She is one of the poets who is included in my anthology In A Strange Land: Introducing Ten Kingdom Poets (2019, Poiema/Cascade). Her first full-length poetry collection Litany of Flights is the first place winner of the inaugural Paraclete Poetry Prize competition. One of the poems from her new book first appeared in the web journal Poems For Ephesians.
The poetry in this new collection is conspicuously a poetry of place. It's populated with scrub jays, and glows with the ominous approach of California wild fires. The following poem is also from Litany of Flights (2020, Paraclete Press).
Fusion
After Salvador Dali’s Christ of Saint John of the Cross
1.
Uncrucified arms a sculpted triangle,
Not-thorns a crown of chestnut hair,
Splendid. The light of the world, head
bowed, radiates. The pigments flare,
suffuse gold fire:
he cannot be dimmed.
2.
John of the Cross, the friar or fire,
in love with the living flame of love
prayed to be a bonfire
of this Light. Unreservedly he selects
this angle, a wick of a man longing
for his lightning strike.
3.
In Dali’s cosmic dream, Christ
blazes as the nucleus of the universe,
a moment which bears all,
scintillating atoms caught under
the brush, a death reversed by creator.
Gaze on him, resplendent, join
these your atoms to his, and ignite.
Posted with permission of the poet.
This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Laura Reece Hogan: second post.
Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest poetry collection is Ampersand (2018, Cascade). His books are available through Amazon, and Wipf & Stock, including the anthologies The Turning Aside, and Adam, Eve, & the Riders of the Apocalypse.
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