Loss of a Vital Skill
Reviving Our Fluency in Poetic Language
As I was walking up the stairs of Jabal Amman hill, I met some thistle-gatherers. Amman, Jordan, where I live, is a city of hills—to get anywhere you have to walk up and down hundreds of steps—and beside this particular flight of steps, in a steep little vacant lot, a man and a woman were gathering weeds. I paused and called out over the stairway-wall, “What are you gathering?”
They both smiled broadly, and the man walked over to the wall. “Khorfeysh!” he told me, holding up a leaf of milk thistle. Deftly—with bare fingers—he stripped off the prickly leaf-blade and proffered the midrib to me. “Try it!”
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
Daniel Witt is a writer and English teacher living in Amman, Jordan.
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on Poetry from the online archives
more from the online archives
35.2—Mar/Apr 2022
on Fatigued Christians Deciding to Engage the Culture by Keith Lowery
8.4—Fall 1995
The Demise of Biblical Preaching
Distortions of the Gospel and its Recovery by Donald G. Bloesch
28.1—January/February 2015
on State Impositions & Church Acquiescence by Stephen Baskerville
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
