Welcome to my blog! My name is Abram Newcomer, and I've created this site as a place for me to post poetry, articles, and selections. This blog is primarily a space for my poems to see the light of day (whether for good or for ill), to receive feedback from those interested, and, ultimately, to grow in my ability to write.
This is also a space for me to publish articles on the various topics that take up residence in my mind. These may be related to beauty or story, theology or art, or even the mechanics of some poetic form that I find myself interested in.
The Author
To begin, I am a husband, a father, and servant of King Jesus (aka a Christian). I live in upstate New York in a pleasantly small town with a rather ordinary job. For school, I graduated from Grove City College with a BS in Physics and have a keen delight in math and programming. My family and I attend Emmanuel Community Church where we are active members in a beautiful community.
Inexplicably, I have always had a love for poetry. This love stems more from it as a music to be heard than an expression of "raw emotions" as it is often perceived. Because of this, I endeavor to approach poetry, whether through reading or writing, as something delightful to hear before it is good to understand. I have a particular interest in formal poetry, that which is constrained in terms of syllables, stresses, and rhyme. My current favorite poets are Edgar Allan Poe and Tennyson (though there are many more).
"Who made the eyes but I?"
...is taken from George Herbert's "Love (III)" poem. This poem, and this line specifically, has been particularly meaningful in my own understanding and appreciation of the beauty that we find throughout our world. My theory of aesthetics, that which has motivated my building of this blog, condenses down into the following three points:
- God owns all beauty
- God is gracious with his beauty
- All beauty points to Christ
You can read more about this framework and my approach to beauty in the following thesis article.
Abram Newcomer