W.H. Auden*

W.H. Auden (1907—1973) is an English poet, who significantly influenced the direction of 20th century poetry. Although raised in the church, he grew into atheism, even as he found poetry to be his vocation. By the late 1930s, however, he faced troubling questions that eventually led him to return to church, and to declare himself a Christian. One such question was, if he’d been given the gift of poetry, who was the giver?

He moved to the United States in 1939 and began teaching at the University of Michigan. In 1948 Auden won the Pulitzer Prize for his book The Age of Anxiety. From 1956 to 1961, he was Professor of Poetry at Oxford.

Auden had for years been a practicing homosexual — even though, even in his pre-conversion days, he saw this as morally wrong. It remained an issue for him for the rest of his life, even as he and his long-time partner, continued to live together in a passionless relationship.

In his latter years, he divided his time between New York City and Austria. He died in Vienna on September 29, 1973. The following poem appeared in 1942.

For The Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio

Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree,
Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes —
Some have got broken — and carrying them up to the attic.
The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,
And the children got ready for school. There are enough
Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week —
Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,
Stayed up so late, attempted — quite unsuccessfully —
To love all of our relatives, and in general
Grossly overestimated our powers. Once again
As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed
To do more than entertain it as an agreeable
Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,
Begging though to remain His disobedient servant,
The promising child who cannot keep His word for long.
The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory,
And already the mind begins to be vaguely aware
Of an unpleasant whiff of apprehension at the thought
Of Lent and Good Friday which cannot, after all, now
Be very far off. But, for the time being, here we all are,
Back in the moderate Aristotelian city
Of darning and the Eight-Fifteen, where Euclid's geometry
And Newton's mechanics would account for our experience,
And the kitchen table exists because I scrub it.
It seems to have shrunk during the holidays. The streets
Are much narrower than we remembered; we had forgotten
The office was as depressing as this. To those who have seen
The Child, however dimly, however incredulously,
The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all.
For the innocent children who whispered so excitedly
Outside the locked door where they knew the presents to be
Grew up when it opened. Now, recollecting that moment
We can repress the joy, but the guilt remains conscious;
Remembering the stable where for once in our lives
Everything became a You and nothing was an It.
And craving the sensation but ignoring the cause,
We look round for something, no matter what, to inhibit
Our self-reflection, and the obvious thing for that purpose
Would be some great suffering. So, once we have met the Son,
We are tempted ever after to pray to the Father;
"Lead us into temptation and evil for our sake."
They will come, all right, don't worry; probably in a form
That we do not expect, and certainly with a force
More dreadful than we can imagine. In the meantime
There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair,
Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem
From insignificance. The happy morning is over,
The night of agony still to come; the time is noon:
When the Spirit must practice his scales of rejoicing
Without even a hostile audience, and the Soul endure
A silence that is neither for nor against her faith
That God's Will will be done, That, in spite of her prayers,
God will cheat no one, not even the world of its triumph.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about W.H. Auden: first post, second post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.

E.E. Cummings*

E.E. Cummings (1894—1962) is considered one of the most important poets of the 20th century. Like my own grandfather, he served in the ambulance corps during WWI. His first collection Tulips and Chimneys appeared in 1923. James Dickey once wrote, "I think that Cummings is a daringly original poet, with more vitality and more sheer, uncompromising talent than any other living American writer."

Although Cummings is known particularly for his innovation, and is associated with modernism, his divergences are primarily built upon traditional poetic structures. His variations often consist of using words in unexpected ways — making it seem like he’s used the wrong word or placed it in the wrong part of the sentence. By doing so he elicits sudden stops and reassessments of language and meaning for the reader.

Rushworth M. Kidder wrote in The Christian Science Monitor:
----“His poetry, in many ways, is the chart of his search for a
----redeemer — for something that would save a world made ugly
----by the two world wars through which he lived, and made sordid
----by the materialism that spawned them. In his early years he
----sought salvation in love poetry. As he progressed he came to
----seek it more and more in a sense of deity, in a supreme source
----of goodness that appears in his poetry as everything from a
----vague notion of nature's beneficence to a vision of something
----very like the Christian's God.”

The following poem — which first appeared in The Atlantic in December 1956 — is clearly a sonnet, although it uses minimal rhyme.

Christmas Poem

from spiraling ecstatically this
proud nowhere of earth’s most prodigious night
blossoms a newborn babe: around him, eyes
— gifted with every keener appetite
than mere unmiracle can quite appease—
humbly in their imagined bodies kneel
(over time space doom dream while floats the whole
perhapsless mystery of paradise)
mind without soul may blast some universe
to might have been, and stop ten thousand stars
but not one heartbeat of this child; nor shall
even prevail a million questionings
against the silence of his mother’s smile—
— whose only secret all creation sings

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about E.E. Cummings: first post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.

Paul Laurence Dunbar*

Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872—1906) is a poet, novelist, and short story writer from Dayton, Ohio. His parents had both been enslaved in Kentucky before the Civil War. When he was just 16, a Dayton newspaper began to publish his poems.

His mother had learned to read in order to help young Paul with his schooling. Her desire was that he might, some day, become a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church — the first independent black denomination in the United States.

He was the only African-American student at his high school, yet became the president of the school’s literary society. One of his closest friends was Orville Wright — who, along with his brother, were early encouragers of Dunbar’s poetry. They presented it to their father who was a bishop in the Church of the Brethren — the denomination that published his first volume, Oak and Ivy (1893).

Paul Laurence Dunbar eventually published twelve poetry collections, eight books of fiction, and he also wrote the lyrics for the first all-African-American musical performed on Broadway — In Dahomey (1903) — which later toured in both the U.S. and the U.K.

Christmas Carol

----Ring out, ye bells!
----All Nature swells
With gladness at the wondrous story,—
----The world was lorn,
----But Christ is born
To change our sadness into glory.

----Sing, earthlings, sing!
----To-night a King
Hath come from heaven's high throne to bless us.
----The outstretched hand
----O'er all the land
Is raised in pity to caress us.

----Come at his call;
----Be joyful all;
Away with mourning and with sadness!
----The heavenly choir
----With holy fire
Their voices raise in songs of gladness.

----The darkness breaks
----And Dawn awakes,
Her cheeks suffused with youthful blushes.
----The rocks and stones
----In holy tones
Are singing sweeter than the thrushes.

----Then why should we
----In silence be,
When Nature lends her voice to praises;
----When heaven and earth
----Proclaim the truth
Of Him for whom that lone star blazes?

----No, be not still,
----But with a will
Strike all your harps and set them ringing;
----On hill and heath
----Let every breath
Throw all its power into singing!

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Paul Laurence Dunbar: first post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.

Charles Causley*

Charles Causley (1917—2003) is a poet of our times, and yet one more in tune, musically, with the past — becoming at first known for his ballads. He was never a poet of the avant garde — and was called by Dana Gioia, in the late 1990’s, “The most unfashionable poet alive.” He lived a quiet life as a teacher at the same school he had attended, never married, and spent many years caring for his aging mother.

He wrote extensively of his native Cornwall, but also of his world travels. He served in the Royal Navy, and, after completing thirty years as a school teacher, accepted invitations to be writer-in-residence at the University of Western Australia, the Footscray Institute of Technology, Victoria, and the School of Fine Arts, Banff, Alberta.

His first poetry collection, Farewell, Aggie Weston, appeared in 1951; he began to also publish books for children beginning with Figure of 8 in 1969.

In 1984, Gioia said, “Causley’s characteristic mode is often the short narrative…” comparing him to William Blake, his “late eighteenth-century master… [who] provided him a potent example of how the poetic outsider can become a seer.” He added, “The visionary mode has its greatest range of expression in Causley’s religious poetry.”

The following poem is from Charles Causley’s small illustrated book of twelve Christmas poems Bring in the Holly (Frances Lincoln, 1992).

Mary’s Song

Your royal bed
Is made of hay
In a cattle-shed.
Sleep, King Jesus,
Do not fear,
Joseph is watching
And waiting near.

Warm in the wintry air
You lie,
The ox and the donkey
Standing by,
With summer eyes
They seem to say:
Welcome, Jesus,
On Christmas Day!

Sleep, King Jesus:
Your diamond crown
High in the sky
Where the stars look down.
Let your reign
Of love begin,
That all the world
May enter in.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Charles Causley: first post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.

Mary of Nazareth

Mary is the earthly mother of Jesus, who by the power of the Holy Spirit, though she was still a virgin, conceived God’s own son. The story in Luke’s account begins with Zacharias — a man in the priestly line — being told by the angel Gabriel that he and his wife, Elizabeth, will have a child in their old age. This child was to be the one to go before the coming of the Christ to prepare the people for the coming of the Lord.

When Gabriel announces to Mary that she is to become the mother of the Messiah, he also reveals that her cousin Elizabeth is miraculously six-months-pregnant.

The following canticle is an exclamation of praise (here in the New King James Version) which was spoken by Mary to her cousin Elizabeth, whom she was visiting in the Judean hill country. It is known as “The Magnificat,” which is Latin for “magnifies” as spoken in the opening line.

The Magnificat

My soul magnifies the Lord,
And my spirit has rejoiced in God my Saviour.
For He has regarded the lowly state of His maidservant;
For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed.
For He who is mighty has done great things for me,
And holy is His name.
And His mercy is on those who fear Him
From generation to generation.
He has shown strength with His arm;
He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He has put down the mighty from their thrones,
And exalted the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
And the rich He has sent away empty.
He has helped His servant Israel,
In remembrance of His mercy,
As He spoke to our fathers,
To Abraham and to his seed forever.

(For those who ponder, like I have —
----How did this navigate its way
----into Luke’s account?
— check out my poem “Magnificat” from my poetry collection Poiema.)

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.