The Rhymes and Reasons of James Sale:

A Review of DoorWay, Vol. 3 of the English Cantos by Theresa Werba

I have had the honor and pleasure of knowing James Sale as a poetic colleague and ofttimes mentor for many years. I asked him once why he chooses to use imperfect rhymes in his poetry, because I had been under the impression that as formal poets we are never, ever to do it, and that is isn’t following the rules of formal poetry to do it. His response was “There simply are not enough rhyming options in the English language, unlike Italian, which is full of options.” At first I was uncomfortable with the seeming license he was taking in this what I perceived to be a sacrosanct element of formal poetry. How does he get away with that? Is that really allowed? When I first started reading his trilogy The English Cantos, this was really getting to me. It caused me to look constantly at the rhymes, to the detriment of my ability to read the actual poetry.

But I have come to realize what James Sale is doing with rhyming in his poetry is anything but a lack of discipline, or skill, or oversight : it is liberation, innovation, and re-creation. James Sale is not using “lazy rhyme;” he is deliberately, carefully stretching the boundaries of what is acceptable rhyming convention in English formal poetry. He uses his slant rhymes, half rhymes, near rhymes, assonant rhymes, consonant rhymes, light rhymes, and syllabic rhymes with abandon. With joy. With freedom. Lavishly. He is demonstrating that our language is a language that by default doesn’t always perfectly rhyme— but when you get close, it can be as beautiful, and powerful, and in many instances, more effective than a perfect rhyme can ever be. I have come to appreciate his poetic moxie, his brazen iconoclasm, his stretching of the normative, his ingenuity. Whereas I was once rather religious in my approach to rhymes, I now see in James Sale’s work how imperfect rhymes can be effective and of great beauty, and how he does not stray into the realm of formal poetic heresy. It is providing us with another way to look at English rhyming in poetry. It also provides an intentional alternative to the “predictability” inherent in perfect rhyme.

DoorWay is the third volume of the English Cantos trilogy. James Sale recounts his battle with cancer and descent into hell (HellWard, Vol. 1), his visit to purgatory (StairWell, Vol.2) and his ascent into heaven (DoorWay, Vol. 3). Jospeh Salemi aptly describes the trilogy as a “medieval dream vision,” and throughout the entire work we encounter unusual, mystic, human, emotional, spiritual, and metaphysical realities. In DoorWay James Sale moves through the celestial constellations as he meets loved ones and poets (including, of course, Dante) and ultimately encounters God Himself. He combines mythology, astrology, and Christianity into a syncretic expression of the ultimate spiritual experience.

James Sale has written all three volumes of The English Cantos in terza rima form. This form consists of three-line stanzas, with groups of three rhymes alternating in a chain-like, interlocking pattern (aba bcb cdc). Whereas with a sonnet, you need only find one rhymed pair per quatrain (in the Shakespearean or Spencerian forms) or per octet and most sestets (in the Petrarchan form), with terza rima you need three rhymes per two tercet sets. The option to employ imperfect rhyming opens many unexploited poetic possibilities for rhyming in this challenging form.

Consider this set of tercets, from Canto 4 (“Detour to Taurus”):

“In turning then, to glance at what I’d see

Making disturbance so, and seeing, froze:

I saw its wings beating effortlessly;

Yet as they did flesh shifted, changed its clothes,

Me glimpsing glimmerings of some star’s right

To be to which it must metamorphose:”

We have a delightful use of the word “metamorphose” as the rhyme to “froze” and “clothes”, yet it is a near-perfect rhyme. Compare this with the following imperfect rhymes in Canto 2 (“St. Dismas Speaks”):

“Reminding me before I made my flit

Upwards, one action more to do, be sung:

Even to contemplate, my soul was lit.

‘Hail!’ and I turned, and saw the women’s tongues

Like flames of fire ascending to the heights,

All nine, and one apart, more lovely, strong,”

Here we have the addition of “s” to “tongues” to rhyme with “sung” (some poets do this as a matter of course and do not consider this a form of imperfect rhyme, though I normally would), but then we have “strong” as a consonant rhyme to “sung” (where the final consonant rhymes but the preceding vowel is different). Contrast with the assonant rhymes in the following two tercets (Canto 1, “St. Dismas speaks”):

“So heavy that, despite Nenya which saves,

My knees buckled and lungs collapsed like shelves;

Yet for all that: epic faces, and braves:

‘Hail! Hail! Great Muse, Calliope herself!

Visit me now and with your beauty let

Me soar where you taught John those secret spells;”

Here we have “shelves”, “herself”, and spells”, which all have the same vowel, but the ending consonants are different.

An example of eye rhyme further illustrates expanded rhyming possibilities (Canto 2, “Family Scales”):

“Such runes as testify His glory’s due;

Though meshed in flesh, embedded in deep mud

As you are; yet for all your filth accrued,

Still chosen because His Will produces good

Despite unworthy vessels of His grace.

You know (I know!) and sing about His blood.’”

Here we have “mud” “good” and “blood”, and I have seen “good” and “blood” rhymed in Elizabethan poetry when I am pretty sure the words did actually rhyme, but we keep them as eye rhyme nowadays.

A particularly interesting use of imperfect rhyme is found in Canto 2 (“Family Scales”):

“So high, and first equal of those God made.

Like twins they were, the one called Lucifer

Who fell to where no light is, no words prayed—

His balance lost and righteousness tipped over—

So that in the midway of highest heaven

Michael held firm to prove ultimate victor.”

I found this set of rhymes particularly interesting because I never thought to see Lucifer get his own rhyme! I also see that this is an actual perfect rhyme, because the schwa sound at the end of “Lucifer”, “over” and “victor” are the same sound, though spelled differently. So an eye rhyme of a different sort!

I approached reading DoorWay with the idea to listen to the rhymes in my head with a different place in the ear than what I am used to utilizing. I now think of James Sale’s poetry more as the way I might listen to a song, where imperfect rhymes are perfectly acceptable. Then it becomes more of an ornament to the pulses and rhythms and phraseology and storyline. I alertly relax, and enjoy the ride.

Not only did James Sale cause me to reconsider how to rhyme a poem, but he has filled me with wonder at some of the most inventive use of language I have ever read in poetry! Consider the following various lines:

“One hullabaloo, hubbub of joyous cries,”

“Some hypnagogic state holds one in lieu—“

“No sagging, sickly sorrows plaguing flesh,”

“My lips ablaze—cremating all my lies;”

“Linear, pillar-like of hot blue steam,”

“Behind, her hinds who fed on trefoil’s leaves

Whose trifurcation tallied being blessed”

I have enjoyed every one of these poetic gems of language, and DoorWay is replete with them.

Another fine feature of DoorWay are the excellent annotations by fellow poet and literary critic Andrew Benson Brown, who provides supplemental information and insight throughout the work. The Kindle version makes accessing the annotations very easy, and you do not lose your place as you are reading!

I started as a wary member of the School of The Perfect Rhyme At All Cost, but James Sale has made me a convert to the School of Rhyming Possibilities. In my own poetry going forward I hope to be more open to the sounds and variables inherent in imperfect rhyme. I recommend DoorWay, and the entire English Cantos, as an impressive and satisfying reading experience, a work of technical skill and artistic achievement, a masterpiece for the ages.

Theresa Werba (formerly Theresa Rodriguez) is the author of eight books, four in poetry, including What Was and Is: Formal Poetry and Free Verse (Bardsinger Books, 2024) and Sonnets, a collection of 65 sonnets (Shanti Arts, 2020). Her work has appeared in such journals as The Scarlet Leaf Review, The Wilderness House Literary Review, Spindrift, Mezzo Cammin, The Wombwell Rainbow, Fevers of the Mind, The Art of Autism, Serotonin, The Road Not Taken, and the Society of Classical Poets Journal. Her work ranges from forms such as the ode and sonnet to free verse, with topics ranging from neurodivergence, love, loss, aging, to faith and disillusionment and more. She also has written on autism, adoption and abuse/domestic violence. Find Theresa Werba at www.theresawerba.com and on social media @thesonnetqueen.

An introduction to DoorWay

by Professor Joseph S. Salemi

The third part of James Sale’s Dantean trilogy now joins HellWard and StairWell. DoorWay completes a psychological and spiritual journey that can be read as the poet-pilgrim’s intense pain and introspection during a life-threatening illness, or as a complex philosophical discourse on his own life and hopes and sins, modeled on the structure of the Divine Comedy. In fact it is both these things: a deeply personal remembrance of people, events, and knowledge gained, and a strikingly impersonal commentary on how one’s man’s private existence can be understood in a framework that reaches far beyond himself.

What is below is inextricably connected with what is above, and finite acts have infinite implications. Those are the two great lessons of the Divine Comedy, and Sale has learned them well. They are especially important in this final section of the trilogy, which parallels Dante’s Paradiso. In Canto 9 (the last in this DoorWay section), I came across a tercet that encapsulates this truth:

I saw the universe—and in a box

That I could see right through, all contained

As it were matches a stationer stocked!

To put it more prosaically, that which we might consider local and ordinary and parochial and insignificant is part of a massively larger whole—the universe and its governance—and has a meaning that may not be visible to us in our daily lives. And just as Dante’s journey to the world beyond the grave was prompted by a “dark night of the soul,” so also was Sale’s composition of this complex trilogy sparked by his close call with death many years ago, and how that incident was the impetus for a totally new outlook on life and its meaning.

Like HellWard and StairWell, this final section DoorWay is a sometimes bewildering kaleidoscope of knowledge and intricate details. Reading DoorWay is like being sucked into a whirlpool, or the furious windstorm that sweeps Paolo and Francesca da Rimini in Canto V of the Inferno. One cannot fight or resist it—one must simply read on, just as the poet-pilgrim must proceed in his journey to whatever celestial reward awaits him. The task is difficult, but so is life, and so is the path to salvation.

The seriousness of this journey is beyond debate, and therefore it cannot be described without the wide array of references that Sale provides: biblical, literary, historical, and of course familial, in the case of his own personal life and relationships. Just as Dante has Beatrice, the poet-pilgrim in DoorWay has Linda (his beloved wife), and Butterfly (a lost son). Relatives, personal friends, acquaintances, and teachers are present. And they are placed within a framework of meaning that is much wider than what can be recorded of their temporary life on earth. Sale speaks of persons and events from a given time and place, but never forgets to understand them as reflections of an eternity that goes beyond time andplace. And sometimes the persons remembered and met are historical, such as Doctor Johnson, or Gerard Manley Hopkins, or Dante himself. One cannot help thinking of the Divine Comedy, where Dante encounters not just contemporary persons he knew in Italy, but also figures from the distant past.

This is why constellations and zodiac signs play such an important role in the way Sale arranges the Cantos in this work. It is one thing to live a human life, or to lie in a sickbed, or to be married and have children, or to do any of the sublunary things that are part and parcel of our earthly existence. But if they are to have permanent meaning, they must be understood as connected to a realm of existence that transcends ours totally, beyond space and time. Such an understanding can be religious, or philosophical, or mystical, but whatever it is it must be as changeless as the stars. Yes, of course the stars change in their movement, and sometimes new stars are born. But within the normal time-frame of a human life, they are for all practical purposes immutable. And what is immutable is a reflection of the divine. What did Augustine say? Nil nisi divinum stabile est, caetera fumus.

Stars are important in DoorWay: Libra, Taurus, Cancer, the Archer, Aquarius, Canis Major, and the Virgin all mark off individual Cantos, not just as title headings but also as significant elements in understanding where the poet-pilgrim is and what he must endure. For example, in Canto 3 called “Constellation of the Virgin,” Sale mentions the classical Proserpina, the biblical Eve, one of his aunts named Eve, his wife Linda, and Doctor Johnson’s wife Tetty, and all of them are carefully woven into the texture of his narration.

There is a great deal of emotion in DoorWay, in that the poet-pilgrim experiences grief, terror, deep remorse, fear, doubt, uncertainty, and finally immense joy and love. These are not the meaningless emotions of some aimless individual swept up by every passing fancy or concern. They are emotions rooted in hard and difficult questions about human responsibility, about life and death, and about the narrator’s own worthiness for reward in the light of his failings and mistakes. These failings and mistakes are not described as violations of some abstract code of ethics, or some sectarian catechism of rules. They are incidents or events that strike him as occasions where he acted in a fashion less in tune with his better nature, and for which he feels regret and sorrow. In this sense Sale is unlike Dante, whose morality was highly circumscribed by dogmatic concerns. Sale’s words are much more psychological, more introspective, and more a reflection of modern uncertainties. But then again, Dante’s situation was different. He walked through Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso as a living man, protected by a divine passport. Sale’s poet-pilgrim is on a journey that is of the deepest importance to him as he dangles between survival and death.

I could call the scope of Sale’s work “epic,” but it is not really in that category. It is more on the order of the medieval dream vision, wherein the narrator of the material functions as the central voice of perception, commentary, and emotional intensity. The best medieval poems in this genre can be religious, like The Pearl, or secular, like Roman de la Rose, or even satirical, like Skelton’s The Bowge of Court. Their great advantage, in any case, is that they give the poet the license to expand his vision beyond the visible world and to connect human existence to an imagined sphere which can provide an escape from mundane problems, or give some crucial answers as to why those problems exist, and what they really mean in the larger scheme of things.

HellWard, StairWell, and this concluding text DoorWay are works of major significance. In a sane world they would earn great critical attention and garner much praise as a contribution to Western literature and perceptions. Religiously, psychologically, philosophically, and aesthetically they are developments rooted in the Divine Comedy, and for this reason alone are part of an inherited cultural tradition. It is to be hoped that even if James Sale’s work finds few readers today, his trilogy will remain an accomplishment for all time.

—Professor Joseph S. Salemi

Joseph S. Salemi: Poet Biography and Poems

A Meeting of Minds and Mediums

The Wider Circle: A Fusion of Poetry, Art, and Music at Upton House

This June, The Gallery Upstairs at Upton Country Park at Poole in Dorset UK will host a groundbreaking exhibition that merges poetry, visual art, and music into a singular, immersive experience. Running from June 5th to 16th, 2025, the exhibition is a collaboration between The Wider Circle, a collective of accomplished artists, and renowned Bournemouth poet James Sale. Their work is inspired by Sale’s latest book of poetry, DoorWay—a modern reinterpretation of Dante’s vision of heaven.

A Meeting of Minds and Mediums

The Wider Circle brings together a diverse group of artists who have each responded to DoorWay in their own unique style. The collective includes poet James Sale, multimedia artist Angela Perrett, calligraphy artist Judith Warbey, mixed media artist Linda E Sale, digital artist Mark Burden, and composer Antonino Chiaramonte. Each artist has created new work that not only reflects but also expands upon the themes found in Sale’s poetry, promising a visually and intellectually rich exhibition.

James Sale’s DoorWay is the third installment in his English Cantos collection and follows Dante’s traditional terza rima structure. Rooted in both classical poetry and personal experience—particularly Sale’s near-death encounter in Ward 17 of Bournemouth General—the book offers a profound meditation on life, transcendence, and artistic vision. Excerpts from DoorWay will be featured in the exhibition, allowing visitors to engage with the poetry alongside the art it has inspired.

Artistic Interpretations of DoorWay

Each artist in The Wider Circle has approached DoorWay with their own creative lens, resulting in an eclectic mix of styles and mediums.

Angela Perrett presents an evocative collection of glass, clay, and oil paintings that capture the emotional depth of DoorWay. “The fluidity of glass allows for unexpected developments, while the layering of oil paint mirrors the struggle and awe of the journey,” she explains.
Judith Warbey, a descendant of Victorian artist Walter Tyndale, has crafted a contemporary calligraphic interpretations of DoorWay, with sections meticulously bound and presented in unique, symbolic ways.
Mark Burden takes a digital approach, distilling each canto into a single, jewel-like composition that encapsulates the essence of the poetry in a visually striking form.
Linda E Sale, who also designed the cover art for DoorWay, uses mixed media on paper, canvas, and wood to convey the emotional and spiritual themes woven through the poetry. “The exhibition is unique,” she says, “because each artist is presenting standalone works while also maintaining a common thread through DoorWay.”
Antonino Chiaramonte contributes a musical dimension to the project, composing an original score inspired by DoorWay. His compositions are featured in the Audible versions of the books offering a multi-sensory experience.

A Celebration of Creativity and Interpretation

Visitors to the exhibition will not only have the opportunity to admire the artwork but also witness live interpretations during the private view event. This includes poetry readings by James Sale with music and sound, bringing an added depth to the fusion of artistic disciplines on display.

As Linda E Sale notes, “We hope visitors will develop a new appreciation of Dante’s work through this exhibition. It pays homage to Dante while also treading fresh ground.”

For those eager to delve into a world where literature, fine art, and music intertwine, The Wider Circle’s exhibition at Upton House is not to be missed.

Event Details

Dates: June 5th – 16th, 2025
Location: The Gallery Upstairs, Upton Country Park, Poole BH17 7BJ\
Opening Hours: 10:00 – 16:30 daily
Follow for Updates: Facebook & Instagram

https://www.facebook.com/thewidercircleexhibition

https://www.instagram.com/thewidercircle

Step through the DoorWay and experience art in an entirely new light.

Halloween Book Launch: HellWard Revisited

The English Cantos are a three-volume series that has taken exactly 7 years to write and may take another 7 years to fully take to market! In order, the three volumes are HellWard, StairWell, and DoorWay. They correspond to Dante’s The Divine Comedy and his 3-fold division into Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso. Like Dante’s poem, this is an epic poem too and it uses the terza rima stanzaic form that Dante perfected. One important difference is that although Dante’s work has 100 Cantos, The English Cantos comprise only 33: 33, of course, being a number still in honour of Dante, since each of his volumes had 33 cantos (and an extra introductory one in the first sequence). That said, The English Cantos is not one-third of the length of the Dante work: the Divine Comedy is 14,233 lines long, whereas The English Cantos has 9846 lines (so approximately 69% as long). In other words, The English Cantos is a substantial body, and actually more like the typical length of an epic, which the American critic, Andrew Benson Brown, established as about 10,000 lines.

But whilst the writing of the poetry of DoorWay has just been completed, its editing, line numbering and Notes have not. And this lead on to explaining some of the reasons why it may take another 7 years to bring the full body of work to market. The original edition of HellWard had no explanatory notes to help the reader; but StairWell did, and these were widely welcomed. As one American reader said, paraphrasing, ‘I get the sense of what is being said, but I love being able to follow up on some obscurity – to me – that the poet then explicates.’ In these circumstances, then, it seemed advisable to add Notes to the HellWard edition. So, the new HellWard Revisited is doing precisely that.

At the same time, the text is being scanned for errors, one of the 4 artists, Judy Warbey, who contributed to the exhibitions of the work over the last few years has also contributed art for each of the 12 Cantos; the artwork for the cover, by Linda E Sale, has been expanded; and to add even more value, the book is being issued in hardback. Really, then, this is a collector’s piece and all that is missing is the signature of the poet!

So, returning to DoorWay, they too need Notes, and it’s a strange but perhaps not entirely unexpected thing that the higher one goes, the more Notes one needs! Don’t get me wrong. I think readers will find DoorWay the best of the three volumes. Surprisingly, though I say it myself, despite being in Heaven (Paradiso) the action and the tension doesn’t let up; but in order to convey that level of excitement and engagement, I have had to ransack all the greatest Greek myths and Bible stories. There are plenty of Notes, then, to tell you about all this sort of stuff as well as the more arcane and personal references that litter the text, although reading, you will be able to understand the poem without them.

However, there is more to tell. HellWard has its Audible version out; and the recording of StairWell is close to being finished – the voice recordings are done, and now only we await the wonderful musical composition by Professor Antonino Chiaramonte that will preface each Canto, as he did so brilliantly in HellWard. The labour of the Audible version of DoorWay will have to wait till 2025.

And if 2025 seems a long time, then 2026 is even longer: for we are now working on, with various associates, a film version of the HellWard/StairWell texts. We anticipate the film to be released some time in 2026, but there is clearly a lot of work to do.

If you take all this on board, along with more re-issues (or revisits, or what I might call deluxe versions: not forgetting that my son, Joseph Sale, is not only a fabulous writer himself but also an expert at bookbindery!) of the various volumes to include more artists’ work and more special features, then you can see that we project a long lead-in time before all this is settled. Hopefully, at that point, the poem will become the classic that your support has helped make it become! Thank you.

The special edition of HellWard: Revisited is coming out October 31st, 2024.

PRE-ORDER HERE

StairWell reviewed by Profiles in Catholicism

Hello.

StairWell has been reviewed over at Profiles in Catholicism by the wonderful scholar Francis Etheredge. It’s a fantastic review that performs an incisive examination of the poem from the standpoint of Scripture and Dante Alighieri’s original masterpiece, The Divine Comedy. It makes for fascinating reading, as this extract demonstrates:

“C. S. Lewis says vividly: ‘“To enter heaven is to become more human than you ever succeeded in being on earth; to enter hell is to be banished from humanity. What is cast (or casts itself) into hell is not a man: it is ‘remains’”[x].

In Dante’s work, ‘Each sin’s punishment in Inferno is a contrapasso, a symbolic instance of poetic justice; for example, in Canto XX, fortune-tellers and soothsayers must walk with their heads on backwards, unable to see what is ahead, because that was what they had tried to do in life: and since he wanted so to see ahead he looks behind and walks a backward path’[xi].

However true that maybe of a sinner suffering in Dante’s Inferno, and I seem to recall that there was a definite influence on Sale in his first Canto, HellWard, what that account demonstrates, as it were, is the “logic” of hell as a permanent state of repudiation: of that terrible despair of ever loving or being loved that those who have irrevocably rejected forgiving or being forgiven experience in that they are “trapped in their sin”.”

Read the full review.

The New James Sale Poetry Newsletter

Recently, I decided to produce a brief and monthly newsletter, so I’d better explain why and what!

I wanted to do this because I became aware over a 50 year+ involvement in poetry, poetry education, and poetry theory, I had amassed, quite literally, a lifetime’s body of work, ideas, and experience that others might find useful, inspirational and even transformative. Hence, the need to develop some outlet for it. This is the why.

But on the other hand, what? Here the word ‘brief’ and ‘monthly’ come in. Clearly, people do not wish to be overloaded with everything that is in one’s cupboard. Such material needs to carefully curated and released; as well as that, one needs to be sensitive to feedback and requests from readers. So, I imagine the newsletter will develop in form and content.

As it stands at the moment – I am about to issue number 3 – each issue has 3 sections and the total content is only about 1 A4 sheet’s worth, easy to read in a couple of minutes. The three sections are: how to write great poetry, which has a practical bias; a great quotation about poetry that is food for thought; and finally the third section is an update on the work that I am doing in this field.

If you would like to be on the Mailchimp database and receive your monthly dose of poetic news, then contact me directly at: james@motivationalmaps.com and say, Poetry Newsletter for me, please! And I will gratefully oblige. If you want any of the back issues, 1 and 2 at the time of writing this, please also request them.

I shall be providing 12 tips (so a year’s worth of content) on how to write great poetry. To give you a flavour of what I mean, here is the first tip from Newsletter #1:

Poetry Tips # 1 How to write great poetry – Rule # 1

The first way to write great poetry is to write bad poetry!!! Don’t be parsimonious – write lots of it. Stop thinking that because I’ve written it, then it must be good! Study “Changes” – why is it bad? Give 3 reasons. Newsletter # 2 will show you why this is bad.

Today we are happy
in our present.
Tomorrow it is our past.
The changes wrought about
are not substantial
and cannot last.
Because they change.

But what is the worst line or stanza you have ever written? Find 3 reasons why you think it is bad. If you can do that, then you are on your way to improvement.

Want more tips? Subscribe now and welcome! – James Sale

Commentary On HellWard By David Russell, Part 7: Hope Springs Eternal

In Canto XI: Poetasters:

“The Poet, having escaped the HellWard of European dictators and corrupt British politicians, emerges into the penultimate HellWard depth where he, with his guide, Dante, meets the Poetasters from America and Britain. These lost souls have denied Apollo and the real meaning and purpose of poetry. They have, thus, have been guilty of promoting a most heinous crime and so must finally encounter the River Lethe.”

Still with Dante as his guide, he proceeds, to a cave containing the ‘truly mad’, the pretentious aesthetes. In this epic, aesthetics cuts to the quick:

“Here even Dante wearied at the scene,

As if the heaven he was in could not

Protect him from writings, low and obscene.”

A reference to Ginsberg’s Howl – condemned as “Conceived entirely not from soul, but head.” James’s accusations are manifold: “Devised false words to undermine true meaning . . . And those confusions which their failed explainings . . . So little light and even less remorse”

One ‘inmate’ cries, “Help me escape this awful pit.” Dante arrives to stir up the mud. Jinnsberg (Ginsberg) appears, and emotes (in the author’s opinion vacuously) then Dante ‘conjured up’ a ditch, which forces Jinnsberg down

Powerful metaphor of panic:

“His fear, hysterical as a boil sealed shut

Beneath the skin, but bursting to explode . . .”

He made one more attempt, then disappeared: “With all the counterculture and its lies.” I am not in sympathy with all the judgements in this epic.

Raphael mai amech izabi almi – Raphael began to clamour with the ferocious mouth. Raphael is in chains, under the curse of Nimrod, the Confusion of Tongues. Nimrod emotes ferociously, but then ushers James onward.

He condemns the false poets: “So godless, they must go to nothing’s hole.” Further condemnation of Walt Whitman – his utterances condemned as spit and ash. This is a further point of disagreement:

“But each hated the other with furious rage;

And more, despised true poets writing true.”

There is no specification of the true poets! They are condemned as deafening and dead. Dante could barely stand it, ok.

Then What About the Brits? Praise of Shakespeare, then sustained damning of just about everyone since. There must be some honourable exceptions. Sir Handy (Hardy?) Dante tries to comfort James, cynically resigned:

“Compassion elevates the human mien,

But pity here is pointless and askew”

He longs for Apollo, the Muses and Orpheus. The next target seems to be Carol Ann Duffy. Again, I cannot go along with this condemnation. But I do appreciate the author’s having the grace to be self-critical.

“Perhaps here, I too, became as bad;

Instead of curses it was time to bless,

For only blessings let poetry be made.”

In Canto XII the poet addresses the Philosophers:

“The Poet, having escaped the HellWard of false prophets and poetasters now encounters the false philosophers whose ideas have spread misery and mayhem to so many. One whose song epitomises all the false promises of secularism; another who has led women to deny themselves and their nature; and finally, Satan’s final trick – a populist and scientist claiming God does not exist. But the god Apollo appears and his light shows the way out of hell.”

Longing to “restore the love that’s heaven’s message . . . ignored, or never heard. The majority are to be lost in the deluge – only those who seek the Gods survive.” He pities the vainglorious who have abandoned belief in a power above. Dante senses his grief and sustained his hope.

“But those whom Orpheus taught to sing know well

How suffering pain must be – so pay the cost:

How, in the depths of feeling’s pit of hell,

True poets sing the song to somewhere else,

Where heaven forms, even as their words spell It.”

“Following Lethe’s subtleties”, James is led into a tip of useless, fragile clutter. He wonders at “This ward where ovens thaw-through those half-baked!” Then the grand proclamation:

“’Be careful,’ Dante said, ‘for here ís the end

Of hell itself in your world: the last test.”

An attack on John Lennon’s Imagine, which I cannot go along with – described as a corpse, riddled with bullets – “All wisdom’s rot was in one song.”

Dante’s stern judgement: “There ís no hope / For those who think their efforts earn rewards.” In answer to James’s plea that one should expect one’s work to show one’s best, Dante replies “Until you drink pure milk, there is no cure.” This ‘pure milk’ is later defined”

“. . . the great cosmos formed / By Him from nothing and / His heart of Fire; The One whose Word – how majestic then encalmed Chaos’s own self.”

Dante’s assertion is a benign, spiritual explosion which blasts away the dross. But then there appears the figure of an Amazon woman – Leia Leer. She has “cut down men, fallen in love with Achilles after trying to kill him, Only my carcass screwed man after man.”

There is an altercation between her and Dante: “Her ideas drew women from womanhood . . . Practised infamy as fame’s whoring tart . . . Enslaved herself by every known lust.” She retorts that he is a ‘giant poet’, so it would be an honour to have sex with her. She offers him a challenge:

“You could – we could – explore my fetid fig,

Then write a canto undermining men . . .”

She is prepared to be self-denigratory with her proposition. Then she assaults Dante. James is horrified, but Dante stands passive. Her rain of blows vaporises. She becomes ‘virtually nothing’. Dante outlines her ‘career’, in which she misled millions, duped herself and them – “To out-think God, contain Him in their heads”. Now she is reduced to nothing. She afforded entry to Satan – made “Some pit not even Beelzebub might mine . . .”

James feels a desperate need to move on from the wards, lest he might be infected by them. He feels remorse “for all the lost, / Who once like me had prospect of reward . . .” James’s and Dante’s journey proceeds to “A point at centre, at evil’s dead core . . .” However, Dante reminded him of the Grace of God:

“This truth, believed, helps you escape these ills

Whereby these damned are stuck and come to nothing,

Except to know they caused just what they feel.”

They proceed to meet one bed-ridden entity called Rich – an armchair academic. There follows an indictment of a hallowed institution:

“Well, Oxford, England proves a fertile host

To entertain and spread mental pandemics

That waste the land and leave the people lost.”

Like many of his ilk, Rich is “All nice, concealing vicious, vile envy”; he is condemned for getting others to laugh at God. Now he is making a failed attempt at self-evaluation: “Not nous to own he doesn’t know enough.” All his intellectual premises disintegrate. His fate is compared to the unravelling of Penelope’s weaving.

Then enter Nemesis, one of supreme power:

“Nemesis! – daughter worse than any son –

Whom Satan’s self cannot escape or thwart,

Who binds the giants, holds the Titans down! . . .”

Even Satan is in terror of her. Hers is the ultimate source of power – “Before creation even took its punt . . .” She could destroy both wrong and right. Satan goes into a masturbatory panic; his organ assumes grotesque proportions. He makes a desperate bid for power:

“Nib-like, his penis wrote the cosmic contract:

One third part his for all eternities.”

Rich is temporarily reassured by Satan’s pact, and begins to write; but then things falter:

“Mere scrawling wreckage, from his head’s dull striking

And gouging marks on a lax putty plaque.”

He looks back to a mythicized past – “Missing the memes from ancient times”. He hypothesizes the ‘day of reckoning’: “. . . when all the trembling world stopped / And held its breath in fear: what would One say?” As he expostulates, his cardigan disintegrates, revealing his skin “in dissolute, dissolving form”.

Mysteriously, paradoxically, James gets a sense of light. How could this be, in the ultimate depths?

“A ward where no windows were, and no gaps,

Far, far beyond substance and time’s taut terms,”

Then James is bombarded by heat rays of incredible intensity. The event forces Dante to shield his eyes. Then there is a vision of a beach, morning tide at sunrise – “waves, reflecting good’s true side”. Enter Apollo on the scene. A supra-scientific vision of a Godhead:

“About his being flickered photon-streams

In constant interplay with the black air

Which – forced back – radiance overcame.”

Rich makes a last, feeble, desperate appeal: “real science demands doubt”, then comes to nothing. He has been cut off from Apollo’s light.

Now James is overwhelmed by his vision of Apollo – “my future he unwound”. He almost collapses with the revelation, but Dante again props him up. Apollo’s message is like a thunderstorm. He prays for Apollo’s guidance. Dante reminds James that Apollo has pointed James’s direction. He urges James to follow Apollo’s path of growth as he, Dante, did in the past. James is now under an Orpheus-like obligation not to look back. He feels fatally tempted by her ‘Whose beauty outweighed the whole universe.’ He has a moment of extreme vulnerability.

But Phoebus smiles, and Dante remains at his side. He must escape a universal collapse:

“The ground lurched – gave way – for time would not wait;

These wards were due to sink down in their lakes

Of fire, and I must leap to miss their fates.

I heard behind chaos, like timber, crack;

And then perpetual ruin, as if mad,

Asylum-bound souls screeched for their own wrack.

But I, on a solid stairwell, now stood,

Weeping. Who could not, at such loss of good?”

Hope springs eternal.

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Guest Post: “Oh Mother of the Stairs” by Francis Etheredge

“Oh Mother of the Stairs”

Albeit briefly, many years ago I was put in a prison cell while the police decided what to do with me; as, wandering the countryside, I was obviously thought to be on drugs or mentally ill. What had happened was that failing to get on with my university course, failing to form friendships, not knowing what to do next and absolutely tormented by questions about the purpose and meaning of life, I put the keys to my lodgings back through the front door as I left to go. I did not know where. I ended up in a cell and, after a while, on a psychiatric ward for a few weeks. However, even this brief experience makes me think of the solid cells, their sheer walls, formidable doors and intermittent visits by staff. So, although this does not equate with the full extent of a prison sentence, it is a real and personal point of departure.

“I don’t know how much you know about the Covid situation in prison but it’s pretty grim – no visits, locked inside cells for 23 hours a day, huge increase in self harm especially in women’s prisons, pretty much all education, rehabilitation, recreation, gym sessions have been put on hold. They’ve managed to contain it so far but there’s a lot of concerns that prisons are too full for proper distancing or safety measures – they’re near capacity anyway, and there isn’t enough staff. Some campaigners are trying to push for early releases for those with short sentences or who are waiting for their trials in order to reduce the pressure, but not much is being done even though it’s been agreed as necessary and a few were released back in the summer when the less infectious variant was the main worry”¹.

In addition, then, to the considerations raised by my daughter, there is a real need to approach the situation of prisoners with practical compassion; indeed, it might even begin with simple advice, based on my own experience. Thus to offset long periods of inactivity with short periods, around fifteen minutes, of legs been put up against a wall to help to change the blood circulating through them – even going as far as cycling in the air.

This, clearly, is an important work for ex-offenders, chaplains and volunteers who are able to engage, positively, with the imperative of taking people forward in their lives and not just because of the short-term necessity of help, as valid as that is. Thus, while it is self-evident that there are concerns for the well-being of prisoners, staff and the public generally, there are also humanitarian goals that go beyond the limitations of the situation and call for new ways forward. Who knows what untapped resources remain dormant or require the motivation to transfer skills from crime to the good to be done – in the prisoners themselves?!

What about a parish adoption of a prison or a prison block? Where, at the very least, the prisoners are prayed for regularly; and, who knows, what as yet unknown good works will spring from such seeds?

“Oh Mother of The Stairs”

You inherited a title from our first mother, Eve, and, as the

New Eve, you are even more the mother of all the living, loving

To call out to all to take the steps to life, to enter from whatever

Turning point and to take the rail, the rhythm of life and prayer

And to ascend, step by step, holding on as you are helped to hold

On and to rise, and rise again, rising in the company of others.

Oh Joseph, as you worked you saw who was lost and looking around,

And you prayed, whether in words or gestures, dedicating your

Difficulties to turning boys and girls, youths, old men and women,

To your wife, Mary, who stands by the entrance to the stairs,

Calling to all who would pass on by to stop, to falter just in time,

And to follow the turning up, and to avoid the turning down.

Oh Mother of the Stairs, let not those who are on the money-go-round

Stay stuck on the cutting edge, getting caught up in the swirling

Down and round, round and down until, either fished up or flat

Against the possibility of the water-fall, taking them beyond the

Edge of returning, descending without drowning, falling as they

Fail, failing as they fall, faster now, unless netted before the end.

Oh Lord, you have descended to hell and you have ascended

To heaven, you know the way down and you know the way up;

And, indeed, you know all the steps in between and all the

Stops and starts and changes of direction, encouraging all

Who are going down to come up and all who are going up to

Continue up, and even as they go to help others to rise with them.

You knew imprisonment and you turned it into an opportunity

For the salvation of the world; you knew the isolation of being

Intensely alone and again you turned it into an opportunity

For the salvation of the world; you knew the utter worn-out-ness

Of carrying your cross and bearing afflictions for others and you

Turned it into an opportunity for the salvation of the world.

Help all who are imprisoned bear the burden of illness, isolation,

Even estrangement, turning their cross into opportunities to shed

Addictions, to see in their lives your Son’s walk with them to the

Resurrection, to turn around and see the goodness of God coming

Towards them, arms outstretched, bringing the healing love that

Loves to heal, turning them up-wards to go up the stairs with help.

Oh Mother of the Stairs, gather your children from all walks of life,

All points of the earth, all peoples of the world, all times of life,

Whether poor or rich, victim or violent, alone or as part of a gang,

Turning what is misused to a good use, scheming into helping,

Gang members into friends, taking into giving, causing harm

Into helping to heal – being saved into showing others the stairs.

“Oh Mother of the Stairs” is from an excerpt from pp. 174-180 of Within Reach of You: A Book of Prose and Prayers: https://enroutebooksandmedia.com/withinreachofyou/.

We are fundraising for the World Youth Day Pilgrimage to Lisbon, Portugal, 2023. All eight of children hope to go, along with their father and mother.

We have raised over half the money we need, if you would like to contribute to the remaining £6000, kindly go to the following “Just Giving Page”: https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/etheredge-wyd-2023?utm_term=J7jd3vxx3

-Francis Etheredge.

Mr. Francis Etheredge is married with eight children, plus three in heaven. Francis is the author of Scripture: A Unique Word, and a trilogy From Truth and Truth (Volume I-“Faithful Reason”; Volume II-“Faith and Reason in Dialogue”; Volume III-“Faith Is Married Reason”), all of which are published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing; The Human Person: A Bioethical Word, The Family on Pilgrimage: God Leads through Dead Ends, The Prayerful Kiss, Conception: An Icon of the Beginning, Mary and Bioethics: An Exploration, and Honest Rust and Gold: A Second Collection of Prose and Poetry, all of which are published by En Route Books and Media.Francis is currently a freelance writer and speaker and his “Posts” on LinkedIn can be viewed here. Poetry; short articles; autobiographical blog; excerpts from books; and “Philosophize: A Ten Minute Write”.

1 Courtesy of Teresa Etheredge, email, 14/1/2021, studying Criminology at University, England; see, also, “Prisoners to entrepreneurs: Business holds the key to reducing re-offending – The Centre for Entrepreneurs explains the rationale behind turning prisoners into business owners…”: by Maximilian Yoshioka, Updated: Jun 9, 2016 Published: Jun 9, 2016: https://startups.co.uk/blog/turning-prisoners-into-entrepreneurs-why-business-holds-the-key-to-reducing-reoffending/.

Commentary On HellWard, By David Russell Part 3: Love Cannot Be Overcome

In Canto IV, James proceeds to a Ward which contains a former boss – apparently benign, but with ‘an underlying and pathological desire for control, recognition and self-aggrandisement.’ He desperately needs to be propped up by his guide. He feels great twinges of guilt about having been a bad teacher. Dante tries to console him, saying he was young then; this does not quite compensate. An interesting digression on the decline of the English educational system: “The mind a slave to idols without heart: Kids sold a mess of pottage . . .”

An exhortation of Dante: “. . . part of his (God’s) nature is / Freedom of the will; we must share it too.” Then the Grand Paradox that ‘love created Hell.’ After this, Dante has a shaking fit, from which he soon recovers. He reasserts the will of god, and resumes the great journey: “There’s One with whom we cannot force a deal.” They head on a downward path with an increasing gradient; there are ghostly footsteps. Dante’s rhetoric continues – if only Adam had not committed the primal sin, there would have been an ideal world. The Poet “Heard only groans, saw filth, and smelt the blood, / Of Adam’s legacy which we all shared.” Dante asked “Don’t you see the good?” Then a mass of empty beds, awaiting restless souls. He goes through the door, and finds one he recognises as Bryan. Robotically, he orders James to lie down. He then discovers that the beds are cluttered with the aftermath of surgery, indicating patients who have not recovered. The Poet senses that Bryan is under a curse. Bryan is very angry when quizzed on this point. It turns out that he is an old, persecuting mentor of the Poet – ‘with nothing learned’. A fraudulent educational manipulator. “Bryan took credit for all I’d made,” but still tries to make gestures of friendship. He tries to tempt James with an offer of an Educational partnership. Dante warns him against this temptation, and urges him to leave. Bryan comes out in his true colours. James is furious, attacks Bryan, and pierces his skull. James remembers a benign mentor, J E Williams. His memory is an ‘avalanche of snow’ to cool the heat of anger. James and Dante venture to their next encounter.

They progress, in Canto V, from the Boss’s Ward to that of some former close friends. One of these is a person he admired as a ‘poet friend’, but then discovered details of his bad character. He still has contradictory feelings about Bryan.

“I could not reconcile my own two sides:

Be one person, integrated, together.”

Another indictment:

“So-called learning proving one route to pride

And not much more: humans puffed up with knowing;

Not knowing exactly the hell they’re in

Of endless iteration, pointless doing.”

Dante embraces James, and affirms their bond: “As if by force he should join my split soul . . .”. James is restored to energy and positivity. He asks Dante again why he left his comfortable Heaven, to be told of someone who loves and cares for him:

“Through her, Beatrice ordered your relief.”

Great optimism:

“Love lights, and love cannot be overcome

Because beauty stops motion at its root. “

Interesting to contemplate the opposition of love and motion. Then he sees Ginty and Marlene, Ginty in bed and Marlene, though sick, tending him. Ginty has gone into terminal decline. He asks James what has brought him here. The answer is that he was prompted by a Muse. Ginty visibly shrinks at the mention of Dante. Ginty then proclaims himself an OBE, and a lover of Literature, then says “It’s nothing, here.” Ginty turns against James, whom Dante again protects.

“And so I came to see Ginty, reversed

In image, friend as was, on Dante’s breast”

Enter Medusa, a possible transformation of Marlene; again under Dante’s prompting, he makes a panic-stricken flight. He is in extreme exhaustion and disillusionment: “It seemed to me that all my friendships lied.” Dante pulls him up with “Now learn what liars do.”

He realises his past naivete:

“The folly I had followed lacking doubts,

Thinking I had friends untested the while

And here discovering for myself their roots.”

They have completed another phase of their journey. There is much trepidation about the next – “ahead was dread of what I despised.”

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The StairWell to Heaven…

The second volume of The English Cantos, StairWell, is now available for pre-order!

This volume marks the middle stage of the Dantean journey, the ascent of Purgatory. In Dante’s cosmological configuration, Purgatory is viewed as a mountain arising from the reverse side of Jerusalem and the Satanic nadir. In James Sale’s StairWell, Purgatory is configured as a magical stair of spiritual progress.

Each step upon the stairwell contains an impossible space, a landscape corresponding to the particular spiritual ailment of those on the path of redemption. The stair is also a personal symbol of James Sale’s literal ascent up the staircase in Royal Bournemouth Hospital towards the Chapel of St. Luke, in which he prayed during his battle with cancer.

Aptly, St. Luke is figured in esoteric terms as the Taurus or bull—correlating to the element of earth and physical matter—and therefore promises deliverance from the physical suffering via spiritual means. Purgatory is Luke’s kingdom, for in many ways it marks the intersection of Divine and earthly. In this interstitial space, magical things are possible, hence whereas HellWard features horrifying psychological and mythological archetypes, StairWell takes on an almost Arthurian aesthetic of fantasy and magic—the grand, holy quest for the absolution of one’s soul and attainment of the Garden of Paradisical Innocence.

Purgatory itself is also symbolic of our earthly reality, for progress is possible in Purgatory both up and down the stair; the fate of those in Purgatory is not “fixed” yet, but rests in potentiality for salvation or damnation. Thus, StairWell is full of literal and symbolic transformations, signified by the black butterfly upon its cover, which embodies the truth spoken by Dante Alighieri:

“Perceive ye not that we are worms, designed

To form the angelic butterfly, that goes

To judgment, leaving all defence behind?

Why doth your mind take such exalted pose,

Since ye, disabled, are as insects, mean

As worm which never transformation knows?”
Purgatory, Canto X