From light verse and straightforward sonnets to strange soliloquies and songs, Looking Up gives voice to the stony figures that adorn Washington National Cathedral-the beasts, fiends, and sentinels that watch us as we pass unknowingly beneath them.



Rooted in folklore and myth, medieval history, and the cathedrals restorative gardens and grounds, the 53 poems in this book awaken some of Washingtons most enigmatic residents. Whether malevolent or benign, each creature offers its own solution to an old, beguiling riddle: ""What do they want of us, those long-necked gargoyles who howl in the...

Charbonnier est maitre chez soi: ""The collier is master in his own house."" This French saying finds its most literal expression in The Tale of Charlemagne and Ralph the Collier, a 15th-century Middle Scots romance about the adventures that ensue when King Charlemagne, separated from his entourage by a blizzard, seeks refuge in the home of a proud and irascible collier. Combining folktale motifs with burlesque humor and elements of chansons and chivalric romances, The Tale of Charlemagne and Ralph the Collier is a lively but little-read story of medieval courtesy, hospitality, and...