that was.
The Latin passage in the poem is the way every mass started in the old Latin days. The priest would say: "And I shall go in unto the altar of God." The altar boy would answer: "To God, who giveth great joy to my youth."-- Warren F. O'Rourke, 1972