Abstract

In "Who the Meek Are Not," poet Mary Karr thinks it unlikely that peasants, serfs, and the socially low will inherit the earth. Puzzling out that beatitude, she instead conjures the image of "a great stallion at full gallop / in a meadow, who—/at his master's voice—seizes up to a stunned / but instant halt."1 We are then invited to picture his muscles rippling even when at rest, to see in that rippling an immense power purposely held back. Blessed are the meek, for they restrain what they could unleash.If this is not exactly the theme of Steven Connor's book on unappreciated dispositions, it comes close. In his revaluation of those quieter virtues that decline to speak their names, he draws a link between...