O come, let us to the flowing brook,

Join me; greet the waters as they rush

Down from their pure source above in Heav’n.


O let us ask that man for some to drink,

And lo, he comes and pours it over us

Saying “Drink this, breathe it, let it enter you.”


O may this fiery water transform us!

May we burn with its undying flame,

And let it brim in us and overflow!

This poem was inspired by ’s November poem-a-day prompt “Invitation”, though I took it out of the context of types of relationships, and used it as the form of my poem.

There’s a good amount of sprung rhythm (using more or fewer unstressed syllables than would strictly be required), and a little awkwardness in the phrasing, but I’m fairly pleased with the way it turned out. I like the threefold structure and the almost-chiasm of the whole thing. I didn’t really know what it was going to be about when I wrote the first line, and it turned into something far more meaningful than I was expecting.

Thanks for reading,

John Prester

1. I was born one day too late to vote on my eighteenth birthday.

2. Evelyn Waugh is probably my favorite author.

3. T. S. Eliot is probably my favorite poet.

4. I also love Tolkien, Chesterton, Graham Greene, and Sigrid Undset.

5. Hopkins is another wonderful poet.

6. Lest you think that I only like twentieth-century Catholic authors, I’ll inform you that I also love reading Greek, Roman, Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon literature, but I don’t do it as often as I should, because it’s hard to read them in the original languages, and translations miss a lot.

7. Medieval Latin literature is very fun and easy to read though.

8. I also love Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.

9. Everyone likes to say that their eyes are some unique blend of colors even when they really aren’t, so I’ll just say my eyes are blue.

10. I love the mountains in Colorado.

11. My two biggest spending categories are musical instruments and books.

12. I have learned some/am learning Latin, Greek, Russian, Arabic, Anglo-Saxon, French, Italian, and German.

13. I’ve only actually taken classes in Latin and Greek; the rest I studied on my own.

14. I sing bass in the choir at my parish (mostly chant and renaissance polyphony), and also in a concert choir (mostly contemporary works).

15. I enjoy swing dancing, Eastern European and Scandinavian folk dancing, English country dancing, balroom dancing, and some American folk dances.

16. Strauss waltzes are super fun to dance to, especially with a live orchestra.

17. I play organ, clarinet, accordion, and saxophone.

18. As an organist, I am obliged to affirm that J. S. Bach is the best composer, but I also really admire the compositions of Raffaelle Manari and Henri Dallier (Go look them up)

19. Henry Tilney is my role model.

20. I used to fence.

21. Sabre is far better than epee or foil.

22. Much Ado About Nothing is Shakespeare’s best play.

23. I have lots of graph paper notebooks filled with various mathematical drawings, such as this map of a four-dimensional maze from when I was about fourteen:

    

22. Jan Sobieski is the best.

23. I enjoy doing calculus, but physics is miserable.

24. I’m about 6’ 1” in height.

25. I am a staunch lover of the semicolon, although em-dashes sometimes creep into my poetry.

26. I like books and songs to that are deep and thoughtful.

27. That’s why I like Twenty Øne Piløts and NF.

28. If I grow up, I’ll probably end up being a monk.

29. I like all kinds of seafood, especially baby octopus.

30. Persuasion is good, but I have a deep and abiding love for Emma (the book, not the character).

31. The character of Emma is also really wonderful; she seems like she would be an annoying person to be friends with, but she’s ideal as a character.

32. The Tennant of Wildfell Hall is the best novel by any of the Brontës.

33. I don’t like choosing a favorite book, color, movie, &c. I believe we should appreciate the different ways things are good, and not be forced to choose between them.

34. As an abbreviation for et cetera, &c is far superior to etc.

35. Medieval scribal abbreviations are so cool, although they do tend to make one’s calligraphy illegible to modern readers.

36. I have a collection of paper boats representing the ships at the battle of Lepanto. Each paper boat has the name of the ship it represents written on it. (For the Turkish ships, the name of the commander is written, because the Muslims didn’t keep records of ship names.)

37. I seem to love using parentheses to to add side comments.

38. My hair is light brown. It was blonde when I was a little child, but it’s darkened since then.

39. My generous neighbor gave me an attaché case when I was 12 and I carried my school books in it for several years.

40. I usually don’t carry more than $10 in cash, because if I go into a bookstore I will spend all the cash I have on hand.

41. I have been to 38 states.

42. I have never died yet.

43. In 10th grade I wrote an invective against cats for my writing class. If any one is curious, it can be found here. (It’s hilarious, so it might be worth reading.) For the record, I don’t actually believe all the things I say in it.

44. This is hard and I’m not even halfway done; I’m beginning to doubt that there even are a hundred facts about me.

45. I naturally stay up late, but being up at 4 AM is wonderful. Sometimes it’s easier just to stay awake the whole night.

46. Dinosaurs are dragons.

47. I am a chronic procrastinator, as is evidenced by the fact that I’m hastily writing this after I got 100 subscribers, and not beforehand.

48. I’m so blessed to be surrounded by books in every room of my home.

49. I like having nice shoes for different occasions.

50. I enjoy performing magic tricks, especially card tricks and the cups and balls.

51. I love fountain and dip pens. (and good ballpoint pens; my favorite is the Pilot G-tec-C4)

52. I collect high quality notebooks. Japanese ones tend to have really nice paper, and I have a couple European ones that are nice too.

53. 2mm blue line graph paper is excellent for technical drawings.

54. I like to make paper pop-ups of buildings, though I haven’t done it recently.

55. The bookshelf with my literature collection is organized chronologically.

56. I built a telescope (6” Newtonian for those who care), but I don’t use it as much as I should.

57. Gustave Doré is my favorite artist.

58. My friend and I carved a bunch of gravestones out of sidewalk chalk.

59. You don’t understand how hard it is to carve a little cross out of chalk until you’ve tried it.

60. I’ve competed in a speed cubing competition.

61. A few months ago I got glasses for the first time, because my eyesight had gotten worse. I think I may read in the dark too much.

62. Hopefully I don’t go blind like Mac in Eight Cousins, because I don’t have a Rose to read to me.

63. Some of my favorite saints are St. Louis IX, St. Andrew Avellino, and St. John Nepomucen.

64. I think the Father Brown Mysteries are the best detective stories.

65. I enjoy playing long, complex board games; the longer and more complex the better.

66. It irritates me how everyone seems to like the Inferno better than the Purgatorio or the Paradiso.

67. This might be a fault, but I enjoy the Peter Jackson movies better than reading Lord of the Rings. The book is certainly better, but I enjoy it less.

68. Ralph Vaughn Williams wrote the best hymn tune harmonizations.

69. I’m scared of heights but I like to climb stairs up towers.

70. I think Lord of the World is the best apocalyptic/dystopian book.

71. Brave New World is a close second.

72. If I grow up, I want to be a parish organist or choir director.

73. My sister and I like to build churches out of Legos.

74. The other thing we build is warships and airplanes and other weaponry and have war.

75. During spring break, we used to put paper from those big rolls on our kitchen floor and draw a town with roads for our matchbox cars.

76. I love collecting unique and old books.

77. I find historic recipes quite intriguing. It’s cool to see what different cultures considered necessary to specify, and what they thought not worth mentioning.

78. A lot of Medieval English recipes end with “and serve it forth”

79. Once I made a savory applesauce with onions from a supposedly ancient Mesopotamian recipe and it was good.

80. I think one thing that too many people forget is that we can love tradition and also love modern things. We need to recognize good things, wherever they come from, and love them as such.

81. I do some coding. Mostly in C++, but a little python.

82. I am appalled by the fact that Hawaii has interstate highways.

83. I think my favorite of Tolkien’s stories is that of Numenor.

84. Jane Eyre is overrated.

85. That Hideous Strength is underrated.

86. I think A Tale of Two Cities is neither over- nor underrated.

87. One little-known book that I love is Son of a Hundred Kings by Thomas B. Costain.

88. I usually don’t like historical fiction very much, but Quo Vadis is great.

89. I think Maryland is the best of the eastern states, Wisconsin is the best midwestern state, and Texas is the best southern state.

90. I sometimes read the encyclopedia at night when I’ve finished my book.

91. I believe the quality of insults has declined. Chesterton was called a “drunken helot of radical sentimentalism”, but I’ve never heard a living person utter any insult nearly as good.

92. I am bad at sports, and do not enjoy playing them competitively, but it’s fun to play ultimate frisbee or soccer or volleyball with friends.

93. I enjoy doing calligraphy and making illuminations.

94. The Prince and the Pauper is Mark Twain’s best book.

95. I think enigma machines are one of the coolest war devices ever invented.

96. Philology is fascinating; it’s awesome to see how the different languages developed and the various ways different peoples think.

97. There’s a picture of me sitting at the console of the second largest organ in the world.

98. Apple juice is better than orange juice.

99. I don’t understand people that run for recreation. It seems to me that the only reasonable reason to run is either to something or away from something, and not for the running itself.

100. I’ve never had any pets.

Good job if you made it this far. I just barely did.

If you want to tell me how wrong my opinions are:

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Thanks again to my 100 subscribers, and to you, dear reader.

-John Prester

As the bitter days go by,

The gloomy hours creep slowly.

Bitter hours, minutes, moments,

days creep; moments 

go slowly

by. 

The first words in each line make up the first line, the second words make the second line, &c. There’s too many short words in the first line, so it doesn’t really look triangular, but according to the number of words in each line it is a triangle.

I’m not completely satisfied with this poem (partly because it’s only half of what I had set out to write), but I do like how the last three lines turned out. To me it feels like the moments are dripping sluggishly off the end of the poem. Spreading the one sentence out over three lines makes it go slower.

A bit about the form:

Lewis Carroll (probably) wrote this wonderful square poem:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

I often wondered when I cursed,

Often feared where I would be—

Wondered where she’d yield her love,

When I yield, so will she.

I would her will be pitied!

Cursed be love! She pitied me…

It reads the same both vertically and horizontally. My efforts to write this kind of square poem are what led to my triangular poem above. The form is, needless to say, excruciatingly difficult, because whenever you change one line it also changes the others. I have not yet been able to make a decent square poem, but I’m still trying, so perhaps I’ll eventually succeed. Right now I’m just trying to get some words that fit together in the right way, and then maybe I’ll be ready to tackle the challenge of adding rhyme and meter.

Please comment if you know of any other complicated forms of poetry that you want me to try.

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Can I learn how to know myself again?

Can I forget these indices and surds?

Can I befriend myself and other men

As persons, not mouths full of empty words?


How hard is it to listen when I hear;

To let thoughts enter in my closed-up mind.

Far easier to keep them out—for fear

Is only absent in an empty rind.


But I must not desert my post and flee,

Running away in mind, t’escape the curse

Of living life—No, though I hold a key,

I must not use it—that way leads to worse.


So let me learn to know and love my friends,

And, in this, know and love myself again.

A couple notes about inspirations for this poem:

“Indices and surds” are mathematical things (exponents and irrational roots). As I was writing this poem, I had in mind Lewis Carroll’s double acrostic Four Riddles which contains the stanza:

Yet what are all such gaieties to me
Whose thoughts are full of indices and surds?
x² + 7x + 53 = 11/3

When I wrote “No, though I hold a key, / I must not use it—that way leads to worse” I was thinking of this passage in Chesterton’s story The Hammer of God:

Wilfred Bohum threw one leg over the parapet, and Father Brown had him in a minute by the collar.

‘Not by that door,’ he said quite gently; ‘that door leads to hell.’

Molly with her straight brown curls;

Her poor girl’s pins, bedecked with pearls;

Her wrinkled dress, just newly pressed;

Her clean bare feet, in shoes so neat,

Stares out upon the window.



Outside, another, just come in,

Her spotless soul all black with sin;

Her happy face, with somber grace;

Her stature small, for she was tall,

Stares through the wooden window.



Jane, the other, for all her life

Had borne concealed an éxposed knife.

She stuck it through poor Molly's shoe,

And then she sighed, and fell, and died;

Her blood flowed up the window.

I wrote this several years ago, inspired by a shorter poem by my sister . Hers had the same opening line, but the rest made sense (mostly). I thought it was quite indecent that such a deliciously nonsensical line should be left to languish among boring, stuffy, conventional lines with coherent ideas; so I wrote this poem to properly house it among fellow absurdities.

If you like this, please consider subscribing because I have lots more nonsense where this came from. If you don’t like this, please consider subscribing because I also have profound (or at least serious) thoughts.

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Thanks for reading!

P.S. I was perplexed in the selection of a cover photo (there aren’t many drawings of girls with straight curly hair), so I just chose “A Souvenir from Scotland” by Gustave Doré, one of the few paintings by my favorite engraver.

The heavy clouds bear on the troubled mind 

With solemn, sullen thoughts of dreaded gloom. 

No sun can pierce into the eye that’s blind,

Nor happy things enter the darkened tomb.



How pitiful the sad, enshrouded soul,

That looks for light, but only sees the dark;

How heavy now it seems in its dank hole;

How far now from the cry of joyful lark.



How changéd are its worn-out, plodding feet

From those which gamboled on the sunny bank,

Which once it loved, when it could feel that heat.

But now it sickens, cold and filled with rank.



Shall it forever freeze in this dark place,

Or can it be thawed, before it end this race?

I wrote this poem after reading Hopkins’ Terrible Sonnets”. I think in this poem I felt similar sorrow, but unfortunately could not write with similar excellence, so the appellation “Terrible” applies to both the subject and the quality.

I wrote this with a fountain pen, which makes one feel very much like a poet. You should get a fountain pen.

Why am I doing this?

I’m starting this because I love books, and I want to share my thoughts on the things I read, both because the thoughts might perchance be valuable, and because I hope to inspire you to read and have your own thoughts. I also want to submit some of my poetry and creative writing to the discerning judgement of the denizens of Substack.

This publication is inspired by many worthy Substacks, but especially by and . I aspire to produce something similar to their writings.

About me

I love playing organ, clarinet, accordion, chess, and saxophone; reading for hours; swing and folk dancing; Tolkien’s legendarium; arguing about political and economic systems; singing in choirs; encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauruses and the like; learning languages; the Latin Mass; thinking thoughts; and long sentences.

What to expect

I’m imagining that most posts will be reviews of/thoughts inspired by whatever I happen to be reading, with occasional poems and stories. Sometimes there might be articles about random thoughts I have. I intend to post at least twice a month, and likely more often, but that might be impeded by school.

Thank you for reading,

John Prester

There is something incomparably thrilling in first opening a brand new book. - Evelyn Waugh