Anne Porter*

Anne Porter (1911—2011) had written poetry all her life, although through the busy years of raising a family she had not sought publication. It wasn’t until after the death of her husband ― the painter Fairfield Porter ― in 1975 that she began to consider poetry to be her new vocation.

Connections with significant American artists, and their encouragement, led to the publication of her 1994 collection, An Altogether Different Language, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Porter added 39 new poems to these, for her second book, Living Things: Collected Poems (2006, Zoland Books).

In a 2010 article in the Christian Century, Ellen F. Davis wrote that Porter is a “direct descendant of the psalmists”; she “clarif[ies] what is at stake in the Psalter: nothing less than the possibility of praising God truly.”

Anne Porter passed away just one month before her 100th birthday.

Noël

When snow is shaken
From the balsam trees
And they’re cut down
And brought into our houses

When clustered sparks
Of many-colored fire
Appear at night
In ordinary windows

We hear and sing
The customary carols

They bring us ragged miracles
And hay and candles
And flowering weeds of poetry
That are loved all the more
Because they are so common

But there are carols
That carry phrases
Of the haunting music
Of the other world
A music wild and dangerous
As a prophet’s message

Or the fresh truth of children
Who though they come to us
From our own bodies
Are altogether new
With their small limbs
And birdlike voices

They look at us
With their clear eyes
And ask the piercing questions
God alone can answer.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about Anne Porter: first post, 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.

Anne Porter*

Anne Porter (1911—2011) has left us two collections of her poetry. When her first book, An Altogether Different Language, was honoured as a finalist for the National Book Award, she was 83 years old. Her second book, Living Things (2006), is her collected poems, so includes the first book in its entirety.

Although she wrote poetry all her life, she rarely found time — being married to accomplished painter Fairfield Porter, and raising their five children. She can often be seen as a model in her husband's paintings, although she saw herself more as an object in the scene than as the subject. Other than entertaining friends — such as painter Jackson Pollack, and poet Frank O'Hara — her social life centred on the local Methodist church. After her husband died in 1975 she moved on from what she had taken as her vocation to another — beginning to write poetry more seriously.

David Shapiro, in his introduction to An Altogether Different Language, describes her as: "...an ecstatic exception, an American religious poet of stature who reminds us that the idea of the holy is still possible for us." He writes, "For Anne Porter, the holy is found in a commitment to Christ the Mediator and his triumph in suffering for a suffering world."

She died in 2011, just a month shy of her 100th birthday.

Listening To The Crows

Infant in a pinewood
Lying in a basket
Not owning anything
Not knowing
A single word

I listened to the shiny
Crows outside my window
As they spoke with one another
In a strange tribal language

And even now
When I wake up early
And overhear the crows
Calling to one another
In the cool floods of the air

The deeps of infancy
Open within me
Their wonder washes me
And instantly

My heart grows light
As light as if the world
Had never fallen.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Anne Porter: first post, third post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest 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.

Anne Porter

Anne Porter is a poet who has not received the attention her verse deserves. She was born in 1911, and is perhaps best known as the widow of the American painter Fairfield Porter. She did not try to have her poetry published until well after Fairfield’s death in 1975. She had dedicated herself to the raising of their five children, and to hospitality. Theirs was a stormy marriage, and Anne Porter had only dabbled with her own art in rare moments of spare time.

David Shapiro, a poet and family friend, encouraged her to seek publication. When her first collection, An Altogether Different Language (1994) appeared, it was a finalist for the National Book Award. Subsequently, several of Porter’s poems have appeared in Commonweal. In 2006 she published Living Things — her collected poems. Her poetry is deeply reflective, and often springs from her own Christian faith.

The Pasture Rose

Rosa humilis
The rose of the pastures
A small peasant rose

Free and for nothing
Gives us her prickles
Her five translucent petals
And her golden eye

And so to thank her
I try to learn
That dialect of silence
Which is her language
And then translate it
Into human words

As if the Lord had told me
Listen to the rose
Be the voice of the rose.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Anne Porter: second post,
third post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the award-winning author of the poetry collections Poiema (Wipf & Stock) and So The Moon Would Not Be Swallowed (Rubicon Press). They are both available at: www.dsmartin.ca