Marjorie Maddox*

Marjorie Maddox is Professor Emerita of English and Creative Writing at the Lock Haven campus of Commonwealth University, in Pennsylvania. To enumerate just some of her achievements, count the 17 collections of poetry she has published — awards received including the Yellowglen Prize, an Illumination Book Awards Medal, the Foley Poetry Prize, and several chapbook awards — as well as the more than 700 poems, stories, and essays she’s published in journals and anthologies.

Her new book Seeing Things (2025, Wildhouse Publishing) will appear on February 28th. Amid the advance praise for this poetry collection, Jeanne Murray Walker has said, “It’s surely one of the best books I have read this year.” It is a very personal book where Marjorie Maddox finds herself between her mother’s advancing dementia and her daughter’s depression, with troubling memories of her own.

The following poem is a tribute from one friend to another, both of whom are fine poets, one of whom died far too young of inflammatory breast cancer. I have had the privilege of editing poetry collections for both Marjorie Maddox (True, False, None of the Above) and Anya Krugovoy Silver (Second Bloom) as part of the Poiema Poetry Series. This poem first appeared in Presence, and is from Marjorie’s new book Seeing Things.

Photo with Bald Heads

— for Anya Krugovoy Silver and Noah Silver

Or nearly; the baby fuzz is hers,
compliments of the cancer we seldom speak,
though she does—loudly and often—but not now.
Instead, on this matte finish, she calmly cradles
the red-faced infant, his small mouth open,
life from the still-living pulsing.
His soft spot already
sprouts strands she’ll touch
and touch again. See
how she stares out at us
or at God, just this side of the pictureperfect
smile she owns
in the bright flash
of her dark room. See how
she embraces, with her
sleep-deprived, wideawake
eyes, much more
than the omniscient
one-eyed camera
could ever claim. Only she
can reveal her See
this is me there, here, now,
grabbing my own ever after,
the camera clicks and subtle shifts
that follow: her liturgy not of beginnings
or ends, but persistence, holy continuation
into our space of now, brimming
just so with this immortal moment of joy.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Marjorie Maddox: 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.

Nola Garrett

Nola Garrett is a Pittsburgh poet who taught literature and writing for many years at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. Her books include a collection of sestinas The Dynamite Maker’s Mistress (2009), and The Pastor’s Wife Considers Pinball (2013). In this latter collection she has created the persona of the pastor’s wife, whom she imagines as seperate from herself, and yet in relationship with her. Mayapple Press released Garrett's Ledge: New & Selected Poems in 2016.

She is one of the poets whose work appears in Taking Root in the Heart (2023, Paraclete Press) ― a new anthology, of poets whose work has appeared in The Christian Century, edited by Jill Peláez Baumgaertner. Some of the other featured poets include Brett Foster, Julie L. Moore, Luci Shaw, and Anya Silver.

Nola Garrett has also translated Macedonian poetry, along with her daughter-in-law Natasha Garrett.

The Pastor’s Wife and I

The pastor’s wife does not go out to play.
Outside it is Tuesday—merciless and far
from Sunday. She is all righteous carrots
and earnest potatoes. Sometimes she hurts
me with her notions, makes my shoulders droop,
reminds me that Nola’s dreams are a troupe
of untrained monkeys. She recycles
my prayers, drags me away from dark angels.
But, when her hair grew prim and gray, I made
her dye it brown. Then, she chose our second husband,
a good man given to chills—him, I seduced.
Now, like a gun, she holds her watch
to my ear, forces me to write these poems.
It was I who fed her those wild greens,
a salad cut from the last of my pagan
garden’s rue. Her mouth burns
for benedictions and shooting stars.
Into my mirror she stares, worries
I might disappear—her feral woman—
the woman who met Christ at the well.

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.

Anya Krugovoy Silver*

Anya Krugovoy Silver (1968—2018) is a prolific poet, perhaps best known for writing boldly and honestly about her battle with inflammatory breast cancer. She was recently named a Guggenheim fellow for poetry for 2018. I was informed of her death last week, within the first 24 hours. I still feel shock, as she had just been sharing with me about various projects she was working on — including a review of my anthology, Adam, Eve, & the Riders of the Apocalypse, and a new poetry collection.

She participated in the Poiema Poetry reading at the Festival of Faith & Writing in Grand Rapids in April, as pictured below, and will be very missed by the circle of fine poets — including Julie Moore, Barbara Crooker, Tania Runyan, and Marjorie Maddox — who count her as a friend.

The following poem is from her fourth and most-recent book, Second Bloom, which I am honoured to have edited for the Poiema Poetry Series (Cascade Books).

Fourth Advent

On Sunday, I lie beside a friend in bed,
weeping, because she doesn’t want a better place.
How bleak the next life to her grieving sons,
who need their mother here, on earth—
her silly wigs, her marathons, her fingers
deftly pinching dumplings for the feast.
For our sins, it’s said that Christ was born.
The manger’s set up in the church,
my friend sleeps through her steroid pills.
The nights grow still. We wait, Emmanuel.
Merciful one, begotten of woman, understand
how difficult it is to trust that you are kind.

Here is Anya's obituary from Friday's New York Times.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about Anya Krugovoy Silver: 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.

Julie L. Moore*

Julie L. Moore is Associate Professor of English, and the Writing Center Director at Taylor University in Indiana. Her life has recently gone through major changes — a move from Cedarville University in Ohio to Taylor, and more significantly the dissolution of a marriage she was completely committed to. Such an experience naturally impacts the voice of the poet in her new collection, Full Worm Moon. Moore is daring; she's unafraid to share her experience of the darkness, and yet to find hope in the beauty and goodness still present in her life.

I have been privileged to be Julie's editor for both Full Worm Moon, and her previous collection, Particular Scandals, both of which are part of the Poiema Poetry Series (Cascade Books). I am also pleased to have included her poems in both of my recent anthologies — The Turning Aside, and Adam, Eve, & the Riders of the Apocalypse. All of these books are available through Wipf & Stock.

Anya Krugovoy Silver reflects on this new collection: “‘What if the beautiful day is over?’ wonders Julie Moore in her shattering new collection, Full Worm Moon. And indeed, poems about the end of a marriage wring the reader. . . Amidst the world’s disarray, Moore’s playful wit and exultant language ultimately proclaim the persistence of tenderness, peace, and love.”

The following poem is from Full Worm Moon.

Compline

St. Meinrad Archabbey

Forgive me my faults, my faults, my grievous faults,
she recites with the Benedictines preparing
for evening’s darkening shroud—

her husband’s figure standing erect
in her memory, his finger pointing at her,
threatening her, his once-sure vows

now dead, their hazy specters
prowling the hallways of her heart,
their long fingernails raking its walls.

While she chants—words, just words,
& barely sung—the Lord’s Prayer
stumbles onto her tongue: forgive us our trespasses,

as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Not even an hour, nor is it sweet,
this prayer that arrests her,

exorcising the ghosts of promises past,
their furious, furious haunting.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Julie L. Moore: first 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.

Anya Krugovoy Silver*

Anya Krugovoy Silver is a prolific poet who teaches at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. She was named the Georgia Author of the Year/Poetry for 2015. Her two most-recent books are From Nothing (2016) — which like her first two collections is published by Louisiana State University Press — and the recently released Second Bloom, which I assisted with as editor for the Poiema Poetry Series (2017, Cascade Books).

She is also one of the poets featured in my anthology The Turning Aside: The Kingdom Poets Book of Contemporary Christian Poetry — (available here) and through Amazon. Second Bloom is also available on either site.

The following poem is from Second Bloom, and first appeared in Saint Katherine Review.

Holy Saturday, 1945

It was for you, Maria Skobsova,
that Mozart wrote his Requiem.
Bolshevik nun, instead of celebrating
the funeral of Christ, you walked
into the gas chamber at Ravensbrück
in place of another woman.
Instead of trailing the coffin
around the church, you claimed
a place in the line entering hell.
It was for you, Maria Skobsova,
that Mozart fainted in the writing
of his mass, Let them, Lord, pass.
All work remains unfinished:
the composer’s delirious lines,
the forging of baptismal certificates
in your Parisian convent, the censing
of the church on Holy Saturday.
Instead of incense, fumes of Zyclon B
haloed the shorn heads of the dying.
No beaded shrouds for Mozart’s
common grave, for your grey smoke.
Give thanks to the Lord, we sing.
for he is good: for his mercy endures forever.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Anya Krugovoy Silver: 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.

Anya Krugovoy Silver

Anya Krugovoy Silver is the author of two poetry collections The Ninety-Third Name of God (2010), and I Watched You Disappear (2014), both from Louisiana State University Press. She teaches English at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia.

In 2004, when pregnant with her son, Noah, she was diagnosed with a rare, incurable form of inflammatory breast cancer. After years in remission, the cancer returned in 2010. “Although I loathe cancer and wish that I didn’t have it," she has said, "I think it’s made me a better poet because it’s given me a subject matter that I feel compelled to write about,” Even so, living with cancer is only one of the subjects in her new collection. At last report, her cancer was relatively stable.

The following poem first appeared in Image.

Ya-Quddus

-------One of the ninety-nine names of God

Yours is the name of God that comes most easily to me
God holy, pure, perfect as geometry, that which is set apart.
God to whom I pray, though I deserve no favors.
And would you, Ya-Quaddus, whom I simply call God, Lord,
bargain with my heart for life? As other from human as ether,
would you turn your non-self, whole self, toward my voice?
I stand in a circle of women chanting your name.
No, begging your name. Swimming in your strange indigo.
Our voices ring out like copper prayer bowls.
Refined one, breathe yourself into my spoiled body,
my body bitter as rind, which I am trying so hard to love.
Like steam, draw out the stains in my bones and lungs.
Let me feel whatever it is you are (since I can never know),
---------heal me.

Posted with permission of the poet.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Anya Krugovoy Silver: second post, third 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.