Day Two of Leafy Glen

October 2, 2010

Why write sonnets for a website devoted to clothing?

(sonnet starts below these two short paragraphs)

Mainly because of these sonnets deal with making. Penelope in the Homer’s Odyssey weaves during the day and unweaves at night to ward off the false suitors. I think of clothing as tied into the work of civilization to recall its original arts and face forward with them. I want to work at getting to the source of our identity. Just as the weavers in Guatemala weave in their story cloth, so have woven our story into the social fabric of the American experiment.

Another reason is that my intention in Goods of Conscience is not merely to make clothing, as noble as I have tried to make doing it. My intention is to recall to the Church the system of the benefice. The soul of parishes is making. I want to weave in some background as to why. Allen Tate said that “you can live without poetry but you can’t live well.” Making in a parish may seem superfluous until you try it.

Two 10/02/10

A marriage to build up the house

the way that force and choice

grow gentle in the hands of a ruse

Is conceived in the heart of a woman.

Once, after the fall of Rome

when the city bled in caravan,

As did all cities harboring Cain,

a good wife in the vale of Pozzo

of the simple son made name

As divine as plebe and cross

and cleaned the valley of fear

and filled it with grain and dross.