Malcolm Guite's "Michaelmas"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 8 November 2023

⏱️ 7 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ayodeji Malcolm Guite (/ɡaɪt/; born 12 November 1957) is an English poet, singer-songwriter, Anglican priest, and academic. Born in Nigeria to British expatriate parents, Guite earned degrees from Cambridge and Durham universities. His research interests include the intersection of religion and the arts, and the examination of the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis and Owen Barfield, and British poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He was a Bye-Fellow and chaplain of Girton College, Cambridge, and associate chaplain of St Edward King and Martyr, Cambridge. On several occasions, he has taught as visiting faculty at several colleges and universities in England and North America.

Guite is the author of Sounding the Seasons and four other books of poetry, including two chapbooks and three full-length collections, as well as several books on Christian faith and theology, and Mariner, a critical biography of Coleridge. Guite has a decisively simple, formalist style in poems, many of which are sonnets, and he stated that his aim is to "be profound without ceasing to be beautiful". Guite performs as a singer and guitarist fronting the Cambridgeshire-based blues, rhythm and blues, and rock band Mystery Train.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.
0:04.1	I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Wednesday, November 8, 2003.
0:09.1	In the Eastern Christian Church calendar, today is the Feast of the Holy Archangels,
0:16.9	which is the counterpart to the Western observation of the Feast of St. Michael and All the Angels,
0:24.4	or Nicolmus, which is commemorated on September 29th.
0:29.7	In honor of both of those occasions, today's poem is a sonnet for St. Michael, Archangel by one of our favorite poets here at The Daily Poem, at Malcolm Geite.
0:44.6	I will read the poem once, offer a few remarks, and then read it again.
0:50.4	This is a sonnet for St. Michael the Archangel.
0:57.5	Michael Musgayle. This is a sonnet for St. Michael the Archangel. Michaelmas Gales assail the waning year, and Michael's scale is true, his blade is bright.
1:04.2	He strips dead leaves and leaves the living clear to flourish in the touch and reach of light.
1:10.3	Archangel bring your balance,
1:12.1	help me turn upon this turning world with you and dance in the great dance.
1:16.8	Draw near, help me discern and trace the hidden grace in change and chance.
1:22.1	Angel of fire, loves fierce radiance, drive through the deep until the steep waves part,
1:28.9	undo the dragon's sinuous influence, and pierce the clotted darkness in my heart.
1:35.0	Unchained the child you find there, break the spell, and overthrow the tyrannies of hell.
1:57.4	St. Michael, the Archangel, is the figure who throws Lucifer from heaven when he's cast out after his rebellion against God.
2:05.6	And he's often depicted in art and iconography as armor-clad wielding a sword or a spear
2:11.6	and slaying or wrestling with a dragon or a serpent
2:15.6	representing Lucifer.
2:18.3	His commemoration on September 29th, Michael Mass, is traditionally the date that marks the end of the fall harvest, and also, incidentally, the beginning of the fall academic term. Those things go hand in hand.
2:36.4	Once the field labors are complete, young folks can go back to their studies.
	...

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