Students had to read MARY'S HOUSE, do a paper on it. (Doesn't shame me--anything I have to teach them is in that.) And there are always nice revelations when I do that: the good--what the poetry does, but also the complacency in some of the poems (though I'd hoped I'd gotten that out). No deal. In any case, I ask for help and will try to correct that as Debra Murphy (the editor and I) work through the next edition.
But what's weird here, too, is how Catholics always seem upset if their poets aren't saints. (I always get that vibe. . . . Priest, too, sometimes, early on, object that anyone else would preach the Gospel; though they get over that soon enough, delight in the fact.) It's why so many are suspicious of Merton. He wasn't a saint. No sh-t, Sherlock, as they used to say. But he's wonderful. Flat out. It's weird though, that expectation. Who weirds out if a priest isn't a saint? Or a plumber?
