Morning, troupe. We’re classing up the joint today, with a Donne sonnet, put to music by John Adams. It’s Holy Sonnet X, below.
Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
It all comes out of Crossworld, where the clue at 12D today was “‘Death Be Not Proud,’ for one.” The answer was SONNET, but Rex shared this other one by Donne with us, and commenter Blex shared the Adams work that contains it. If you like John Adams, sit back and enjoy. If he’s new to you, give him a little time.
The following snippets are stolen from a Cliffnotes sort of site:
“John Donne wrote the series of poems called the Holy Sonnets during a period of religious conversion from Catholicism to Anglicanism. In this particular poem, the speaker has lost touch with God altogether and prays desperately for God to return. Furthermore, the speaker believes that faith can only return through forceful means: God has to force his way back into the speaker’s heart. The poem, then, is at once a witty and an achingly open portrait of a soul desperate to overcome the torment of religious doubt.
“The speaker makes a bold comparison between faith in God and erotic love.”
I posted the following as a comment on Rex’s blog:
I heard Adams once explaining how he chose music as his life’s work. He was a kid in a terrible community band — you could barely make out what song they were trying to bang out when they played. And they volunteered to play in a local mental hospital once. They set up in the common room and the patients were brought in. Most were staring into space, or walking around in circles, or muttering nonsense to themselves. Every one in his or her own space, far away. But when the band began playing, they all turned and walked towards it, and focused on the music with wonder and appreciation. Adams said he realized at that moment the power of music, and how deeply it can connect to people.
Today’s puzzle was a good old-fashioned really tough Saturday workout. Very satisfying to finish it in one piece. The constructor was Byron Walden. It’s so rare for Rex to gush over a puzzle. Here’s how he gushes:
“Always comforting to see Byron’s name on the byline. That may seem an odd thing to say about someone whose puzzles tend toward the ruthlessly hard and sadistically playful, but the comfort comes in knowing that the struggle is going to be worth it. I know the puzzle is going to throw fastballs at my head over and over, open trap doors, release the dogs, or the bees, or the dogs with bees in their mouths and when they bark they shoot bees at you. It’s gonna be an ordeal, but you’re gonna like having been ordealed. Today was no exception—a properly Saturday Saturday that had me going “huh? … Huh? … D’oh!” over and over.”
For the clue at 8D: “Pictures where people are headscarfed?,” I had it ending in —BIEMOVIES and just kept thinking of Arab stuff with the head scarves. Finally the crossing word gave me a Z to start off with. So it was ZOMBIE MOVIES! It’s “scarf” in the sense of “eat” (to scarf down). And zombies eat your brains (heads) so there’s “headscarfing.” Hard, right?
And at 3D the clue was “Cinderella’s calling card.” I kept thinking things like shoe size or pumpkins, but it was not that Cinderella. It was a Cinderella team in the basketball tournament, and the answer was BIG UPSET. Whew.
Even a little word like ARC was a challenge. The clue for it was AZIMUTH. If I had to guess, I would have said Azimuth was a god of some sort. D’oh!
Loved this clue/answer as a tax prof: “Dodgers foes’, for short.” Ans: IRS. (Get it? Tax dodgers.)
At 53A, “Cold weather outerwear” was ANORAK. Did you know that word has a secondary meaning: a studious or obsessive person with unfashionable and largely solitary interests. The word comes from Greenlandic. I didn’t even know there was such a language.
Here’s one:
Do you know your Russian history? Or maybe your bartending? At 7A the clue was “White Russians, e.g.,” and the answer was CZARISTS. (That’s the Z I needed for the ZOMBIE MOVIES.) Commenter Andrew wondered if someone was drunk because his comments were so mean, and he phrased it by asking if he “downed too many Czarists last night.”
40D was the type of clue you’d never get unless you’ve done puzzles for a long time. The clue was “Black heart?” It’s referring to the letters in the word B-L-A-C-K. The “heart” of the word is the central letter: A. And its pronunciation makes it a SHORT A. That was the answer: SHORTA. (I got it with help from a few crosses.)
Egs posted: After my third White Russian last night, Mrs. Egs asked, “Egs, are you drunk?” “SHORTA” I replied.
Phil refused to identify where this shot came from. It’s either from Night of the Living Dead, or it’s my tax class after the midterm. Hard to tell.
Owl Chatter’s outing to Brooklyn for the Pistons/Nets game was a smashing success. Slight concern that we lost touch with Phil and George midway through the second period and came back to Jersey without them. But they’re both grown men (except maybe Georgie) so they’re probably okay. I found George’s wallet under his seat with $1,200 in it and his Botox Rx.
The Barclay Center is great and our seats were good. The Pistons looked terrific for most of the game until they suddenly lost by ten points. Big disappointment: No Cade Cunningham. Boo hoo. He might have made a difference. No Duren either. Ivey, Sasser, and Metu all looked terrific. I think they’ll be decent next year. Would definitely return to see them in Brooklyn again.
Good night everybody. See you tomorrow!
The Wellington Files 