{"id":2615,"date":"2011-05-11T00:50:44","date_gmt":"2011-05-11T07:50:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/?p=2615"},"modified":"2011-05-11T21:55:30","modified_gmt":"2011-05-12T04:55:30","slug":"correspondence-reprimand-and-penance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2011\/05\/correspondence-reprimand-and-penance\/","title":{"rendered":"Correspondence: Reprimand And Penance"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Rifftides<\/i> archive browser who identifies himself only as Hank wrote to take me to task:<\/p>\n

I feel certain you are friends with Miller Williams. My main comment
\nis that if you are going to publish online his poetry, it seems you
\nwould want to get it right. There are numerous errors in the poem I
\nfound on this site, from formatting to punctuation to capitalization.
\nNot meaning to get on your case about this, but I did notice it. I
\nsend this respectfully.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>Over the past six years, I have posted two of friend Williams\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s poems. I checked the one about Slow Drag Pavageau<\/a>, posted in 2006, and found that it was accurately transcribed. Whew. <\/p>\n

Hank was right to get on my case about the other one. I plead guilty to all three of his charges. Since few readers are likely to go back to items put up six years ago, I apologize to Professor Williams and attempt to make restitution by reposting the piece, complete with an added photograph and updated links. This first ran on July 22, 2005. The atrocities it refers to were in a string that continues with little sign of letup, unless the recent event in Abbottabad was a turning point. We can hope.<\/p>\n

Following the most recent rounds of atrocities\u00e2\u20ac\u201dIraq, London\u00e2\u20ac\u201da friend wanted to talk. He did not have comforting insights into mankind\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s oldest philosophical question, nor did I. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know whether Miller Williams has the answer, but this distinguished American poet ponders it beautifully. With his permission, here is one of his finest poems.<\/p>\n

Why God Permits Evil:
\nFor Answers to This Question
\nOf Interest to Many
\nWrite Bible Answers, Dept. E-7<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u201dad on a matchbook cover<\/p>\n

\n

Of interest to John Calvin and Thomas Aquinas
\nfor instance and Job for instance who never got<\/p>\n

one straight answer but only his cattle back.
\nWith interest, which is something, but certainly not<\/p>\n

any kind of answer unless you ask
\nGod if God can demonstrate God\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s power<\/p>\n

and God\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s glory, which is not a question.
\nYou should all be living at this hour.<\/p>\n

You had Servetus to burn, the elect to count,
\nbad eyes and the Institutes to write;<\/p>\n

you had the exercises and had Latin,
\nthe hard bunk and the solitary night;<\/p>\n

you had the neighbors to listen to and your woman
\nyelling at you to curse God and die.<\/p>\n

Some of this to be on the right side;
\nsome of it to ask in passing, Why?<\/p>\n

Why badness makes its way in a world He made?
\nHow come he looked for twelve and got eleven?<\/p>\n

You had the faith and looked for love, stood pain,
\nlearned patience and little else. We have E-7.<\/p>\n

Churches may be shut down everywhere,
\nhalf-written philosophy books be tossed away.<\/p>\n

Some place on the South Side of Chicago
\na lady with wrinkled hose and a small gray<\/p>\n

bun of hair sits straight with her knees together
\nbehind a teacher\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s desk on the third floor<\/p>\n

of an old shirt factory, bankrupt and abandoned
\nexcept for this just cause, and on the door:<\/p>\n

Dept. E-7. She opens the letters
\nasking why God permits it and sends a brown<\/p>\n

plain envelope to each return address.
\nBut she is not alone. All up and down<\/p>\n

the thin and creaking corridors are doors
\nand desks behind them: E-6, E-5, 4, 3.<\/p>\n

A desk for every question, for how we rise
\nblown up and burned, for how the will is free,<\/p>\n

for when is Armageddon, for whether dogs
\nhave souls or not and on and on. On<\/p>\n

beyond the alphabet and possible numbers
\nwhere cross-legged, naked, and alone,<\/p>\n

there sits a pale, tall, and long-haired woman
\nupon a cushion of fleece and eiderdown<\/p>\n

\nholding in one hand a handwritten answer,
\nholding in the other hand a brown<\/p>\n

plain envelope. On either side, cobwebbed
\nand empty baskets sitting on the floor<\/p>\n

say In<\/em> and Out<\/em>. There is no sound in the room.
\nThere is no knob on the door. Or there is no door.<\/p>\n

“\u00a91999 by Miller Williams<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Williams wrote and read the inaugural poem<\/a> at the beginning of President Bill Clinton\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s second term in 1997, four years after Maya Angelou was the inaugural poet as President Clinton began his first term. In a PBS program, The Inaugural Classroom<\/em>, a 12th grader asked Williams how it felt to be compared to Angelou.<\/p>\n

“She writes opera and classical music,” Williams said, “and I write jazz and blues.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The late poet John Ciardi summed up Williams this way:<\/p>\n

Miller Williams writes about ordinary people in the extraordinary moments of their lives. Even more remarkable is how, doing this, he plays perilously close to plain talk without ever falling into it; how close he comes to naked sentiment without yielding to it; how close he moves to being very sure without ever losing the grace of uncertainty. Add to this something altogether apart, that what a good reader can expect to sense, coming to these poems, is a terrible honesty, and we have among us a voice that makes a difference.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Why God Permits Evil\u00e2\u20ac\u009d appears most recently in Williams\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s collected poems, Some Jazz a While<\/a><\/em>. To learn more about Miller Williams, go here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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A Rifftides archive browser who identifies himself only as Hank wrote to take me to task: I feel certain you are friends with Miller Williams. My main comment is that if you are going to publish online his poetry, it seems you would want to get it right. There are numerous errors in the poem […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2615","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2615\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}