The Best Writer I Never Heard Of?

      It is amazing what I don’t know.  Maybe it is also amazing what I do know.  
     What may be interesting is what I think I know but have no clue about.  For this is the stuff of metaphysics and the mysteries of life, the realm of faith, which no one can really know for sure.  As metaphysics and mysteries are too deep for one lowly blog post, I will stick simply with being amazed by what I don’t know.
     In mid December, I was having lunch with my dean and our former provost.  We decided to meet at Lady Gregory’s in the trendy Andersonville neighborhood of Northwest Chicago.  I was the first to arrive and the maitre d’ asked where I would like to sit.  I told her we would prefer a table rather than a booth.  She said, “How about in the library?”  Being a library and bookish kind of guy, I said, “Sounds good to me.”  We went to the back of the restaurant to an alcove like section.  It did look like a library.  There were two walls with bookcases laden with antique books, a beautiful tiffanyesque chandelier, an array of framed photos of famous writers.  I immediately recognized William Butler Yeats.  I liked the restaurant and really liked the library section.
      I had time to peruse the shelves and take a few photos before my friends arrived.  I saw the framed photo of a quote pictured above:  “Isn't there any heaven where old beautiful dances, old beautiful intimacies prolong themselves?”  This quote was unfamiliar to me, but intriguing in a way because this is pretty much how I envisioned heaven all my life.  I never realized that fact, however, until I saw this quote.
     For some reason, and it might have been something the Mormons believe, I see everyone creating their own heaven, or hell, by their behavior, experiences, and relationships during our lifetimes.  Is this the case?  I have not clue.  But, it appealed to me.  Simultaneously, it scares me almost as much as it appeals to me.  
     I was also totally blank on who this quote might be attributed to.  This was only a mystery until I queried the internet just now.  This quote is from a 1915 book, The Good Soldier, by Ford Madox Ford.  I was blissfully unaware of Ford Madox Ford and his book.  See what I mean, it is amazing what I don’t know.  

Ford Madox Ford, James Joyce, and Ezra Pound

     So, who was Ford Madox Ford?  He was born in 1873 in England and died in 1939 in France.  Ford Madox Ford was his nom de plume.  His name at birth was Joseph Leopold Ford Hermann Madox Hueffer.  He was novelist, poet, and critic.  His novel, The Good Soldier, is considered his best novel.  Antwerp was his most famous poem.  Both of these works were considered amongst the first and well regarded examples of the modern fiction and poetry styles of the 20th Century.  Ford founded and edited two important and influential literary journals in the UK and then in Latin Quarter of Paris.  He had a bought of agoraphobia that ended his first marriage which was followed by series of female partners.  A surprising fact I learned was that he taught at Olivet College in Michigan during the last decade of his life.  In sum, he might be the best writer I never heard of.
     I will certainly read some of his poetry.  Will I seek out and read The Good Soldier?  Well, it took me over fifty years to get to The Good Earth.   Perhaps contemplating his quote on heaven and writing this bloggy bit is all the Ford Madox Ford I may ever get or, for that matter, need.

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Here is the first section of Antwerp.  Read the entire poem on PoemHunter.com

I
Gloom!
An October like November;
August a hundred thousand hours,
And all September,
A hundred thousand, dragging sunlit days,
And half October like a thousand years . . .
And doom!
That then was Antwerp . . .
In the name of God,
How could they do it?
Those souls that usually dived
Into the dirty caverns of mines;
Who usually hived
In whitened hovels; under ragged poplars;
Who dragged muddy shovels, over the grassy mud,
Lumbering to work over the greasy sods . . .
Those men there, with the appearance of clods
Were the bravest men that a usually listless priest of God
Ever shrived . . .
And it is not for us to make them an anthem.
If we found words there would come no wind that would fan them
To a tune that the trumpets might blow it,
Shrill through the heaven that's ours or yet Allah's,
Or the wide halls of any Valhallas.
We can make no such anthem. So that all that is ours
For inditing in sonnets, pantoums, elegiacs, or lays
Is this:
'In the name of God, how could they do it?'