ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
High Tide Journal editor Bryana Johnson is a homeschool graduate whose many interests include political science, educational theory, poetry, art, music and literature. She was classically educated using the Charlotte Mason philosophy of education and her mother maintains the Charlotte Mason Help website. She grew up in Turkey and currently works for an international translation company. Some of her favorite authors include G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, Amy Carmichael, Emily Dickinson, Thomas Sowell and P.G. Wodehouse.
Bryana is unashamedly pro-life and volunteers at a local Pregnancy Help Clinic. She also helps mentor youth through a Teen Court Program in her area and serves as an intern with Glenn Beck's Mercury One, is a regular columnist for the Washington Times Communities and the The College Conservative. Her dedication to truth-telling motivates her to dig into the stories behind the stories and seek out the surprises behind the spin.
Bryana has placed in multiple poetry contests in the US and Canada and her poems have been published in several literary journals including the Boston Literary Magazine, Assisi, Time of Singing, Quantum Poetry Magazine, The Mayo Review and Adroit Journal. Her first full-length collection, Having Decided To Stay is available now.
Bryana is unashamedly pro-life and volunteers at a local Pregnancy Help Clinic. She also helps mentor youth through a Teen Court Program in her area and serves as an intern with Glenn Beck's Mercury One, is a regular columnist for the Washington Times Communities and the The College Conservative. Her dedication to truth-telling motivates her to dig into the stories behind the stories and seek out the surprises behind the spin.
Bryana has placed in multiple poetry contests in the US and Canada and her poems have been published in several literary journals including the Boston Literary Magazine, Assisi, Time of Singing, Quantum Poetry Magazine, The Mayo Review and Adroit Journal. Her first full-length collection, Having Decided To Stay is available now.
Shannon is an author and award-winning poet who loves philosophy, art, and literature. She also enjoys playing classical piano and composing music. J.R.R. Tolkien, Blaise Pascal, Francis Schaeffer, and Mortimer J. Adler are among her favorite authors. Her other interests include cosmology and astrophysics, as well as history and contemporary politics.
Her debut novel, The Keeper of Nimrah will be available in the Fall 2012.
Read some of Shannon's poetry:
THE WAITING
SEHNZUCHT
THE THINGS THAT NEVER HAPPENED
DAYTIMES OF THIS WORLD
SOLITARY
Why THE HIGH TIDE?
The line is taken from our all-time favorite poem -- G.K. Chesterton's remarkable saga, The Ballad of the White Horse, which deals in fascinating language and rhyme with the the West Saxon king, Alfred "the Great" and his victories over Viking invaders of England.
At one point in the poetic narrative, Chesterton describes the turning-point in a battle thus:
"The high tide!" King Alfred cried."
"The high tide and the turn!
As a tide turns on the tall grey seas,
See how they waver in the trees,
How stray their spears,
how knock their knees,
How wild their watchfires burn!"
We feel strongly that America is fast approaching a point of "high tide" and that due to economic confusion, a failed education system, and the breakdown of the American family structure, our liberties and inalienable rights are being trampled underfoot in a frenzy of fear, illiteracy and uncertainty.
The question is, will there be a turn?
We believe that the much of the population of America is simply in need of awakening, and as young people who are concerned about our own future and that of our children, we want to do whatever we can to help speed that process. This site is about promoting the art of thinking and advocating liberty within the safe bounds of moral precepts. We hope to explore social, political and literary issues through writing and invite you to follow and participate in discussion.
Chesterton's delightful epic continues, and towards the end of the poem, we find this brilliant depiction of modernity:
...though they scatter now and go
In some far century, sad and slow,
I have a vision, and I know
The heathen shall return.
They shall not come with warships,
They shall not waste with brands,
But books be all their eating,
And ink be on their hands.
Not with the humour of hunters
Or savage skill in war,
But ordering all things with dead words,
Strings shall they make of beasts and birds,
And wheels of wind and star.
They shall come mild as monkish clerks,
With many a scroll and pen;
And backward shall ye turn and gaze,
Desiring one of Alfred's days,
When pagans still were men.
...By this sign you shall know them,
The breaking of the sword,
And man no more a free knight,
That loves or hates his lord.
Yea, this shall be the sign of them,
The sign of the dying fire;
And Man made like a half-wit,
That knows not of his sire.
What though they come with scroll and pen,
And grave as a shaven clerk,
By this sign you shall know them,
That they ruin and make dark;
By all men bond to Nothing,
Being slaves without a lord,
By one blind idiot world obeyed,
Too blind to be abhorred;
By terror and the cruel tales
Of curse in bone and kin,
By weird and weakness winning,
Accursed from the beginning,
By detail of the sinning,
And denial of the sin;
By thought a crawling ruin,
By life a leaping mire,
By a broken heart in the breast of the world,
And the end of the world's desire.
