What do you think?
Rate this book
The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord
The Hundredfold is a tapestry of hymns, monologues, and short lyrics knit together as one book-length poem in praise of Christ in his startling humanity. Using all the riches of the English poetic tradition—meter, rhyme, music—the poet ponders the mysterious man from Nazareth and the world he came to set on fire with splendor.
Having made a career of translating the Italian masters Dante and Tasso, Anthony Esolen puts on the dusty mantle of such English craftsmen as Donne, Milton, and Hopkins in his first book of original contemplative poetry. The Hundredfold contains dramatic monologues set in first-century Greece and Palestine; lyrical meditations on creation, longing, failure, modern emptiness, and unshakeable hope; and twenty-one brand-new hymns, set to such traditional melodies as "Picardy" and "Old One-Hundred-Twenty-Fourth".
The book includes an introduction with diamond-sharp insights about English poetic forms at a time when form is so often misunderstood, if not dismissed. It provides an invaluable resource for students, teachers, and poets themselves, as well as those who read poetry for pleasure.
Having made a career of translating the Italian masters Dante and Tasso, Anthony Esolen puts on the dusty mantle of such English craftsmen as Donne, Milton, and Hopkins in his first book of original contemplative poetry. The Hundredfold contains dramatic monologues set in first-century Greece and Palestine; lyrical meditations on creation, longing, failure, modern emptiness, and unshakeable hope; and twenty-one brand-new hymns, set to such traditional melodies as "Picardy" and "Old One-Hundred-Twenty-Fourth".
The book includes an introduction with diamond-sharp insights about English poetic forms at a time when form is so often misunderstood, if not dismissed. It provides an invaluable resource for students, teachers, and poets themselves, as well as those who read poetry for pleasure.
232 pages, Paperback
Published August 5, 2019
31 people are currently reading
223 people want to read
About the author
Anthony Esolen
60 books483 followersAnthony Esolen is the author of over twenty-five books and over 1,000 articles in both scholarly and general interest journals. A senior editor of Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity, Esolen is known for his elegant essays on the faith and for his clear social commentaries. His articles appear regularly in Touchstone, Crisis, First Things, Public Discourse, The Catholic Thing, Chronicles, Inside the Vatican, and Magnificat, among others. An accomplished poet in his own right, Esolen is known for his widely acclaimed three-volume verse translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy (Modern Library). His Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child has been described as "a worthy successor to C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man." And its sequel, Life Under Compulsion, has been called "essential reading for parents, educators, and anyone who is concerned to rescue children from the tedious and vacuous thing childhood has become." His recent books of social commentary include Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture, Nostalgia: Going Home in a Homeless World, and the forthcoming, No Apologies: Why Civilization Depends upon the Strength of Men.
Anthony Esolen has been writing his own poetry for decades, but until recently most of his published poetry has appeared in his verse translations of the great poets, Dante, Tasso, and Lucretius. More than a hundred of his own poems have appeared in such venues as Fine Madness, The Plains Poetry Journal, and Modern Age. After studying and teaching great poetry for nearly thirty years, Professor Esolen set out to write a book-length unified poem of his own, a project which he hopes will show that serious and significant long poetic works can still be written in our time. The result of his effort is The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord, a book-length single poem composed of 100 parts -- short lyrics, dramatic monologues, and hymns -- centered on the life of Christ. He is working now on a second such long poem, The Twelve-Gated City, a collection of 144 interrelated poems centered on the parable of the prodigal son.
The grandson of Italian immigrants to America, Anthony Esolen was born and raised in the coal-mining country of Northeastern Pennsylvania. He received his B.A. from Princeton University, and his Ph. D. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he was a Morehead Fellow. He is the 2020 recipient of the CIRCE Institute's Russel Kirk Prize, awarded each year to a writer and scholar "in honor of a lifetime dedicated to the cultivation of wisdom and virtue." He is writer-in-residence at Magdalen College in Warner, NH.
For more from the mind and pen of Anthony Esolen, visit his online magazine called Word and Song, at https://anthonyesolen.substack.com
Anthony Esolen has been writing his own poetry for decades, but until recently most of his published poetry has appeared in his verse translations of the great poets, Dante, Tasso, and Lucretius. More than a hundred of his own poems have appeared in such venues as Fine Madness, The Plains Poetry Journal, and Modern Age. After studying and teaching great poetry for nearly thirty years, Professor Esolen set out to write a book-length unified poem of his own, a project which he hopes will show that serious and significant long poetic works can still be written in our time. The result of his effort is The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord, a book-length single poem composed of 100 parts -- short lyrics, dramatic monologues, and hymns -- centered on the life of Christ. He is working now on a second such long poem, The Twelve-Gated City, a collection of 144 interrelated poems centered on the parable of the prodigal son.
The grandson of Italian immigrants to America, Anthony Esolen was born and raised in the coal-mining country of Northeastern Pennsylvania. He received his B.A. from Princeton University, and his Ph. D. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he was a Morehead Fellow. He is the 2020 recipient of the CIRCE Institute's Russel Kirk Prize, awarded each year to a writer and scholar "in honor of a lifetime dedicated to the cultivation of wisdom and virtue." He is writer-in-residence at Magdalen College in Warner, NH.
For more from the mind and pen of Anthony Esolen, visit his online magazine called Word and Song, at https://anthonyesolen.substack.com
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
October 7, 2019
Ladies and gentlemen https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... after a long review I will see if I get, let this criticism be shorter, also by the way I take advantage, to announce my upcoming reviews. My intention is to postpone this week the criticisms I owe to Goodreads users this summer, and analyze those of the latest books, which I have read because they are very interesting. First I will write this review of this anthology of Professor Esolen's poems, tomorrow we will continue with an interesting book of crusades https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4... where I will propose a very populist measure. My friend the writer Manuel Alfonseca https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
he has proposed that the Spanish-spanish books write the reviews in Spanish, and then in the comments, (because as you know my reviews are usually very long) to be posted in English, because he thinks that the book does not interest the mayaría of Goodreads users , because it's not in English, and that's why they're not interested. My intention when writing the review in English, and then the Spanish criticism is to promote the book to see if it manages to be translated into English, and for most users, even if they do not buy the book at least read my review (this I do not only for the ha English-speaking wields, but by most Goodreads users, who do not speak Spanish, and who have English as a French language. Esperanto did not prosper :-)). If my friend Manuel Alfonseca succeeded, tomorrow's review will be my penultimate review of a Spanish book in Goodreads. The last review would be the book"Barbarians in Hispania" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...
and professional partner Daniel Gómez Aragonés, a lover and expert on Visigoths https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... (books published in the United States, The United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries will continue to be written first in English, and then in Spanish as before). My next review would be (if not change things) by the Italian writer Giovanni Arpino https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1... (we will talk about that in my review, but this novel made adaptations in Italy, and in the United States, which allowed the ever magnificent Al Pacino to win their only Incar) then I will write a review that I have spoken out with several people especially with my Whattsap group chaired by Maria Clara (one of the best, and most active Goodreads users, writer, and lover of the romantic genre) I mean the book "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix that will not please fans or critics, but I think, it will displease the fans of the magician more (I will also take the use to speak of George R.R. Martin's tapadillo https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... ) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2... https://www.goodreads.com/series/4517... then my plan is to continue with my summer reviews After this long prelude I set out to write about this wonderful anthology of poems. (I'll try to be shorter) because this book also has history. My admiration for Professor Esolen began when the publisher Ciudadela edited his wonderful book (in Spain co-written with the brilliant José Javier Esparza https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... ) entitled "political guide misguided Western civilization" despite not being a historian (something good had to have Annale with her interdisciplinarity) she wrote a book, which should be mandatory reading in schools https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2... afterwards because of my fascination and my eagerness to collect from Catholic writers I was fortunate enough to give on social media with the Professor's wife They are, and befriend them, having the opportunity to read two other jewels of Professor Esolen https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1... https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2... and https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2... that were a very interesting read, and that made one thing clear. Professor Esolen's interest in preserving tradition, demolished by an ominous decades of slinglinglinging secularism. Apart from a love of education, and for sharing his wisdom with younger generations. It was not pleasant, and I am surprised, that a certain critic of the American population, the most progressive, and that he has so much protested against the McCarthysm has now degenerated, and has become a persecutor, and this deplorable trend has invaded as well (and I saddens to say it) to the church's spheres. Professor Esolen suffered an infamous, and unjust pursuit according to his persecutors for attacking diversity. So this genius had to drop out of college, and go to another. He took advantage of revealing this situation, to denounce other similar injustices. For both in the United States and in Europe people are starting to be persecuted, they do not have progressive ideas, and because of their religious beliefs. In England a judge has decreed that the Bible incites hatred. This is a bad symptom of jurisprudence, which sets a terrible precedent, and threatens to trigger many evils. Although I will speak of the English situation, when I write the review of the latest novel by the English spy writer Frederick Forsyth "The Fox" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3... https://www.goodreads.com/author/show.... Returning to this anthology of poems that we are dealing with your reading was due to a request from Professor Esolen's wife, who without her knowing I created a Whatsaap group on Facebook to support her husband's work (I apologize to Goodreads users , but I am gossipy, and gossip than a Suetonius https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... ) Then my beloved sister (nothing like family) helped me to get in record time the book of Professor Esolen. I must add, I had two great difficulties in reading it. That I'm not used to reading poetry, I'm like Agrippa, who would be unable to distinguish a poet from a madman. Then the other difficulty was that I read it in English This book has not yet been translated into Spanish. I'm not very good with tongues. For this reason I found useful the wonderful prologue of Professor Esolen, who is a professor of truth translator of Dante, and of the great Tasso https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... here has certainly shown Professor Esolen, that not only is he a theorist who writes poetry, he also appreciates it, and what is better also leads to practice. Professor Esolen's foreword should be the same, as "Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization" should be mandatory in schools, and the Faculties of Philosophy and Letters (in the History section) here he has certainly shown Professor Esolen, that not only is he a theorist who writes poetry, he also appreciates it, and what is best also leads to practice. Professor Esolen's foreword should be the same, as "Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization" should be mandatory in schools, and the Faculties of Philosophy and Letters (in the History section). This prologue should be a must in the Faculties of Humanities especially those dedicated to studying literature, and philology. What I could understand (because just like poor Queen Catherine, I am a poor clumsy stranger with a language that is not mine). The first thing Professor Esolen does is encourage millennials not to untie themselves, and not be afraid of poetry. I don't know if it was Owen Barfield https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... that the ancients spoke in verse. The second thing Professor Esolen does is explain to us how these verses should be intoned, and to be declaimed. I must admit, one of the worst crosses for a Spanish student, who studies English, is the terrible listening. Understand the different intonations of each of the Anglo-speaking countries so it is very convenient this tutorial. He also tells us brilliant anecdotes from the great poets, who have preceded us, whom the great English poet and writer Alfred Noyes called to his aid in his duel against Edith Sitwell for seeing who was better if classical poets, or modern https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...# (this debate was won with sufficiency Alfred Noyes) https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... Aside from that the Professor commented as Professor Tolkien https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... the healthy influence that Saxon poets had on their work (like Caedmon) and enjoy the chosen poems that sneak from Herbert, Milton, Dante, and so on. Then Professor Esolen explains his own compositions, and tells us about them. In a sense Anthony Esolen has embodied what Chateaubriand championed in his essay "The Genius of Christianity" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1... the superiority of Christian poetry over pagan, and I dare to say that also in the face of the ultra-modern spawn known as vanguards that haunts us. They almost make you want to say like Cornelia Flyte/Charles Ryder "That modern art is modern nonsense" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3... it is also a slap against the raking secularism, and the atheist humanism, which emerged in Westphalia, and which came to stay from the 1960s of the last century. I'm not saying that Professor Esolen wrote Girolamo Vida's "The Christian", or Klopstock's "The Mesiada" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6... https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... nor has Ricardo Palma https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... emulated Peru even if they are hugely different authors as I read I couldn't help but think of Giovanni Papini and his "Life of Christ" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1... because that's what Professor Esolen does, and it's something, that I've appreciated filling the gaps Bible https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5... and let us get acquainted with the characters, who appear there. The thoughts of the Virgin Mary are touching. The reflections of the Centurion, and what he thinks of his wife, St Paul's letter to his teacher Gamaliel while in Arabia, the regrets of St. Peter, the succession of biblical episodes, the reflections of the disciples of Emmaus Emmaus (although here if I would like to correct Professor Esolen as far as I know the disciples of Emmaus are not called Irenor, nor Andronicus but Cleophas). I was very interested in Pilate's letter to Emperor Claudius, although it seems that he was not banished to Hispania, but to Gaul (as Paolo Belzoni https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... , but it does not demonstrate the perfidy, and the character exproator's flatterer. Very different from the blasphemy of Anatole France https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... and the heterodoxy of Eric Emmanuel Schmidt https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4... or that of Caillois https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4... who does not succeed in condemning Jesus. Esolen's Pilate is closer to Louis's https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4... Frank G. Slaughter https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1... or Gertrude von Lefort https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2... also certainly interesting what the disciples of St. John think, and connect this with our everyday reality. Since, as Sinuhe the Egyptian says, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1... "Whoever is with God is never alone." I can only praise the careful edition of Ignatius Press well carried by Father Fessio and beg if anyone reads this review, that the writers I called of the Generation of Ignatius Press https://www.ignatius.com/ be edited in Spain (do not make the mistake of confine them to Catholic publishers that their voice is retweeted by Spain, and for the world). Generally Spain has been unlucky not to have chosen the best literary current, nor philosophical now if he comes into contact with these writers, he can make up for centuries of mistakes.
he has proposed that the Spanish-spanish books write the reviews in Spanish, and then in the comments, (because as you know my reviews are usually very long) to be posted in English, because he thinks that the book does not interest the mayaría of Goodreads users , because it's not in English, and that's why they're not interested. My intention when writing the review in English, and then the Spanish criticism is to promote the book to see if it manages to be translated into English, and for most users, even if they do not buy the book at least read my review (this I do not only for the ha English-speaking wields, but by most Goodreads users, who do not speak Spanish, and who have English as a French language. Esperanto did not prosper :-)). If my friend Manuel Alfonseca succeeded, tomorrow's review will be my penultimate review of a Spanish book in Goodreads. The last review would be the book"Barbarians in Hispania" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...
and professional partner Daniel Gómez Aragonés, a lover and expert on Visigoths https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... (books published in the United States, The United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries will continue to be written first in English, and then in Spanish as before). My next review would be (if not change things) by the Italian writer Giovanni Arpino https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1... (we will talk about that in my review, but this novel made adaptations in Italy, and in the United States, which allowed the ever magnificent Al Pacino to win their only Incar) then I will write a review that I have spoken out with several people especially with my Whattsap group chaired by Maria Clara (one of the best, and most active Goodreads users, writer, and lover of the romantic genre) I mean the book "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix that will not please fans or critics, but I think, it will displease the fans of the magician more (I will also take the use to speak of George R.R. Martin's tapadillo https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... ) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2... https://www.goodreads.com/series/4517... then my plan is to continue with my summer reviews After this long prelude I set out to write about this wonderful anthology of poems. (I'll try to be shorter) because this book also has history. My admiration for Professor Esolen began when the publisher Ciudadela edited his wonderful book (in Spain co-written with the brilliant José Javier Esparza https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... ) entitled "political guide misguided Western civilization" despite not being a historian (something good had to have Annale with her interdisciplinarity) she wrote a book, which should be mandatory reading in schools https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2... afterwards because of my fascination and my eagerness to collect from Catholic writers I was fortunate enough to give on social media with the Professor's wife They are, and befriend them, having the opportunity to read two other jewels of Professor Esolen https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1... https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2... and https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2... that were a very interesting read, and that made one thing clear. Professor Esolen's interest in preserving tradition, demolished by an ominous decades of slinglinglinging secularism. Apart from a love of education, and for sharing his wisdom with younger generations. It was not pleasant, and I am surprised, that a certain critic of the American population, the most progressive, and that he has so much protested against the McCarthysm has now degenerated, and has become a persecutor, and this deplorable trend has invaded as well (and I saddens to say it) to the church's spheres. Professor Esolen suffered an infamous, and unjust pursuit according to his persecutors for attacking diversity. So this genius had to drop out of college, and go to another. He took advantage of revealing this situation, to denounce other similar injustices. For both in the United States and in Europe people are starting to be persecuted, they do not have progressive ideas, and because of their religious beliefs. In England a judge has decreed that the Bible incites hatred. This is a bad symptom of jurisprudence, which sets a terrible precedent, and threatens to trigger many evils. Although I will speak of the English situation, when I write the review of the latest novel by the English spy writer Frederick Forsyth "The Fox" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3... https://www.goodreads.com/author/show.... Returning to this anthology of poems that we are dealing with your reading was due to a request from Professor Esolen's wife, who without her knowing I created a Whatsaap group on Facebook to support her husband's work (I apologize to Goodreads users , but I am gossipy, and gossip than a Suetonius https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... ) Then my beloved sister (nothing like family) helped me to get in record time the book of Professor Esolen. I must add, I had two great difficulties in reading it. That I'm not used to reading poetry, I'm like Agrippa, who would be unable to distinguish a poet from a madman. Then the other difficulty was that I read it in English This book has not yet been translated into Spanish. I'm not very good with tongues. For this reason I found useful the wonderful prologue of Professor Esolen, who is a professor of truth translator of Dante, and of the great Tasso https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... here has certainly shown Professor Esolen, that not only is he a theorist who writes poetry, he also appreciates it, and what is better also leads to practice. Professor Esolen's foreword should be the same, as "Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization" should be mandatory in schools, and the Faculties of Philosophy and Letters (in the History section) here he has certainly shown Professor Esolen, that not only is he a theorist who writes poetry, he also appreciates it, and what is best also leads to practice. Professor Esolen's foreword should be the same, as "Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization" should be mandatory in schools, and the Faculties of Philosophy and Letters (in the History section). This prologue should be a must in the Faculties of Humanities especially those dedicated to studying literature, and philology. What I could understand (because just like poor Queen Catherine, I am a poor clumsy stranger with a language that is not mine). The first thing Professor Esolen does is encourage millennials not to untie themselves, and not be afraid of poetry. I don't know if it was Owen Barfield https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... that the ancients spoke in verse. The second thing Professor Esolen does is explain to us how these verses should be intoned, and to be declaimed. I must admit, one of the worst crosses for a Spanish student, who studies English, is the terrible listening. Understand the different intonations of each of the Anglo-speaking countries so it is very convenient this tutorial. He also tells us brilliant anecdotes from the great poets, who have preceded us, whom the great English poet and writer Alfred Noyes called to his aid in his duel against Edith Sitwell for seeing who was better if classical poets, or modern https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...# (this debate was won with sufficiency Alfred Noyes) https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... Aside from that the Professor commented as Professor Tolkien https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... the healthy influence that Saxon poets had on their work (like Caedmon) and enjoy the chosen poems that sneak from Herbert, Milton, Dante, and so on. Then Professor Esolen explains his own compositions, and tells us about them. In a sense Anthony Esolen has embodied what Chateaubriand championed in his essay "The Genius of Christianity" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1... the superiority of Christian poetry over pagan, and I dare to say that also in the face of the ultra-modern spawn known as vanguards that haunts us. They almost make you want to say like Cornelia Flyte/Charles Ryder "That modern art is modern nonsense" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3... it is also a slap against the raking secularism, and the atheist humanism, which emerged in Westphalia, and which came to stay from the 1960s of the last century. I'm not saying that Professor Esolen wrote Girolamo Vida's "The Christian", or Klopstock's "The Mesiada" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6... https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... nor has Ricardo Palma https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... emulated Peru even if they are hugely different authors as I read I couldn't help but think of Giovanni Papini and his "Life of Christ" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1... because that's what Professor Esolen does, and it's something, that I've appreciated filling the gaps Bible https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5... and let us get acquainted with the characters, who appear there. The thoughts of the Virgin Mary are touching. The reflections of the Centurion, and what he thinks of his wife, St Paul's letter to his teacher Gamaliel while in Arabia, the regrets of St. Peter, the succession of biblical episodes, the reflections of the disciples of Emmaus Emmaus (although here if I would like to correct Professor Esolen as far as I know the disciples of Emmaus are not called Irenor, nor Andronicus but Cleophas). I was very interested in Pilate's letter to Emperor Claudius, although it seems that he was not banished to Hispania, but to Gaul (as Paolo Belzoni https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... , but it does not demonstrate the perfidy, and the character exproator's flatterer. Very different from the blasphemy of Anatole France https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... and the heterodoxy of Eric Emmanuel Schmidt https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4... or that of Caillois https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4... who does not succeed in condemning Jesus. Esolen's Pilate is closer to Louis's https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4... Frank G. Slaughter https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1... or Gertrude von Lefort https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2... also certainly interesting what the disciples of St. John think, and connect this with our everyday reality. Since, as Sinuhe the Egyptian says, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1... "Whoever is with God is never alone." I can only praise the careful edition of Ignatius Press well carried by Father Fessio and beg if anyone reads this review, that the writers I called of the Generation of Ignatius Press https://www.ignatius.com/ be edited in Spain (do not make the mistake of confine them to Catholic publishers that their voice is retweeted by Spain, and for the world). Generally Spain has been unlucky not to have chosen the best literary current, nor philosophical now if he comes into contact with these writers, he can make up for centuries of mistakes.
September 15, 2019
This book will likely be close at hand, for me, as long as I'll want books close at hand. The amount of comfort and rightness expressed in Esolen's thoughts, his faith, his poetry is just what one needs. He states in his introduction that he sees this little volume "as the first salvo in the Christian reclamation of the land of imagination and song."
While I don't think it is the first, I hope it will be among many efforts helping us recover the ground we've lost.
While I don't think it is the first, I hope it will be among many efforts helping us recover the ground we've lost.
December 6, 2019
When I saw that this was a book of poetry, I’ll admit I wasn’t exactly excited. Gaining an appreciation for poetry has been on my to-do list for a few years, but I didn’t really want to start now, with this book. The Introduction — 40 pages of prose by Esolen — won me over. Esolen is a teacher at heart (and by profession), and he does it well. His love and appreciation for poetry, and his explanation for what he intended and executed in this book was beautifully stated. And then, then, I started reading his poetry. It’s one long epic poem, broken into sections. He explains the format and the whys, but I skimmed in my rush to get done. Reading this book was like wading through water of different colors, feeling different tastes on your tongue, and smelling a garden of flowers one by one. Those are imperfect analogies, but I don’t know how to explain the joy and hope and delight this book contained. I not only intend to reread it, because it’s about Christ’s life and work, but also to pray with it, because there’s something so holy about the way Esolen has made things real and said so much with so little. Highly recommended!
Read
July 21, 2020The intro is a well rounded overview of English rhyme and meter. Made me want to do two things: read aloud as often as possible and take a stab at writing a few sonnets.
This is one I'll be coming back to again and again.
This is one I'll be coming back to again and again.
March 30, 2020
A tremendous achievement. Anthony Esolen's poems will be a regular feature of my devotional reading from now on, and I hope those in hymn form find choirs and congregations to employ them, as well.
This book seems out of its time and place...by which I mean, "better than our age deserves", and perhaps very much what we need. It isn't like anything else out there, at least nothing from our century; it's an epic poem composed of a hundred shorter poems, crafted by a master. striving to tell spiritual truth.
Poetry, you might think, is not your "thing" - particularly if your impression of it is the maundering, self-indulgent blank verse which wins laureate status for modern mediocrities. If so, forget that and try this. You'll be reading the best literature our society is producing.
This book seems out of its time and place...by which I mean, "better than our age deserves", and perhaps very much what we need. It isn't like anything else out there, at least nothing from our century; it's an epic poem composed of a hundred shorter poems, crafted by a master. striving to tell spiritual truth.
Poetry, you might think, is not your "thing" - particularly if your impression of it is the maundering, self-indulgent blank verse which wins laureate status for modern mediocrities. If so, forget that and try this. You'll be reading the best literature our society is producing.
October 8, 2024
This is, without a doubt, the greatest book I have read in this year of many great books. I have never enjoyed poetry like I have here, and even if I am to read greater poems than these someday, I will look to The Hundredfold as my first astounding immersion into the depths of the Christian imagination. What Esolen has achieved in this book is nothing short of remarkable. I have spent many blessed hours beholding, discussing, and imparting beauty to others over my short life, and yet after these poems, I feel as if I am only just beginning to understand it. Woe to the Christian who does not venture into the awe-inspiring stanzas of The Hundredfold, for he is missing the experience of a lifetime. This book will remain close at hand for many years to come.
Read
August 16, 2022for
The Modena Review
An intriguing, imaginative, and somewhat brave book of sacred verse—but is it poetry?
Anthony Esolen is best-known as an essayist. Moreover, he is known as a rather curmudgeonly essayist, accustomed to lamenting the artistic dark ages of today whilst praising the achievements of the past. I recall the first Esolen piece I ever read, which was a rather grumpy if humorous attack on the New American Bible translation, or NAB. If I remember well, the problem was that the NAB is written not in English but in ‘NABbish’, a bland, bureaucratic English of the committee. (I hasten to add that, while I have only read snippets of the NAB, they seemed adequately stirring to me.)
The Hundredfold, a book of poetry, is a new departure for Esolen. It is subtitled ‘Songs for the Lord’ and the book is firmly Catholic in its viewpoint. It is certainly a peculiar poetic debut. Esolen has not had to build up a poetic career through a painstaking series of minor publications in journals, largely following the poetic trends of his time, as most do. (He would say, surely, that this is all the better.) For his first poetic outing, rather than a brief, cheap pamphlet, he is given an enormous 224 pages in a beautiful volume produced by Ignatius Press.
The poetry inside is unusual, too. It is all perfectly metrical and often rhymed. It comes in three genres, all mixed up within the ‘hundredfold’ of poems that comprise the book. There are hymns written to traditional tunes, about which I will say a little later on. Then there are what Esolen calls ‘epigrams’. It is good to see this neglected, ancient genre being used, if nothing else. (I have done my small, immature part in the revival, too, as it happens.) But Esolen’s epigrams lie far from the Roman models of Catullus and Martial, and likewise from the Greek epigram-writers. They lack, firstly, the Attic salt, the often direct rudeness of classical epigram. Where classical epigram is short, punchy, and even pugnacious, Esolen’s are not infrequently long and prolix.
But there are some good ones in the book. Epigram 51, to the Holy Spirit, sings in pleasant, musical couplets:
It is one of the best epigrams in the book for its ring composition (that is, beginning and ending with the same idea, ‘Most silent of the Three’), its compression, and its brevity; all of these work together to give this poem an epigrammatic feel. But the other 65 epigrams in the book are not to the same standard.
The main part of The Hundredfold is its dozen long poems, each about 200 lines. These are dramatic monologues, dialogues, or epistolary poems. All are in blank verse. As with the epigrams, some seem unremarkable, but a few of them make an impression. The strength of each of these poems lies in their imagination. They are all set in the first century AD and are spoken by major or minor characters from the New Testament. A theme throughout is how the person of Jesus of Nazareth has affected the speakers; these passages are often quite powerful.
‘The Centurion to his Woman’ is one of the stronger of the dramatic monologues. The Centurion speaks as a world-weary soldier at home with Greek philosophy and with a firm grasp of the long pagan past. He complains,
One can see in the Greek pessimism of these lines that a certain historical imagination is among Esolen’s strengths. His love of story-telling, however, sometimes works contrary to the poet’s imperative to compress. Instead, he expatiates. Still, nice lines occasionally arise from the surface chatter:
There is good characterisation, good historical imagination; but the lines rarely sing. For the most part, the verse seems that of someone who writes more comfortably in prose.
A successful monologue comes thirty pages later in ‘The Blacksmith to Saint Luke’. It begins with good nature poetry—one of Esolen’s strengths throughout the book—and achieves a sort of Shakespearean energy in lines such as
Just as the Centurion gave us an idea of his rough trade, so the blacksmith characterises his work as
There is a lot, indeed, throughout these pieces about the hardness of life. One gets the sense of the freshness and joy that news of a Redeemer brings.
It is a shame Esolen’s sense of humour is not more on show. It appears, however, in the dialogue ‘The Travelers to Emmaus’ in which the one says to the other,
It’s a good question. Esolen knows his doctrine and his Bible well, and draws the mind back especially to the latter’s riches throughout the book. There are two more long poems, both epistles, worth mentioning. ‘Saint Paul to Gamaliel’ imagines the Apostle’s youth under the training of the great teacher. Although not greatly poetic, it has a few nice compounds, such as ‘Night-vault’ and ‘scar-tangle’. In another poem, Pilate writes to Emperor Claudius. Again the historical imagination is strong and well-informed: the governor complains for most of the letter of slanders made against him, something which strikes me as very Roman.
As one can tell from the foregoing, though, Esolen seems better suited to the demands of historical fiction or the short story than those of poetry. But he does know his limitations. He claims that his poetic offering here is but ‘a first salvo in the Christian reclamation of the land of imagination and song’. It is imaginative. But I am not sure, for all its metrical and rhyming skill, that this is the right direction for the reclamation—if a Christian reclamation of imagination or song is indeed possible, advisable, or even called for nowadays. Whatever the answer to those questions, is turning the clock back one-hundred years the way forward?
There is an irony here. In trying to save poetry from the ‘baleful’ effects of modernism, Esolen proves a point made by the modernists, namely that regular metres and rhymes do not necessarily produce poetry, any more than following a blueprint will necessarily produce great architecture.
But, for all this, it is a book with virtues. I just wish that the large amount of filler had been excluded. Often a little chapel is holier than a great Cathedral. Likewise here, for all its grand, superfluous architecture, The Hundredfold’s sweetest moment, late in the book, consists in this little Herbertian hymn, written to the hymn tune ‘Artavia’:
C. R. Eager
Thank you for reading The Modena Review. I should add that this book is a bit old now, being from 2019, but it has been on the list since MR’s inception, so it was thought that late would be better than never. After the Summer, there should be one or two new writers offering thoughtful reviews in one or two new genres. And, all being well, the Autumn should see the launch of MR’s second column, Combray, which will be devoted to brief, affectionate essays on older books which lie, we hope, a bit off the old beaten track. I meanwhile have a very long list to get through.
An intriguing, imaginative, and somewhat brave book of sacred verse—but is it poetry?
Anthony Esolen is best-known as an essayist. Moreover, he is known as a rather curmudgeonly essayist, accustomed to lamenting the artistic dark ages of today whilst praising the achievements of the past. I recall the first Esolen piece I ever read, which was a rather grumpy if humorous attack on the New American Bible translation, or NAB. If I remember well, the problem was that the NAB is written not in English but in ‘NABbish’, a bland, bureaucratic English of the committee. (I hasten to add that, while I have only read snippets of the NAB, they seemed adequately stirring to me.)
The Hundredfold, a book of poetry, is a new departure for Esolen. It is subtitled ‘Songs for the Lord’ and the book is firmly Catholic in its viewpoint. It is certainly a peculiar poetic debut. Esolen has not had to build up a poetic career through a painstaking series of minor publications in journals, largely following the poetic trends of his time, as most do. (He would say, surely, that this is all the better.) For his first poetic outing, rather than a brief, cheap pamphlet, he is given an enormous 224 pages in a beautiful volume produced by Ignatius Press.
The poetry inside is unusual, too. It is all perfectly metrical and often rhymed. It comes in three genres, all mixed up within the ‘hundredfold’ of poems that comprise the book. There are hymns written to traditional tunes, about which I will say a little later on. Then there are what Esolen calls ‘epigrams’. It is good to see this neglected, ancient genre being used, if nothing else. (I have done my small, immature part in the revival, too, as it happens.) But Esolen’s epigrams lie far from the Roman models of Catullus and Martial, and likewise from the Greek epigram-writers. They lack, firstly, the Attic salt, the often direct rudeness of classical epigram. Where classical epigram is short, punchy, and even pugnacious, Esolen’s are not infrequently long and prolix.
But there are some good ones in the book. Epigram 51, to the Holy Spirit, sings in pleasant, musical couplets:
Most silent of the Three, inspire
My mind with Pentecostal fire;
Let fall thy wing upon my ear
That I may learn to wait and hear;
Brush my lips with Thy gentle beak
And bring me to the crowds to speak,
But calm my breast, that I may be,
Most silent of the Three, like thee.
It is one of the best epigrams in the book for its ring composition (that is, beginning and ending with the same idea, ‘Most silent of the Three’), its compression, and its brevity; all of these work together to give this poem an epigrammatic feel. But the other 65 epigrams in the book are not to the same standard.
The main part of The Hundredfold is its dozen long poems, each about 200 lines. These are dramatic monologues, dialogues, or epistolary poems. All are in blank verse. As with the epigrams, some seem unremarkable, but a few of them make an impression. The strength of each of these poems lies in their imagination. They are all set in the first century AD and are spoken by major or minor characters from the New Testament. A theme throughout is how the person of Jesus of Nazareth has affected the speakers; these passages are often quite powerful.
‘The Centurion to his Woman’ is one of the stronger of the dramatic monologues. The Centurion speaks as a world-weary soldier at home with Greek philosophy and with a firm grasp of the long pagan past. He complains,
Can it be other after all these years?
Aren’t we aimed like arrows to our end?
One can see in the Greek pessimism of these lines that a certain historical imagination is among Esolen’s strengths. His love of story-telling, however, sometimes works contrary to the poet’s imperative to compress. Instead, he expatiates. Still, nice lines occasionally arise from the surface chatter:
We’ll let old Jordan roll to the Dead Sea,
Eating the silt of centuries, Jericho,
Jerusalem.
There is good characterisation, good historical imagination; but the lines rarely sing. For the most part, the verse seems that of someone who writes more comfortably in prose.
A successful monologue comes thirty pages later in ‘The Blacksmith to Saint Luke’. It begins with good nature poetry—one of Esolen’s strengths throughout the book—and achieves a sort of Shakespearean energy in lines such as
His lesson flared out of his person, as
A robe about the shoulders of a king.
Just as the Centurion gave us an idea of his rough trade, so the blacksmith characterises his work as
Mingled with curses, the music of the smith,
With drops of sweat hissing upon the slab.
There is a lot, indeed, throughout these pieces about the hardness of life. One gets the sense of the freshness and joy that news of a Redeemer brings.
It is a shame Esolen’s sense of humour is not more on show. It appears, however, in the dialogue ‘The Travelers to Emmaus’ in which the one says to the other,
Why we were walking from Jerusalem
Is still mysterious to me.
It’s a good question. Esolen knows his doctrine and his Bible well, and draws the mind back especially to the latter’s riches throughout the book. There are two more long poems, both epistles, worth mentioning. ‘Saint Paul to Gamaliel’ imagines the Apostle’s youth under the training of the great teacher. Although not greatly poetic, it has a few nice compounds, such as ‘Night-vault’ and ‘scar-tangle’. In another poem, Pilate writes to Emperor Claudius. Again the historical imagination is strong and well-informed: the governor complains for most of the letter of slanders made against him, something which strikes me as very Roman.
As one can tell from the foregoing, though, Esolen seems better suited to the demands of historical fiction or the short story than those of poetry. But he does know his limitations. He claims that his poetic offering here is but ‘a first salvo in the Christian reclamation of the land of imagination and song’. It is imaginative. But I am not sure, for all its metrical and rhyming skill, that this is the right direction for the reclamation—if a Christian reclamation of imagination or song is indeed possible, advisable, or even called for nowadays. Whatever the answer to those questions, is turning the clock back one-hundred years the way forward?
There is an irony here. In trying to save poetry from the ‘baleful’ effects of modernism, Esolen proves a point made by the modernists, namely that regular metres and rhymes do not necessarily produce poetry, any more than following a blueprint will necessarily produce great architecture.
But, for all this, it is a book with virtues. I just wish that the large amount of filler had been excluded. Often a little chapel is holier than a great Cathedral. Likewise here, for all its grand, superfluous architecture, The Hundredfold’s sweetest moment, late in the book, consists in this little Herbertian hymn, written to the hymn tune ‘Artavia’:
What can I give the Lord that is His own?
When I was empty, I was filled with pride;
I reckoned sand and called it diamond-stone;
My blind heart was my guide.
He touched my eyes and gave them life to see;
He swept my heart and decked it like a throne;
He spoke a word and made my glory flee,
To fill me with His own.
In Him to lose a treasure is to gain;
Contempt is glory and the cross is bliss.
My gift is but to beg that I remain
Forever only His.
C. R. Eager
Thank you for reading The Modena Review. I should add that this book is a bit old now, being from 2019, but it has been on the list since MR’s inception, so it was thought that late would be better than never. After the Summer, there should be one or two new writers offering thoughtful reviews in one or two new genres. And, all being well, the Autumn should see the launch of MR’s second column, Combray, which will be devoted to brief, affectionate essays on older books which lie, we hope, a bit off the old beaten track. I meanwhile have a very long list to get through.
July 11, 2023
2023 Jun-Jul. Rereading for AP.
2022 Nov. Friend gave me a copy!
* The introductory essay is an outstanding, lay primer on poetry in English. This book is a new candidate for next year's AP literature classes. Especially valuable for my own thinking is the section on the implied narrative of lyric.
* The first ten or twelve poems are rich: lovely and profound things with all kinds of (unfootnoted) resonances with Scripture (and the occasional reference to canonical Western literature). They have several times brought me to tears.
* 100 pages in, more tears.
* Finished, this book is a marvel. A good standard Christmas present for years to come. You don't have to know Dante's great poem to enjoy these modern lyrics and dramatic monologues; you do need to know the Bible, though. Plan to reread soon and consider for use in the classroom next year.
2022 Oct. Heard Esolen read one of the lyrics on a podcast and was brought to tears. Want to read this book soon.
2022 Nov. Friend gave me a copy!
* The introductory essay is an outstanding, lay primer on poetry in English. This book is a new candidate for next year's AP literature classes. Especially valuable for my own thinking is the section on the implied narrative of lyric.
* The first ten or twelve poems are rich: lovely and profound things with all kinds of (unfootnoted) resonances with Scripture (and the occasional reference to canonical Western literature). They have several times brought me to tears.
* 100 pages in, more tears.
* Finished, this book is a marvel. A good standard Christmas present for years to come. You don't have to know Dante's great poem to enjoy these modern lyrics and dramatic monologues; you do need to know the Bible, though. Plan to reread soon and consider for use in the classroom next year.
2022 Oct. Heard Esolen read one of the lyrics on a podcast and was brought to tears. Want to read this book soon.
August 31, 2020
I mostly want to give Dr. Esolen a hug and say, "Come to the Lutherans. You will find so much joy and comfort and purpose in your baptism, and then you will write poetry for the ages."
That's not to say the poetry is not very good in this book, it's excellent. Though I would probably not put words in other people's mouths, especially when we already have their inspired, Christocentric words already recorded for us in Scripture (coughing... Magnificat).
Between the discussion on the elements of poetry and the many examples throughout, this book could be a textbook on how to read, appreciate, and write poetry. I intend to use it as such.
That's not to say the poetry is not very good in this book, it's excellent. Though I would probably not put words in other people's mouths, especially when we already have their inspired, Christocentric words already recorded for us in Scripture (coughing... Magnificat).
Between the discussion on the elements of poetry and the many examples throughout, this book could be a textbook on how to read, appreciate, and write poetry. I intend to use it as such.
September 5, 2020
"One of my greatest objections to what passes for sacred music in Christian churches these days is the severe constriction of mood: the songs at their best and most innocent are fit for happy children clapping their hands in a kindergarten jingle. At their worst they are sickly sweet songs of self-celebration for sinners not desiring reform or the terrible soul-cleaving power of love; or they are political slogans, as ephemeral as last week's newspaper, though not so good for lining a bird cage. They are gold stars and cheap glitter, a smiley face pasted on a blank forehead, ditties to Nobody Threatening in the sky. …what I find missing in praise 'n worship ditties. It is the settled and habitual misery of sin, and the pain of the caustic curative that the Lord will apply- which I am begging him to apply."
-Anthony Esolen, Introduction to The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord, pg. 44,45
On pg. 152, #35 "I saw Satan fall like lightening" Esolen captures with clarifying realism the political significance of Jesus' death and resurrection, and that is that all the pride and arrogance and bloatedness of the political ruling classes are pierced through and exposed for what they are in the light of eternity. "It was Rome, / Not Jesus, that lay buried in the tomb."
From "The Travelers to Emmaus"
"ANDROMACHUS
And His blood trickled down and soaked the earth.
I saw the spreading stain.
IRENAEUS
And so it was
When all that day He stabbed us to the heart,
And the truth spread and stained us as His own. "
This seems to me an effective use of imagery and metaphor. The truth and Christ's blood on the cross merge and Christ insinuates, ingratiates, pierces, marks us. Precious mark!
Esolen captures joy and intimations of the goodness of heaven in a number of places. It was once remarked, as I vaguely recall, that Tolstoy was the last to capture human happiness in his novel Family Happiness, that may just indicate the lack of broad enough reading of contemporary novels by the one making the remark. But regardless, it is safe to say that it is difficult to capture in an imaginative work happiness and joy. One place where Esolen imaginatively does this is in #43 "Christ is the image of the invisible God" (pg. 178). I like the beginning "At the ninth height of being, eyes are bright / With what is now, what was, what is to be" and how he describe the Triune God as "the intimate wellspring where the blessed are" at the end.
It seems to me Christians today generally do not discuss heaven or hell and rarely allude to them. Their existence is taken as established doctrine by the orthodox Christian, but as for an imaginative correspondence with these doctrines, where is it? There are some exceptions, of course. Some one might cite to me the Christian pop song "I Can Only Imagine" and the film based on it. Nevertheless, our imaginative grasp seems self limited as well as existentially limited. By existentially limited, I mean part of the mere fact of our condition. Our situation, of course, makes our grasp of these doctrines limited even with our imagination employed in full. (I consciously am sloughing off the Enlightenment suspicion of the imagination as wrong-headed.) It is as if our imaginations are stewarded by the larger, secular liberal or neo-liberal culture and we are effectively told which doctrines we might activate and which we had better leave alone.
But besides capturing joy, Esolen profoundly captures both worldly cynicism and the nature of our condition with a sobering, soldierly grit. Now here is a sober realism:
“...Man is the only beast on earth that laughs
And is not joyful, who would be content
To live forever and watch his neighbor die,
Who shovels dirt over his dearest sin
As if it would sprout up a sudden rose,
Or lie untouched, untended, unrepented...”
-from “The Demoniac from Gadara” in The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord, pg. 149, by Anthony Esolen
"…Cull out those stones the builders would condemn,
Fashion a home, a room of orison,
A bench for bread and wine, and build from them
The life in love that is Jerusalem."
Thanks be to God that He uses rejects and failures to build His splendid, everlasting kingdom. My desire is that I be a home, a room of orison, for Love, and so not some penurious purist who disdains the unwashed.
"Blessed be God for bodies and their truth:
For children toddling on adventurous feet,
For girls lilting of accent, pertly sweet,
And cowlicked boys sprouting in limbs and youth;
For innocent eyes and cheeks that blush with fear,
For the early down of manhood on the chin,
For soft womanly ways of grace that win
The stoutest heart to cherish and revere;
Father and mother grown like vine and vine
Inseparable, yet in their holy song
We will discern the bass profound and strong
Building the house his lovelier half makes fine
With high and glorious beauties. Those belong
To the two ways that God made man divine."
P. 195-96
Esolen has a robust sense of the goodness of the sexes which serves as a kind of healing balm in this time when all one hears is the crowing of cant in the public square about sexes deracinated for the sake of an abstract equity. The poor training of the imagination to grasp the beauty God has created in the interplay of the sexes and in their separate, uniting perfections leaves a vacuum that is filled instead with an epidemic of porn and other such perfidy.
"…Let us return
To the sweet things of nature, even our own,
And love them well, and condescend to learn
From what is bread and chiseled in the bone,
Lest we collapse into the mists of mind
Surely not undefiled, yet undefined."
-p.206, from #60
"…it needs more than a life to understand
What I knew in the seed at seven years old,
Although the terms were not at my command…
…I should have fed on milk and honey, till
I grew to be a warrior for Christ,
His bread my rations, and His fasts my drill…
…And if, my Savior, I now seek Thy face,
After these years of lassitude and pride,
It is all ever and only by Thy grace…
…The old recruit must swing the sword, not yield,
For should he be cut down like a dead tree,
The red heart of his love shall be revealed;
And he shall gain his dearest hope, to see,
No longer in a glass or symbol, those
Three Persons in substantial Unity…"
Pgs 221, 222,223
Esolen completes his series of poems and hymns spanning the Old and New Testaments with a poem referring to his own life. I find his words breath hope and rouse to keep fighting to the end.
Esolen in a way seems to me to embody a truer "environmentalism", a closer appreciative unity with God's whole creation.
Esolen's ending poem in which he himself speaks is similar in its confession to Seamus Heaney's in his Purgatorio in 'Station Island' where he writes,
And I cried among night waters, 'I repent
My unweaned life that kept me competent
To sleepwalk with connivance and mistrust.'
-Anthony Esolen, Introduction to The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord, pg. 44,45
On pg. 152, #35 "I saw Satan fall like lightening" Esolen captures with clarifying realism the political significance of Jesus' death and resurrection, and that is that all the pride and arrogance and bloatedness of the political ruling classes are pierced through and exposed for what they are in the light of eternity. "It was Rome, / Not Jesus, that lay buried in the tomb."
From "The Travelers to Emmaus"
"ANDROMACHUS
And His blood trickled down and soaked the earth.
I saw the spreading stain.
IRENAEUS
And so it was
When all that day He stabbed us to the heart,
And the truth spread and stained us as His own. "
This seems to me an effective use of imagery and metaphor. The truth and Christ's blood on the cross merge and Christ insinuates, ingratiates, pierces, marks us. Precious mark!
Esolen captures joy and intimations of the goodness of heaven in a number of places. It was once remarked, as I vaguely recall, that Tolstoy was the last to capture human happiness in his novel Family Happiness, that may just indicate the lack of broad enough reading of contemporary novels by the one making the remark. But regardless, it is safe to say that it is difficult to capture in an imaginative work happiness and joy. One place where Esolen imaginatively does this is in #43 "Christ is the image of the invisible God" (pg. 178). I like the beginning "At the ninth height of being, eyes are bright / With what is now, what was, what is to be" and how he describe the Triune God as "the intimate wellspring where the blessed are" at the end.
It seems to me Christians today generally do not discuss heaven or hell and rarely allude to them. Their existence is taken as established doctrine by the orthodox Christian, but as for an imaginative correspondence with these doctrines, where is it? There are some exceptions, of course. Some one might cite to me the Christian pop song "I Can Only Imagine" and the film based on it. Nevertheless, our imaginative grasp seems self limited as well as existentially limited. By existentially limited, I mean part of the mere fact of our condition. Our situation, of course, makes our grasp of these doctrines limited even with our imagination employed in full. (I consciously am sloughing off the Enlightenment suspicion of the imagination as wrong-headed.) It is as if our imaginations are stewarded by the larger, secular liberal or neo-liberal culture and we are effectively told which doctrines we might activate and which we had better leave alone.
But besides capturing joy, Esolen profoundly captures both worldly cynicism and the nature of our condition with a sobering, soldierly grit. Now here is a sober realism:
“...Man is the only beast on earth that laughs
And is not joyful, who would be content
To live forever and watch his neighbor die,
Who shovels dirt over his dearest sin
As if it would sprout up a sudden rose,
Or lie untouched, untended, unrepented...”
-from “The Demoniac from Gadara” in The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord, pg. 149, by Anthony Esolen
"…Cull out those stones the builders would condemn,
Fashion a home, a room of orison,
A bench for bread and wine, and build from them
The life in love that is Jerusalem."
Thanks be to God that He uses rejects and failures to build His splendid, everlasting kingdom. My desire is that I be a home, a room of orison, for Love, and so not some penurious purist who disdains the unwashed.
"Blessed be God for bodies and their truth:
For children toddling on adventurous feet,
For girls lilting of accent, pertly sweet,
And cowlicked boys sprouting in limbs and youth;
For innocent eyes and cheeks that blush with fear,
For the early down of manhood on the chin,
For soft womanly ways of grace that win
The stoutest heart to cherish and revere;
Father and mother grown like vine and vine
Inseparable, yet in their holy song
We will discern the bass profound and strong
Building the house his lovelier half makes fine
With high and glorious beauties. Those belong
To the two ways that God made man divine."
P. 195-96
Esolen has a robust sense of the goodness of the sexes which serves as a kind of healing balm in this time when all one hears is the crowing of cant in the public square about sexes deracinated for the sake of an abstract equity. The poor training of the imagination to grasp the beauty God has created in the interplay of the sexes and in their separate, uniting perfections leaves a vacuum that is filled instead with an epidemic of porn and other such perfidy.
"…Let us return
To the sweet things of nature, even our own,
And love them well, and condescend to learn
From what is bread and chiseled in the bone,
Lest we collapse into the mists of mind
Surely not undefiled, yet undefined."
-p.206, from #60
"…it needs more than a life to understand
What I knew in the seed at seven years old,
Although the terms were not at my command…
…I should have fed on milk and honey, till
I grew to be a warrior for Christ,
His bread my rations, and His fasts my drill…
…And if, my Savior, I now seek Thy face,
After these years of lassitude and pride,
It is all ever and only by Thy grace…
…The old recruit must swing the sword, not yield,
For should he be cut down like a dead tree,
The red heart of his love shall be revealed;
And he shall gain his dearest hope, to see,
No longer in a glass or symbol, those
Three Persons in substantial Unity…"
Pgs 221, 222,223
Esolen completes his series of poems and hymns spanning the Old and New Testaments with a poem referring to his own life. I find his words breath hope and rouse to keep fighting to the end.
Esolen in a way seems to me to embody a truer "environmentalism", a closer appreciative unity with God's whole creation.
Esolen's ending poem in which he himself speaks is similar in its confession to Seamus Heaney's in his Purgatorio in 'Station Island' where he writes,
And I cried among night waters, 'I repent
My unweaned life that kept me competent
To sleepwalk with connivance and mistrust.'
September 9, 2025
Probably could’ve used some tighter editing, but this is one of the best books of poetry I’ve ever read. So rich I felt like I could only read a couple pages per sitting. Cried a couple times, 10/10
“How long was Jesus walking on the road
While the disciples spoke of cross and tomb?
Where was the keeper of that wayside home When Jesus sat at table, blessed the food, And showed Himself in breaking of the bread?
Why are our bearings always wrenched aslant
When wonders spill afresh out of the font Of God's pure being? Let us mend our stride, Turn to the Healer, and attend: for they Who shut their eyes shall never find the day”
“How long was Jesus walking on the road
While the disciples spoke of cross and tomb?
Where was the keeper of that wayside home When Jesus sat at table, blessed the food, And showed Himself in breaking of the bread?
Why are our bearings always wrenched aslant
When wonders spill afresh out of the font Of God's pure being? Let us mend our stride, Turn to the Healer, and attend: for they Who shut their eyes shall never find the day”
November 3, 2025
I like the skill, the forms, and the sincere passion, but by the end my very different worldview made it hard to appreciate it all. I could follow the pattern but it didn’t enhance my understanding. It’s very Catholic.
March 30, 2022
The introduction to the book is worth the cost of the book as it explains poetry in ways I've never read before. The book provides excellent songs and poems for meditation as well as offering a fresh perspective from some of the most familiar scenes in Scripture. Wonderful!
May 19, 2023
poetry is not for me
What I learned in reading this is that poetry is no more appealing to me now that I’m an old man than it was when I was young.
What I learned in reading this is that poetry is no more appealing to me now that I’m an old man than it was when I was young.
September 8, 2025
Nice to engage the poetic again...if anyone has vetted good books of poetry, please let me know
March 27, 2020
This isn't quite the kind of book that one reads cover-to-cover, and I've already re-read decent chunks of it. The Hundredfold is Esolen's love song both to the Son of God and also classic poetry. The first 40-50 pages are purely "introduction", explaining the method and history of verse, how it is to be understood, and the value of poetry as an art. Safe to say that, while mildly interesting, this didn't really stimulate me a whole lot, as I'm not generally one for classic literature or most poetry.
Esolen's original verse itself, however, is quite good. The book's format is a staggering of longer sections of verse (multiple page, 100+ line poems) intermingled with short 8-32 line poems and original hymns set to classic melodies. There are about 60 short poems and something like 15-20 hymns, which are certainly my favorite element of the book - I've made a point to sing most of them to their melodies, and find many of them to be just as or more beautiful than the classic lyrics.
While I'm not a poetry fan by any stretch of the imagination, I will certainly reference this ongoing, and the book is an interesting look at what Esolen has taken away from his studies of classic literature, and what he'll do with that knowledge in his free time.
Esolen's original verse itself, however, is quite good. The book's format is a staggering of longer sections of verse (multiple page, 100+ line poems) intermingled with short 8-32 line poems and original hymns set to classic melodies. There are about 60 short poems and something like 15-20 hymns, which are certainly my favorite element of the book - I've made a point to sing most of them to their melodies, and find many of them to be just as or more beautiful than the classic lyrics.
While I'm not a poetry fan by any stretch of the imagination, I will certainly reference this ongoing, and the book is an interesting look at what Esolen has taken away from his studies of classic literature, and what he'll do with that knowledge in his free time.
January 12, 2021
What a remarkable book of Christian poetry. Challenging, beautiful and Biblical, Esolen's poetry brought well-worn Scripture stories to life in ways that surprised me. I very much look forward to returning these poems again and again over the years.
May 3, 2024
A stunning collection of lyrics, monologues, and hymn texts. Each entry has depth that merits repeated reading and chewing over in thought. Great catalysts to prayer and reflection.
2024: Amazing, really enjoyable a second time
2024: Amazing, really enjoyable a second time
January 24, 2021
Profoundly beautiful poetry from a master at his craft.
Heartachingly good.
Heartachingly good.
January 25, 2021
Love, love, love this volume of poetry. Anthony Esolen has given the world a gift in this collection of beauty and genius.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews