Monday, April 28, 2014

Mark A. Noll

Mark A. Noll is a prolific author and historian, whose scholarly work over-shadows his poetry. He is celebrated, according to Time, as one of the most influential evangelicals in America. His 1994 book The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Eerdmans), an analysis of Evangelical anti-intellectualism, has been significant in shaping Evangelical institutions, according to Christianity Today. He taught for 27 years at Wheaton College, and now is on the faculty of Notre Dame.

His poetry collection Seasons of Grace was published by Baker in 1997. The following poem appears in A Widening Light, a poetry anthology compiled by Luci Shaw.

Christ's Crown

The leaves emerge—a growing
garland lying lightly on his head.
The dance of Spring, or resurrection,
quicks his feet; from all directions
caper those he'll call his own.
The sun shines warming down upon
the dancers and their pivot. Only those
up close can smell and see the thick
black-red the flowers nurse upon.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His new poetry collection, Conspiracy of Light: Poems Inspired by the Legacy of C.S. Lewis, is available from Wipf & Stock as is his earlier award-winning collection, Poiema.

Monday, April 21, 2014

Mary Elizabeth Coleridge

Mary Elizabeth Coleridge (1861—1907) is a British writer, who also wrote poetry under the pseudonym Anodos (a character in the George MacDonald novel Phantastes). During her lifetime she was best known for such novels as The King With Two Faces (1897). Today she is more remembered for her verse.

She was raised in a home that encouraged the arts, and which was visited by such writers as Robert Browning and Alfred Tennyson. She is the great-grand-niece of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Mary Elizabeth Coleridge taught literature and grammar for twelve years at Working Women's College, seeing it as her Christian duty to help the poor.

Good Friday In My Heart

GOOD FRIDAY in my heart! Fear and affright!
My thoughts are the Disciples when they fled,
My words the words that priest and soldier said,
My deed the spear to desecrate the dead.
And day, Thy death therein, is changed to night.

Then Easter in my heart sends up the sun.
My thoughts are Mary, when she turned to see.
My words are Peter, answering, ‘Lov’st thou Me?’
My deeds are all Thine own drawn close to Thee,
And night and day, since Thou dost rise, are one.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His new poetry collection, Conspiracy of Light: Poems Inspired by the Legacy of C.S. Lewis, is available from Wipf & Stock as is his earlier award-winning collection, Poiema.

Monday, April 14, 2014

William Everson

William Everson (1912—1994) is a beat poet of the San Francisco Renaissance. When he discovered the poetry of Robinson Jeffers, he dropped out of university and decided to become a poet himself. During WWII he was a conscientious objector, working in lumber camps in Oregon. In 1947 Kenneth Rexroth wrote a bold endorsement of Everson's work that helped launch him as a national poet.

After having recently read Augustine's Confessions, at midnight mass on Christmas Eve 1948 he had a mystical experience, which led to his conversion. He took on the name Brother Antoninus, having become a lay brother with the Dominican order. The three books he wrote during this time are often considered his finest work: The Crooked Lines of God (1959), The Hazards of Holiness (1962) and The Rose of Solitude (1967). The media grew intrigued at the thought of a monk being associated with the Beat movement, and so Everson was in demand for public readings. Dana Gioia says that "Fame proved Everson's undoing." He left the order in 1969 to marry a woman he'd been counselling.

He was poet-in-residence at University of California, Santa Cruz during the '70s and '80s.

The Making of the Cross

Rough fir, hauled from the hills. And the tree it had been,
Lithe-limbed, wherein the wren had nested.
Whereon the red hawk and the grey
Rested from flight, and the raw-head vulture
Shouldered to his feed—that tree went over
Bladed down with double-bitted axe; was snaked with winches;
The wedge split it; hewn with adze
It lay to season toward its use.

So too with the nails: milleniums under the earth,
Pure ore; chunked out with picks; the nail-shape
Struck in the pelt-lunged forge; tonged to a cask,
And the wait against that work.

Even the thorn-bush flourished from afar,
As do the flourishing generations of its kind,
Filling the shallow soil no one wants.
Wind-sown, it cuts the cattle and the wild horse;
It tears the cloth of man, and hurts his hand.

Just as in life the good things of the earth
Are patiently assembled: some from here, some from there;
Wine from the hill and wheat from the valley;
Rain that comes blue-bellied out of the sopping sea;
Snow that keeps its drift on the gooseberry ridge,
Will melt with May, go down, take the egg of the salmon,
Serve the traffic of otters and fishes,
Be ditched to orchards…

So too are gathered up the possibles of evil.

And when the Cross was joined, quartered,
As is the earth; spoked, as is the Universal Wheel—
Those radials that led all unregenerate act
Inward to innocence—it met the thorn-wove Crown;
It found the Scourges and the Dice;
The Nail was given and the reed-lifted Sponge;
The Curse caught forward out of the heart corrupt;
The excoriate Foul, stoned with the thunder and the hail—
All these made up that miscellaneous wrath
And were assumed.

The evil, the wastage and the woe,
As if the earth's old cyst, back down the slough
To Adam's sin-burnt calcinated bones
Rushed out of time and clotted on the Cross.

Off there the cougar
Coughed in passion when the sun went out; the rattler
Filmed his glinty eye, and found his hole.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about William Everson: second post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His new poetry collection, Conspiracy of Light: Poems Inspired by the Legacy of C.S. Lewis, is available from Wipf & Stock as is his earlier award-winning collection, Poiema.

Monday, April 7, 2014

Doug Beardsley

Doug Beardsley has published seven books of poetry, and three books about hockey—Canada's national game. He is also known as an authority on the Holocaust. His new and selected poems, Wrestling with Angels, appeared from Montreal's Signal Editions in 1995. He is married to literary critic and poet, Rosemary Sullivan. Doug Beardsley taught at the University of Victoria from 1981 to 2006.

He collaborated with celebrated Canadian poet Al Purdy on two books. The Man Who Outlived Himself, about John Donne, and No One Else is Lawrence, honouring the poetry of D.H. Lawrence. The Canadian Encyclopedia also notes Beardsley is "a friend and longtime correspondent of Irving Layton," another of Canada's best known poets.

The following poem is from Doug Beardsley's book Kissing the Body of My Lord: the Marie Poems (1982), which is a series of poems written from the point of view of Marie of the Incarnation—the leader of a group of nuns who came to New France (Quebec) to establish the Ursuline Order in 1639.

Gospel Prayer

Often I have seen the many sides of myself down falling
through my fault, my most grievous fault
my feeble faith. Why You came to me I cannot know.

My life wells up. What we do in this world,
how we pass through cannot be called sin.
We live by what we love.

What does it mean to be saved,
what is salvation but knowing all
that You are. No one can see Your face

and not die. In Your sight I searched to find
nothing. I have made a cross here at the centre
of myself and come up empty

From You I draw my final breath
the way the sisters draw water from our frozen well.
Wet me with Your grace, take me with Your love,

will me to be what you want
me to know, my whole life a prayer
of preparation.

All heaven is here, all the saints of the past
collect about me in the cold of this church we chose
to call Kébec. As it was

once more, grant me the Word my brother born,
I am coming home to share with You
life's encircled sorrow, this anguished end.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His new poetry collection, Conspiracy of Light: Poems Inspired by the Legacy of C.S. Lewis, is available from Wipf & Stock as is his earlier award-winning collection, Poiema.