Vittoria Colonna*

Vittoria Colonna (1492—1547) is an Italian poet, who was also an influential patron of the arts. She is the first woman to have published a poetry collection under her own name. After her husband died at war, she wrote many love poems to his memory which became popular.

During the 1530s she became active in religious reform, and began writing love sonnets addressed to God — which became even more influential. She pushed the traditional Petrarchan form in a new direction to express her relationship with Christ. The first edition of her Rime was published in 1538, and appeared in twelve further editions before her death.

In 1531, Colonna commissioned Titian to paint a large portrait of Mary Magdalene — one of the figures of female spirituality from scripture and early church history she selected as role models for herself and other Christian women.

She became close friends with Michelangelo — influencing his poetry, and sharing the common conviction that faith was to be experienced personally, rather than merely dictated by the church. They both believed that one of the best ways to enhance such faith was through art. She commissioned his black chalk drawing of the Virgin Mary, Pietà for Vittoria Colonna (1540) for her personal meditation.

The following translation is by Jan Zwicky and appears in in Burl Horniachek’s anthology, To Heaven’s Rim: The Kingdom Poets Book of World Christian Poetry.

Sonnets for Michelangelo — 41

When to the one he most loved, Jesus
opened what was in his heart,
when he spoke of the betrayal, the plot
that was to come, it broke
the heart inside his friend. In silence—
for the others must not know—
the tears cut gutters in his face.
But seeing this,
his master held him to his breast,
and before the ditch of pain
had closed inside, had closed his eyes
in sleep.
No eagle ever flew as high
as the divine one in the moment of that falling.
This was God, who was himself alone,
both light and mirror. His rest
true rest, his sleep
true sleep, and peace.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Vittoria Colonna: 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.

James Matthew Wilson

James Matthew Wilson is the founding director of the MFA program in Creative Writing at the University of Saint Thomas in Texas, and poet-in-residence of the Benedict XVI Institute which is centred in San Diego — although he and his family live in Michigan. He is influential as a poet, critic, and scholar, particularly in Catholic and conservative circles. He regularly contributes to such magazines as First Things, The New Criterion, National Review, and The American Conservative.

Among his fourteen published books are several poetry collections; his latest is Saint Thomas and the Forbidden Birds (Word on Fire, 2024). As a poet he is clearly a formalist, which is evident in his roles as Poetry Editor for Modern Age magazine, and as Series Editor for Colosseum Books.

The following poem first appeared in the 2024 issue of Presence.

A Dedication to My Wife
----of a book of Anne Bradstreet's poems

If ever two were one, then why not we?
We have begot two in our unity
And find these incarnation of our love
Whatever other mercy from above
Rains down on me—the joys of work, the ease
Of sunshine, peace in thought—may He still please
To let me share these goods with you; or, better,
To let us know them in one heart, our letter
Sign with one name, and find in every hour
Not failing moments but a lating power
That, met with suffering or trial, endures,
Like cellared wine grow fine as it matures.

This post was suggested by my friend Burl Horniachek.

Posted with permission of the poet.

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.

Venantius Fortunatus

Venantius Fortunatus (c. 530—c. 609) is a Latin poet who was born in the northeast of what is now Italy, and was educated at Ravenna. He later travelled as a wandering minstrel, and as a pilgrim to worship at the shrine of St Martin in Tours and other shrines. It is believed that his intent in moving to Metz, in what is now Northeast France, was to become a poet at the Merovingian Court.

Fortunatus performed a celebration poem for a royal wedding in 566, and soon found patrons among the nobility and bishops. Around 576 he was ordained, and by around 600 he became the Bishop of Poitiers.

The following poem was translated in the 19th century from the Latin by Edward Caswall. It appears in Burl Horniachek’s anthology, To Heaven’s Rim: The Kingdom Poets Book of World Christian Poetry.

Sing, My Tongue, the Saviour’s Glory

Sing, my tongue, the Saviour's glory;
Tell His triumph far and wide;
Tell aloud the famous story
Of His body crucified;
How upon the cross a victim,
Vanquishing in death, He died.

Eating of the tree forbidden,
Man had sunk in Satan’s snare,
When our pitying Creator did
This second tree prepare;
Destined, many ages later,
That first evil to repair.

Such the order God appointed
When for sin He would atone;
To the serpent thus opposing
Schemes yet deeper than his own;
Thence the remedy procuring,
Whence the fatal wound had come.

So when now at length the fullness
of the sacred time drew nigh,
Then the Son, the world’s Creator,
Left his Father’s throne on high;
From a virgin’s womb appearing,
Clothed in our mortality.

All within a lowly manger,
Lo, a tender babe He lies!
See his gentle Virgin Mother
Lull to sleep his infant cries!
While the limbs of God incarnate
‘Round with swathing bands she ties.

Thus did Christ to perfect manhood
In our mortal flesh attain:
Then of His free choice He goeth
To a death of bitter pain;
And as a lamb, upon the altar of the cross,
For us is slain.

Lo, with gall His thirst He quenches!
See the thorns upon His brow!
Nails His tender flesh are rending!
See His side is opened now!
Whence, to cleanse the whole creation,
Streams of blood and water flow.

Faithful Cross! Above all other,
One and only noble Tree!
None in foliage, none in blossom,
None in fruit thy peers may be;
Sweetest wood and sweetest iron!
Sweetest Weight is hung on thee!

Lofty tree, bend down thy branches,
To embrace thy sacred load;
Oh, relax the native tension
Of that all too rigid wood;
Gently, gently bear the members
Of thy dying King and God.

Tree, which solely wast found worthy
The world’s Victim to sustain.
Harbor from the raging tempest!
Ark, that saved the world again!
Tree, with sacred blood anointed
Of the Lamb for sinners slain.

Blessing, honour, everlasting,
To the immortal Deity;
To the Father, Son, and Spirit,
Equal praises ever be;
Glory through the earth and heaven
To Trinity in Unity. Amen

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.

Yared

Yared (505—571) is an Ethiopian composer, hymn writer, and priest, who was a leader in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church which venerates him as a saint.

He is renowned for having established his own system of musical notation, which predates the familiar European system, and is still in use today.

One of the important festivals within the Ethiopian Church is Meskel, where they celebrate the reputed discovery of the true cross by Queen Helena, the mother of Constantine. The story goes that while she was seeking for the Holy Sepulchre, she prayed for assistance, and was directed to where the cross was buried by the smoke from a fire. What interests me most here, is not the artifact’s authenticity, but the extent to which Yared and his contemporaries valued it, because they celebrated the work Christ did on the cross.

The following selection from Yared’s “The Finding of the True Cross” was translated from the Ge’ez by Burl Horniachek with Ralph Lee, and appears in Burl Horniachek’s anthology, To Heaven’s Rim: The Kingdom Poets Book of World Christian Poetry (2023, Poiema/Cascade).

From The Finding of the True Cross

Look and proclaim, how good
it is that men have obtained
this exalted wood.
Brief gold was not the currency
----to purchase back man’s soul,
--------but with his precious blood
------------he chose to pay that toll.
The cross shines out.
The cross shines out and is so bright
that earthly kings do trail its light;
the thing that seemed so dark and damp
is now the world’s great guiding lamp.
The cross’s feast takes place
----both high in heaven’s face
and low upon the earth.
----We know its worth,
prize and praise it, with no dearth
----of trust. It is man’s rebirth
and help in need.

Posted with permission of Burl Horniachek.

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.

Jesse Keith Butler

Jesse Keith Butler is an Orthodox Christian poet who has recently published his first collection, The Living Law, with Darkly Bright Press. He lives in Ottawa with his wife and two children.

By day, Jesse is a program evaluator for the Government of Canada, assessing the effectiveness of government programs in relation to their objectives. He previously did a PhD in education, during which time he published widely in academic journals on the topics of citizenship education, educational policy, and Indigenous education. Jesse and his wife also have a long history of working with Indigenous communities, including two summers spent working with a Christian organization on a First Nations reserve in northern Ontario.

A.M. Juster has written, "With this debut collection, Jesse Butler is joining the growing group of Canadian poets who are taking poetry away from the academy and returning it to a broader audience of poetry lovers. Butler's poems are thoughtful, well-crafted, and a pleasure to read."

The following poem has previously appeared in Solum Journal, and is from The Living Law (2024, Darkly Bright Press).

Villanelle of the Elect

So Jacob was loved, and Esau was hated.
It seems like a bit of an uneven deal.
You won’t stop creating this world you’ve created.

If Esau had hope it was quickly deflated.
The subtle supplanter had him by the heel.
But Jacob was loved, and Esau was hated.

Outside of the city, with heaven ungated
and rungs reaching down, Jacob glimpsed what was real—
you still were creating this world you’d created.

Poor Esau found Jacob’s thin soup overrated
when robbed of his birthright for one meatless meal.
Yet Jacob was loved, and Esau was hated.

You grappled with Jacob. He grunted and grated
while you danced, delighted to meet with such zeal
as you kept creating this world you’d created.

There’s purpose in life but the path isn’t fated.
You unspool these urgings we don’t even feel.
And Jacob was loved. And Esau was hated.
You keep on creating this world you’ve created.

Posted with permission of the poet.

This post was first suggested by my friend Burl Horniachek.

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.

Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg*

Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg (1633—1694) is an Austrian whose sonnets have much in common with the seventeenth century English Metaphysical poets.

When I first posted about her back in 2017, I mentioned that three Canadian poets whom I know and respect — Sarah Klassen, Sally Ito, and Joanne Epp — had been working together on translating some of Greiffenberg’s work. Little did I know that this project would grab hold of them to the extent that they would produce a book-length manuscript.

That book is Wonder-Work: Selected Sonnets of Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg, and consists of their new translations of 65 poems — many of which have not previously been translated into English. The title is well-suited as it reflects the compound nouns of the original German, and the sense of awe that runs through these poems.

The poet-translators had to make significant decisions in bringing Greiffenberg’s sonnets into English. Because conveying her meaning and the beauty of her images was most important, they chose the poetic dance of alliteration and assonance, rather than trying to match the rhyme-scheme of the original German sonnets. One of the sonnets begins, “Oh you whose wisdom dews the stars, the source / of destiny—and yet without their work / your art alone brings everything to pass…”

The English translation of the following poem first appeared in The Polyglot; it is included in Burl Horniachek’s fine anthology To Heaven’s Rim: The Kingdom Poets Book of World Christian Poetry (Poiema/Cascade, 2023) and is, of course, from Wonder-Work: Selected Sonnets of Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg (CMU Press, 2024).

On the Holy Spirit’s Wondrous Consolation

Refreshment from on high, heart-quickening breath!
----You heavenly balm! In suffering, Joy-Spirit
----that comforts while defying death and trouble,
----and calls forth in us joy more plenteous than sorrow.
O let my life behold your heart-illumination!
----Let misery be mocked while you are ever praised,
----and I by you sustained with health and strength.
----Waft over troubled waters, as when the world began.
You good God-Spirit, pain-conqueror, overthrow
----the soul-deceiver; let not his heart-tormenting fire
----consume faith's oil in my lamp;
let not his torturous grappling-hooks ensnare me.
----Bedew my rose, O sweet soul’s dew, so she
----may rise up, by your cooling strength, through fire.

Posted with permission of the translators

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg: first post.

A launch event will take place — with Joanne Epp, Sally Ito, & Sarah Klassen — in the Atrium of McNally Robinson Booksellers, Grant Park, Winnipeg, at 7:00 pm on Friday, January 19th. Watch the Live Stream on YouTube , or view it after the fact.

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.

Pamela Mordecai

Pamela Mordecai is a Jamaican-born poet, who migrated to Canada in 1993. She has authored eight collections of poetry, five children’s books, a novel, and a collection of short fiction. A video collection of her poetry was produced in 2015 at Memorial University, St. John’s, Newfoundland. A Fierce Green Place: New and Selected Poems appeared from New Directions in 2022.

She often writes in Jamaican Creole, particularly for her New Testament trilogy , which has been written and published in reverse order. Dionne Brand said of the first section de book of Joseph (2022), "Pamela Mordecai is a wonder, a teller and a burnisher, working the syntax, rhetorical devices and pragmatics of Jamaican language to its perfection."

The second book is de book of Mary: a performance poem (2015), and the final book de man: a performance poem, written as an eyewitness account of Christ’s crucifixion, appeared in 1995.

I met Pamela Mordecai at a literary event presented by Imago at the University of Toronto in September. She was accompanied by her friend the St. Lucian poet Jane King.

Martin Mordecai, Pamela’s husband of 54 years ― a writer, TV producer, civil servant, and diplomat ― passed away in 2021. Pamela Mordecai now lives in Toronto.

The following poem was recently reprinted in the Humber Literary Review and comes from de book of Mary.

Archangel Explains

Archangel, him smile wide, take a next
sip, give out, “Do not fret, holy one.
For de Spirit shall seize you. De power
of De-One-Who-Run-Things take you in.
Too besides, dem will call de pikni
you going bear ‘Son of God’.
El Shaddai going give him David throne
for David is him forefather long time aback.
And him going reign over de tribe
of Jacob for all time to come,
and him kingdom going last forever.
It never going end.
Not just dat. Hear dis news!
Your cousin Eliza who bad mind
people take to make sport and call mule
she making baby too – gone six month

already never mind she well old,
for Jehovah, him do what him please.”
As for whether is El Shaddai send
me to you, if you think to yourself,
you will know if is so.

Posted with permission of the poet.

This post was first suggested by my friend Burl Horniachek.

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.

Gwenallt

Gwenallt (1899―1968) is a Welsh poet, born as David James Jones, who adopted Gwenallt as his bardic name which he created “by transposing Alltwen, the name of the village across the river from his birthplace”. At age 16 he joined the Marxist Labour Party, and during the latter part of WWI was imprisoned as a conscientious objector. After the war he studied Welsh, and by 1927 was appointed Lecturer in the Welsh Department of University College Wales, Aberystwyth.

He outgrew the political idealism of his youth, but also faced disillusionment with other structures. He was passed over, time and again, for a professorship by college authorities, and he was unsettled in his search for a spiritual home ― reacting strongly to what was said or done by church leadership. He was raised as a Nonconformist, flirted with Catholicism, became a member of the Church of Wales for many years, but ended his days as a member of a Methodist Chapel at Aberystwyth.

Gwenallt wrote his poetry in Welsh, and the first of his five poetry collections, Ysgubau’r Awen (1939), was published to much critical acclaim; in time he became a major voice in Welsh poetry. He also eventually wrote two novels, although his poetry remains more influential. He is noteworthy for his passionate, spiritual voice, his precise local imagery, and the universal significance of his themes.

Here are two English versions of one of Gwenallt’s poems ― which I include for comparison, and to demonstrate how the translating of poetry is akin to writing the poem afresh, hopefully as close to the spirit of the original as possible. The first version was translated by Patrick Thomas ― from Sensuous Glory: The Poetic Vision of D. Gwenallt Jones (2000, Canterbury Press); and the second is translated by Rowan Williams, from his book Headwaters (2008, Perpetua Press). Patrick Thomas and Rowan Williams have both granted me permission to include their translations.

Sin

When we strip off every kind of dress,
The cloak of respectability and wise knowledge,
The cloth of culture and the silks of learning;
The soul's so bare, so uncleanly naked:
The primitive mud is in our poor matter,
The beast's slime is in our marrow and our blood,
The bow's arrow is between our finger and thumb
And the savage dance is in our feet.
As we wander through the original, free forest,
We find between the branches a piece of Heaven,
Where the saints sing anthems of grace and faith,
The Magnificat of His salvation;
We raise our nostrils up like wolves
Baying for the Blood that redeemed us.

Sin

Take off the business suit, the old-school tie,
The gown, the cap, drop the reviews, awards,
Certificates, stand naked in your sty,
A little carnivore, clothed in dried turds.
The snot that slowly fills our passages
Seeps up from hollows where the dead beasts lie;
Dumb stamping dances spell our messages,
We only know what makes our arrows fly.
Lost in the wood, we sometimes glimpse the sky
Between the branches, and the words drop down
We cannot hear, the alien voices high
And hard, singing salvation, grace, life, dawn.
Like wolves, we lift our snouts: Blood, blood, we cry,
The blood that bought us so we need not die.

This post was suggested by my friend Burl Horniachek.

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.

A.F. Moritz

A.F. Moritz has authored more than twenty poetry collections, including Rest on the Flight into Egypt (1999, Brick Books), The Sparrow: Selected Poems (2018, Ananasi) and As Far As You Know (2020, Anansi). From March 2019 until May of 2023 he served as Poet Laureate of Toronto. He teaches Creative Writing at the University of Toronto, and in 2009 he received the Griffin Poetry Prize.

When CBC Radio asked him why he writes poetry, and why it is significant, he spoke of his childhood journey with poetry, and continued,
-----"As I got a little older, I realized and prized that I’d been
-----fascinated by poetry from much earlier, from well before I could
-----read. I connected Poe and the other poetry I soon was reading to
-----the poetry I had heard, from nursery rhymes adults read me out of
-----books, to children’s traditional street and play rhymes, to the
-----Catholic liturgy which, of course, contains some of the world’s
-----great poetry. For instance, I can remember clearly that the
-----suffering servant song of Isaiah was both searing and dear to me
-----from before my ability to read, probably from a couple of years
-----before, although times are impossible to recall precisely in that
-----period of life just emerging from the childhood amnesia. Anyway,
-----this poem has always remained as a chief basis of my work, as
-----something that I remember constantly, and probably don’t have to
-----'remember': by now it simply is me. So too with the psalms, passages
-----of Paul, and the like."

The following poem is from his collection The New Measures (2012, Anansi).

The Grand Narrative

The waters of the pool were troubled
each day, but only at the certain hour,
evening, when the angel entered―
when light, newly reaching
the beginning of its fading,
was most powerful, least dazzling, wholly
absorbed in colors. The water
cured every sickness in the first who touched it
and the blind man stretched out close by
and no one ever told him
the turbulence had come and the city
was darkened, the end had passed
but not yet fallen. No one
so much as kicked him so he tipped
into the boiling, into the seeming
the flat dusty pond was about to be
a fountain. Teacher, he shouted once,
when he heard the teacher had come,
there’s no one to carry me to the pool,
and the man answered him: Here
Here is an inexhaustible
troubling. It’s yours now. You can
see and walk. Remember me
next time you’re lame, blind, gnarled,
stuck in anemia or filth. Enter
the memory and see
the world shine
hating you, filling you
with beasts and birds, trees and flowers,
the growing distant
gabble of many friends, and walk
to unjust death in this city, this
happiness of living and moving again.

Posted with permission of the poet.

This post was suggested by my friend Burl Horniachek.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about A.F. Moritz: 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.

Sally Ito*

Sally Ito is a poet and writer who has four poetry collections, including her new book Heart’s Hydrography (2022, Turnstone). She is an adjunct Professor of English at Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg.

Rowan Williams (the former Archbishop of Canterbury) has written about this collection, “Winter landscapes, water landscapes, the landscapes of family love and frustration, and of the soul’s seasons―all these are mapped by Sally Ito with deep compassion and rich tactile imagery. Everyday perceptions made radiant.”

Sally has recently teamed up with Sarah Klassen and Joanne Epp to translate poetry from Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg for Burl Horniachek’s anthology To Heaven’s Rim: The Kingdom Poets Book of World Christian Poetry (2023, Poiema/Cascade).

The following poem Sally Ito wrote for me when I was seeking poetry related to the Biblical Stations of the Cross for Imago’s Toronto Arts Exhibition “Crossings: A Journey to Easter” which was presented in 2022. It is also the final poem in Heart’s Hydrography.

The Cross Speaks

I was a tree once, and of one body
that grew upward into the sky
and downward into the soil.

Many were the seasons of my life
until it ended with the ax.

Only the human would make out of my death
something out of the death of their God,
my dead body carried by him
who will die for them.

Still, I will lift him, and become the tree I once was
and I will bear him, as he bore me
and be planted once more
in the dark soil of my Creator’s nurturing.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Sally Ito: 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.

John of Damascus

John of Damascus (c. 675―749) is a Byzantine Greek monk, priest, theologian and poet ― born and raised in Damascus, but who lived most of his life in monasteries near Jerusalem.

He is particularly known for his defense of the use of icons. Images of Christ and of the saints were, and continue to be, central to Orthodox worship. This was against the iconoclastic campaigns Emperor Leo III started in 726. John of Damascus argued, that although the Old Testament prohibited graven images, when Christ came in the flesh as “the image of the invisible God” such restrictions were no longer applicable. His writings played a significant role during the Second Council of Nicaea (787), which convened to settle this dispute.

The following is an excerpt from Christopher Childers' translation of “Paschal Canon” which can be read in its entirety in the new anthology To Heaven’s Rim: The Kingdom Poets Book of World Christian Poetry, Beginnings to 1800, in English Translation, which was edited by Burl Horniachek. I am fortunate enough to have worked alongside Burl in the completion of this significant work.

from Paschal Canon

The day of resurrection, may all God’s people brim
------------------with light. The Lord’s Passover!
From out of death to life, from Earth to heaven’s rim,
------------------we’re borne by the Prime Mover
our God Christ, as we sing out his victory hymn.

May all our senses be perfected; may we see,
------------------in resurrection’s sheer
untouchable brightness, Christ the Lightning, and may we
------------------perceive His voice, and hear
His ringing welcome, while we hymn His victory.

Let fitting celebrations exalt the smiling skies;
------------------let raptures seize the earth.
Let all the seen and unseen cosmos melt in cries
------------------of universal mirth.
The transport of the ages, Christ, awakes to rise.

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.

Anna Akhmatova*

Anna Akhmatova (1889—1966) is a Russian poet who lived most of her life in Saint Petersburg. Her first poetry collection, Evening (1912), established her as a significant poet, and her next two books Rosary (1914) and White Flock (1917) continued to build her reputation.

After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Akhmatova chose to remain in Russia even as other writers were fleeing to the West. Requiem, which she primarily wrote between 1935 and 1940, at first was about the arrest of her common-law husband Nikolay in 1935, but then became even more about the arrest of their son Lev in 1938 and his subsequent trial and sentencing.

The following is the tenth section from Requiem as translated by Stephen Capas. It appeared in the literary journal Cardinal Points in 2021.

Crucifixion

1

Don’t weep for me, Mother,
As I lie in my grave.

Choirs of angels hymned the glorious hour,
Dissolved in flame, the heavens glowed overhead.
“Why hast though forsaken me, my Father?”
And “Mother, do not weep for me,” he said.

2

Magdalen sobbed and wrung her hands in anguish,
The disciple whom he loved was still as stone.
But no one dared to look toward the place where
The Mother stood in silence, all alone.

1940-43

This post was suggested by my friend Burl Horniachek.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Anna Akhmatova: 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.

David Scott

David Scott (1947―2022) is an English poet and Anglican priest who gained attention by winning the 1978 Sunday Times/BBC Poetry Competition. This helped lead to the first of his six poetry books, A Quiet Gathering, which won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 1986. He is best known for his poetry, but he also wrote several plays for the National Youth Music Theatre with Jeremy James Taylor, and six books about the Christian faith, including, Moments of Prayer, and The Mind of Christ.

He was vicar of Torpenhow and Allhallows in Cumbria, then Rector of St Lawrence, was an honorary canon of Winchester Cathedral, and an honorary fellow of the University of Winchester. David Scott also served as poetry reviewer for The Church Times.

In 2008 the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, conferred a Lambeth Degree Doctorate of Letters (DLitt) on him “in recognition of his contribution to deepening the spiritual life of the Church through his standing as a poet and his teaching ministry…”

In 2010 David Scott took an early retirement, due to ill health. He died this past October.

The following poem is from Beyond the Drift ― New and Selected Poems, (2014, Bloodaxe Books).

Retirement

I’ll go into a wood, a barn, a room
and not come out until my heart
is settled back on God the pivot,
I the balance. A chance for poise
to get my giddy head becalmed
into stillness that absorbs. I wonder what?
Things I dare not write for fear
they might be so, the illness worse,
or better.
I’ll enter into converse with my soul
and hope again to learn a love for others,
and of others love for me.
To stop doing one thing, and discover
what refuses to be laid aside.
Nothing new perhaps; just former things
attentively revived.

This post was suggested by my friend Burl Horniachek.

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.

Pantycelyn

Pantycelyn (1717―1791) is the bardic name taken by the Welsh poet and hymnist William Williams. He was one of the leaders of the 18th-century Welsh Methodist Revival, and known as “The Sweet Songster” because of his many influential hymns written in the Welsh language. The statue of Pantycelyn pictured may be found in Cardiff City Hall.

Another poetic genre, besides hymn-writing, favoured by William Williams was the elegy; he wrote several elegies in memory of Methodist leaders and other well-known Christians. He also wrote original prose works, and translated others from English.

To English-speakers his best-known hymn is “Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah” which is often used on official state occasions including at the funeral of Princess Diana, and at the weddings of both of her sons. Outside of church use, it is commonly referred to as the “Welsh Rugby Hymn,” because it is frequently sung by the crowd at rugby matches in Wales.

The following poem was translated from the Welsh by Tony Conran (who was profiled here two years ago). It is included in the forthcoming anthology To Heaven's Rim: The Kingdom Poets Book of World Christian Poetry, Beginnings to 1800 ― edited by Burl Horniachek.

The Love of God

Always across the distant hills
I’m looking for you yet;
Come, my beloved, it grows late
And my sun has almost set.

Each and every love I had
Turned unfaithful to me at length;
But a sweet sickness has taken me
Of a love of mightier strength.

A love the worldly don’t recognise
For its virtue or its grace,
But it sucks my liking and desire
From every creature’s face.

O make me faithful while I live,
And aimed level at thy praise,
Let no object under the sky
Take away my gaze!

But pull my affections totally
From falsities away
To the one object that keeps faith
And shall for ever stay.

Nothing under the blue air now
Would make me want to live
But only that I’ll know the joys
That the courts of God can give.

Relish and appetite have died
For the flowers of the world that fall:
Only a vanity without ebb
Is running through it all.

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.

Jane Greer

Jane Greer is the author of two poetry books, whose publications are separated by more than thirty years. Bathsheba on the Third Day (1986) and her new collection Love like a Conflagration (2020).

She founded Plains Poetry Journal in 1981 ― a literary publication dedicated to promoting the poetry of the New Formalism ― which she edited until 1993. She has taught writing at Bismarck State College, and has worked for two decades as a civil servant for the state of North Dakota.

It was while sitting in a New Orleans café, that the idea for a new poem struck her, which led to Greer’s return to steadily writing verse. The following poem first appeared in First Things.

This Blue

The way the light of you
finds me through the hot,
bright unnamable blue,

that square of ancient glass
in the high apse window,
backlit at mid-day Mass:

blue should not feel like burning,
like a blazing lighthouse lamp,
so here I am, learning

this color like a child
too young for words: this blue
to seek me, self-exiled;

this blue to find me, hiding;
this blue to hold me, helpless,
in your cool fire abiding.

Just a small shard, this blue,
yet I am pierced and pinned.
For me, today, no credo: only you.

Posted with permission of the poet.

This post was suggested by my friend Burl Horniachek.

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.

A.M. Juster

A.M. Juster is a champion of formal verse in his work as a poet, as a translator, and as a critic. His tenth book of poetry is Wonder and Wrath (2020, Paul Dry Books). He also serves as Poetry Editor for Plough Quarterly.

As a translator he has brought to English Latin works by Petrarch, Horace, Tibullus, St. Aldelm, and Maximianus, as well as a book-length collection of John Milton’s Latin elegies. He has also translated poems from French, Italian, Chinese, and the east African language Oromo.

In 2010, Paul Mariani revealed, in the pages of First Things, A.M. Juster’s alternate identity. He is Michael James Astrue, who at the time was the Commissioner of the Social Security Administration in Washington, D.C. Mariani pointed out the subtle hint in Juster’s poem “Candid Headstone”―
-------Here lies what’s left of Michael Juster,
-------A failure filled with bile and bluster.
-------Regard the scuttlebutt as true.
-------Feel free to dance; most others do.

Juster is a Catholic, who is celebrated for his wit and finely-crafted light verse. The title of his 2016 collection, Sleaze & Slander: New and Selected Comic Verse, 1995-2015, makes this clear enough. His wit and creativity also comes through in his parody The Billy Collins Experience (2016, Kelsay Books).

Cancer Prayer

Dear Lord,

Please flood her nerves with sedatives
and keep her strong enough to crack a smile
so disbelieving friends and relatives
can temporarily sustain denial.

Please smite that intern in oncology
who craves approval from department heads.
Please ease her urge to vomit; let there be
kind but flirtatious men in nearby beds.

Given her hair, consider amnesty
for sins of vanity; make mirrors vanish.
Surround her with forgiving family
and nurses not too numb to cry. Please banish

trite consolations; take her in one swift
and gentle motion as your final gift.

Posted with permission of the poet.

This post was suggested by my friend Burl Horniachek.

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.

Maryann Corbett

Maryann Corbett is a Saint Paul, Minnesota Poet who grew up in northern Virginia. She earned her doctorate from the University of Minnesota, and worked for more than thirty years as a language specialist for the Minnesota legislature. Corbett has authored five full-length poetry books: the most recent being In Code (2020, Able Muse). Her third book received the Richard Wilbur Award, which honours metrical poetry.

The following poem was first published in First Things, has also appeared at Versedaily, and is from her book Mid Evil (2014, University of Evansville Press).

Prophesying to the Breath

I'm tired of it, this labored breathing. Tired
of phlegm and coughing and the fight for air,
bent double on the landing of a stair,
in wheezing gasps where nothing is inspired.
Tired of the silence next to me in bed
when measured snoring suddenly goes still;
of counting a nervous one, two, three until
it starts itself again. Tired of my dread.
I want it back: the confidence in air—
ruah, pneuma, spiritus—the breath
that stirs the vocal folds of nuns in choir.
The breath that Is. The sound of something there
guiding this gusty round of birth and death.
The rush of driving wind. The tongues of fire.

This post was suggested by my friend Burl Horniachek.

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 Amazon, and Wipf & Stock.

Pennar Davies

Pennar Davies (1911―1996) is a Welsh poet who in his latter, most-productive years exclusively wrote in the Welsh language. He was educated at University of Wales, Oxford, and Yale; he became a Congregational minister in Cardiff, and subsequently a professor of Church History. He took on the name Pennar, which is a stream running through Mountain Ash where he was born. He authored four poetry collections and four further books. His hymn “All Poor Men and Humble” (translated by Katharine Emily Roberts) appears in eleven hymnals. There are also several biographical books available about him, including a biography by Dawn Dweud, Saintly Enigma by Ivor Thomas Rees, and his autobiography Diary of a Soul.

He was a member of the separatist political party Plaid Cymru, became the Literary Editor for The Welsh Nationalist paper where he published work by R.S. Thomas, and was a significant advocate for Welsh-language broadcasting.

His son Dr. Meirion Pennar followed in his father’s footsteps, becoming a leading Welsh language academic, translator and poet.

When I Was a Boy

When I was a boy there was a wonderous region
the other side of the mountain:
the sun livelier there, in its prime;
the moon gentler, its veil of enchantment
resting chastely on hill and dale;
the night like a sacrament,
the dawn like young love,
the afternoon like sliding on the Sea of Glass,
the evening like a respite after mowing;
the faces of ordinary folk like china dishes
and their voices like the soliloquy of countless waters
between the source and the sea,
and the people sons and daughters of old,
princes and countesses in the court;
and all the lines of nature, thought, society
and talent and will and sacrifice
and the saving and the wretchedness and the peace,
all the lines of venture, claim compassion,
meeting at eye level there
in an unvanishing vanishing point
called Heaven
and all on the other side of the mountain
in Merthyr, Troed-y-rhiw and Aber-fan
before I crossed the mountain
and I saw.

This post was suggested by my friend Burl Horniachek.

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 Amazon, and Wipf & Stock.

Bedřich Bridel

Bedřich Bridel (1619―1680) is a Czech baroque writer, poet, and missionary. He was educated in Prague, joined the Jesuit order in 1637, was ordained a priest around 1650, and worked in the Jesuit printing office. Besides his own original works, which were for religious education, Bridel also translated German and Latin texts into Czech. He spent the last twenty years of his life in mission work in Bohemia. He died of the plague in 1680.

The following poem was translated into English, for a forthcoming Kingdom Poets anthology, by Rhina P. Espaillat (with Henry R. Cooper Jr.). The anthology is edited by Burl Horniachek and will appear as part of the Poiema Poetry Series (Cascade Books). This is the first translation of this poem into English.

What Is God? Man?

Three-cornered and three-sided, you
are both triangular and round;
A spherical abyss far too
immeasurably deep to sound;
you are justice, but with no
plumb line, cord, or bounden duty.
Ageless, unadorned you go,
clad in wholly perfect beauty.

Flawless beauty that you are,
and happy beyond every joy,
greater than all love by far,
your purity without alloy
is too clean for time to touch you,
age deface you, force defy,
treasure own you, or death clutch you:
eternal, you can never die.

You are what perfect truth there is.
Since only perfect things can be,
all things, and man, as things are his,
wants to be yours eternally.
You are earth, but still unploughed;
you are the ocean, but still dry,
where no storm blows wild and loud.
You are god, most great, most high.

The unexplained is your disguise:
the unkindled, smokeless flame;
wind—the air on which you rise;
the sea without its seashore frame;
a valley waiting for its hill;
the sun without its morning gleam
or sunset glow; and strangely still,
that flowless interrupted stream.

You are roses with no thorn;
sourceless well; beginning; ending;
all as it was when newly born;
flawless love that needs no mending;
wine unfermented; grapes unpressed;
book without words that makes no sound;
sound not yet voice, still unaddressed;
you everywhere, as yet unfound.

Grove are you, but with no shade;
pure gold mined without the tailing;
beauty no cosmetic made;
glorious throne behind its veiling;
heaven by the light of day;
sea without the waves grown wild;
health that keeps disease away;
laughter, but serene and mild.

You’re a garden with no hedge;
speech without tongue; and without rind
you are fruit; you are the edge
of the abyss no sight can find,
where I drown, dark in that light,
under the homeland that I love:
wholly immersed, and out of sight,
far from all that lives above.

Now I ask, What is my god?
Everything here confuses me!
I wander; everything seems odd.
I’m baffled by the deity.
I can’t make sense of god: however
I prod my mind to comprehend,
however hard I try, I never
pursue god’s nature to the end.

What kind of night awaits me now,
I’m wondering, untangling such
imponderable thoughts as how
great god is? And more—so much!
I’m purified enough to think
such thoughts, to laugh like this, and be
ready to drown in them, and sink
while pondering divinity!

Posted with permission of the translators.

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.

Bobi Jones

Bobi Jones (1929―2017) is a Welsh-language poet, and very much a Welsh nationalist. Many of his poems are portraits of personified rural landscapes, and portraits of common rural folk. Although he was passionate about his evangelical faith ― writing a regular column for a Welsh-language magazine about the Christian heritage within Welsh literature ― his poetry usually remains earthbound in its focus.

In his academic career Robert Maynard Jones was chair in Welsh Language at Aberystwyth University. He is one of the most prolific writers in the history of the Welsh language.

The following poem was translated into English by Joseph P. Clancy, and is from the collection Right as Rain.

Michelangelo’s Three Vocations

Often, confronting the hard, he would haul away
-----(by shelling the deceitful covering) a hidden
person from the rock. He discovered Creation by quarrying
-----and destroying the bad. A way once closed would open.

Often, when he confronted the soft, he would put
-----something extra where flesh and blood were lacking
on the limp canvas. He would interpret the Creation
-----by adding living being through a dash of paint.

But the essence of both would have been unseen, had their sound
-----not been shaped by a sonnet. He confessed there would have been
no way for the one or the other, the subtraction or the addition,
-----to come to life from the depths of their deaths
had the resurrection by the undying Word not turned
-----his words to living love through the grave's Creation.

This post was suggested by my friend Burl Horniachek.

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.