Paul Mariani*

Paul Mariani is an emeritus professor of English at Boston College. He holds a unique place as a biographer of poets — including having written books about Wallace Stevens, John Berryman, Gerard Manley Hopkins, William Carlos Williams, and Robert Lowell. His biography of Hart Crane, The Broken Tower, is the basis for the James Franco biopic of the same name, which was released in 2012.

He has had seven volumes of poetry published, including Epitaphs for the Journey: New, Selected, and Revised Poems (Poiema Poetry Series/Cascade Books) — on which I served as Paul’s editor. In September, he is to receive the inaugural Flannery O'Connor Lifetime Achievement Award at Loyola University in Chicago.

Mariani has published other significant books as well, including the spiritual memoir Thirty Days: on Retreat with the Exercises of St. Ignatius (2003, Penguin). His most recent book, The Mystery of It All: The Vocation of Poetry in the Twilight of Modernism, is newly published by Paraclete Press.

The following poem recently appeared in America.

What Happened Then

Do we understand what happened then?
The few of us in that shuttered room,
lamps dimmed, afraid of what would happen
when they found us? The women back
this morning to tell Peter what they’d seen.
Then these two back from Emmaus.
And now here he was. Here in the room with us.
Strange meeting this, the holes there
in his hands and feet and heart.
And who could have guessed a calm like this
could touch us. But that was what we felt.
The deep relief you feel when the one
you’ve searched for in a crowd appears,
and your unbelieving eyes dissolve in tears.
For this is what love looks like and is
and what it does. “Peace” was what he said,
as a peace like no other pierced the gloom
and descended on the room.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about Paul Mariani: 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.

John Berryman*

John Berryman (1914—1972) is a major figure in late 20th century American poetry, and is particularly significant within the confessional school. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his collection 77 Dream Songs in 1964. Even after his conversion to Christian faith, he suffered from alcoholism and depression, which led to his suicide in 1972.

According to Paul Mariani, whose biography Dream Song: The Life of John Berryman appeared in 1990, Berryman experienced "a sudden and radical shift from a belief in a transcendent God ... to a belief in a God who cared for the individual fates of human beings and who even interceded for them."

Dwight Cramer has said about Berryman's first posthumous collection Delusions, Etc., which had been edited for publication prior to his death, "A religious faith never entirely defined accompanies Berryman's despair. It is a faith that invokes God as a protector but does not explore the Divine nature. It revolves less around God than around the poet's personal need for Him." This can be seen in the following poem, in how Berryman chooses what he wants to believe, and what he doesn't, and his emphasis on happiness, as opposed to a life of sacrifice and service.

The Facts & Issues

I really believe He’s here all over this room
in a motor hotel in Wallace Stevens’ town.
I admit it’s weird; and could–or could it?–not be so;
but frankly I don’t think there’s a molecular chance of that.
It doesn’t seem hypothesis. Thank heavens
millions agree with me, or mostly do,
and have done ages of our human time,
among whom were & still are some very sharp cookies.
I don’t exactly feel missionary about it,
though it’s very true I wonder if I should.
I regard the boys who don’t buy this as deluded.
Of course they regard me no doubt as deluded.
Okay with me! And not the hell with them
at all–no!–I feel dubious on Hell–
it’s here, all right, but elsewhere, after? Screw that,
I feel pretty sure that evil simply ends
for the doer (having wiped him out,
but the way, usually) where good goes on,
or good may drop dead too: I don’t think so:
I can’t say I have hopes in that department
myself, I lack ambition just just there,
I know that Presence says it’s mild, and it’s mild,
but being what I am I wouldn’t care
to dare go nearer. Happy to be here
and to have been here, with such lovely ones
so infinitely better, but to me
even in their suffering infinitely kind
& blessing. I am a greedy man, of course,
but I wouldn’t want that kind of luck continued,–
or even increased (for Christ’s sake), & forever?
Let me be clear about this. It is plain to me
Christ underwent man & treachery & socks
& lashes, thirst, exhaustion, the bit, for my pathetic & disgusting vices,
to make this filthy fact of particular, long-after,
faraway, five-foot-ten & moribund
human being happy. Well, he has!
I am so happy I could scream!
It’s enough! I can’t BEAR ANY MORE.
Let this be it. I’ve had it. I can’t wait.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about John Berryman: first 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.

Allen Tate

Allen Tate (1899—1979) is an important poet of the southern school. He was one of the founding editors of The Fugitive, which helped promote formalist techniques in poetry, and agrarian values. Tate is best known for his poem "Ode to the Confederate Dead". He was influenced first by John Crowe Ransom, and then by T.S. Eliot. Tate, in turn, influenced such poets as Robert Lowell and John Berryman. He was also influential as a critic. In his complicated poems, the poet himself remains a distant figure.

According to The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry Tate has said that all of his poems are "about the suffering that comes from disbelief". In 1950 Tate officially converted to Catholicism, although he had been attracted to it for years.

Homily

If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out

If your tired unspeaking head
Rivet the dark with linear sight,
Crazed by a warlock with his curse
Dreamed up in some loquacious bed,
And if the stage-dark head rehearse
The fifth act of the closing night,

Why, cut it off, piece after piece,
And throw the tough cortex away,
And when you've marvelled on the wars
That wove their interior smoke its way,
Tear out the close vermiculate crease
Where death crawled angrily at bay.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Allen Tate: second 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

William Stafford

William Stafford (1914 —1993) was a conscientious objector during World War II. At that time he worked in an alternate forest service work camp, operated by the Church of the Brethren. While doing this work in California, he met and married his wife, Dorothy, the daughter of a minister in that denomination. He later spent one year teaching at a college associated with the Church of the Brethren, although the balance of his teaching career was at Lewis & Clark College in Oregon.

Poet Donald Hall compares Stafford to other poets of his generation — many of whom were also conscientious objectors, and many of whom died too young. Hall says, “But Stafford is a low-church Christian far from the rhetorical Catholicism that Lowell and Berryman entertained. I suspect that his survival is related not merely to his Christianity but to his membership in a small, embattled, pacifist sect.”

The following comes from a poem, which Stafford wrote on the day he died:

------You can't tell when strange things with meaning
------will happen. I'm [still] here writing it down
------just the way it was.

------"You don't have to prove anything,"
------my mother said. "Just be ready
------for what God sends."
------I listened and put my hand
------out in the sun again. It was all easy.

In 1963, when he was 48, he won the National Book Award for Traveling Through the Dark — his first major poetry collection. Despite this late start, he eventually published 57 poetry books. In 1970 he was appointed to the role that would later become known as Poet Laureate of the United States, and in 1980 he was named Poet Laureate of Oregon.

Easter Morning

Maybe someone comes to the door and says,
"Repent," and you say, "Come on in," and it's
Jesus. That's when all you ever did, or said,
or even thought, suddenly wakes up again and
sings out, "I'm still here," and you know it's true.
You just shiver alive and are left standing
there suddenly brought to account: saved.

Except, maybe that someone says, "I've got a deal
for you." And you listen, because that's how
you're trained—they told you, "Always hear both sides."
So then the slick voice can sell you anything, even
Hell, which is what you're getting by listening.
Well, what should you do? I'd say always go to
the door, yes, but keep the screen locked. Then,
while you hold the Bible in one hand, lean forward
and say carefully, "Jesus?"

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about William Stafford : second 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

Brad Davis

Brad Davis is the winner of the Sunken Garden Poetry Prize, and the International Arts Movement Poetry Prize. He has lived in the west — British Columbia and Washington State — seven different states in the east, and in the U.S. Virgin Islands. He has also taught at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts and at Eastern Connecticut State University.

He is the author of Opening King David, published by Wipf & Stock in 2011. It is a series of 150 poems which respond to, or leap from, thoughts expressed in the 150 biblical psalms. These poems previously appeared in four separate volumes, published by Antrim House Publishers. Although these poems often speak of faith, this is not a collection of devotional verse. Opening King David shows us Davis on his journey, with fellow-travelers — including his close friend Bill who experiences his wife’s slow dying through the time these poems were written. Scott Cairns has said of this book, “Brad Davis has pored over both the scriptures and our common experience...that we might glimpse how every challenge, every adversity might be met with grace.”

Reasons I Write

Those who assume they have no one
to whom they must account for their words—

like politicians, bankers, older brothers,
theologians, poets, headmasters—

they are wrong. Every knee will bow, every
tongue confess. So I do not use words

like “shit” or “Sovereign Lord” unaware.
Berryman, after Hopkins, wrote truly:

that line about Christ being the only
just critic. I write because it takes little

to spark my rage, and Saint Paul said we must
toil with our hands for the end of anger

is murder, and if any would be saved,
they must, with fear and trembling, work it out.


This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Brad Davis: second post, third post, fourth post.

Posted with permission of the poet.

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

Paul Mariani*

Paul Mariani writes in the mode of American confessional poets, as exemplified by John Berryman, and Robert Lowell. This style fits well with his Catholic faith, although it also proclaims his own short-comings. He’s a skilled story-teller, quick to share how he neglected his dog on the day he was dying (“Landscape with Dog”), how in anger with his sons he made a fool of himself (“Sarcophagus”), or of a youthful, drunken fight the night before writing his Ethics exam (“Manhattan”). Such extreme self-revelation and honesty, also gives Mariani the right to express the deepest truths of his own spiritual life.

He has just released his seventh poetry collection, as part of the Poiema Poetry Series from Cascade Books, entitled Epitaphs for the Journey: New, Selected and Revised Poems. As the subtitle states, it harvests the best from his extensive body of poetry, fine tunes it, and adds a selection of strong new poems that can proudly stand alongside the earlier work. He has taken great pains for this volume to improve poetry that has already been highly acclaimed. I am honoured to have been able to serve as editor for this excellent project.

Mariani’s first collection Timing Devices (1979) featured engravings by visual artist Barry Moser; their relationship, both personally and professionally, has continued through the years. Moser has generously contributed powerful engravings for Epitaphs for the Journey. It is available from Wipf & Stock.

The Stone Not Cut by Hand
The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.

Nebuchadnezzar stared while the prophet blazed.
A stone not cut, stormed Daniel, by any human hand,
however self-assured or self-deluded. Understand:
It is the Lord has quarried here. The king’s eyes glazed,

because all he knew was earthly power: kings who razed
entire cities—dogs, women, babies, mules, the very land.
Kings whose subjects, high & low, did their each command.
A stone not quarried by any hand but God’s. Amazed,

the king fell back before the prophet’s words. A stone
that would smash each self-important, self-made idol,
whether built of gold or steel or any other thing their throne
was made of. Yes, whatever insane, grand mal, suicidal
impulse kings could conjure up. A stone by God alone.
Womb-warm, lamb-gentle, world-wielding, tidal.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Paul Mariani: first 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

Anne Bradstreet

Anne Bradstreet (1612—1672) was a Puritan who emigrated to America in 1630, along with her parents and her husband — whom she had married when she was just sixteen. She was the first American woman to have a book published, and is considered by many to be America's first poet. Woman were not allowed to speak their minds in the colony; however it was Anne’s brother-in-law who took her poems to be published in England as The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up In America in 1650. It is her later poems, however, that caught the attention of admirers in the twentieth century.

Both her father and her husband served as governors of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and were instrumental in the founding of Harvard University. Anne enjoyed a happy marriage, and became the mother of eight children. She wrote many of her poems while her husband was away dealing with the business of the colony — sometimes even as far away as England. Her poetry expresses both her love for her husband, and her deep faith in God.

In 1956 John Berryman paid tribute to her in his long poem Homage to Mistress Bradstreet. In 1997 a gate was dedicated to her memory at Harvard University.

By Night when Others Soundly Slept

1
By night when others soundly slept
And hath at once both ease and Rest,
My waking eyes were open kept
And so to lie I found it best.

2
I sought him whom my Soul did Love,
With tears I sought him earnestly.
He bowed his ear down from Above.
In vain I did not seek or cry.

3
My hungry Soul he filled with Good;
He in his Bottle put my tears,
My smarting wounds washed in his blood,
And banished thence my Doubts and fears.

4
What to my Saviour shall I give
Who freely hath done this for me?
I’ll serve him here whilst I shall live
And Love him to Eternity.

*This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Anne Bradstreet: second 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

Walt McDonald

Walt McDonald has published more than twenty collections of poetry, including Faith Is A Radical Master: New and Selected Poems (Abilene Christian University Press, 2005), and has had more than 2300 poems published in journals and collections; in 2001 he was the Poet Laureate for Texas. He is professor of English Emeritus at Texas Tech University.

When asked in an interview in Valparaiso Poetry Review, to whom he felt responsible, McDonald said,

--------“As a Christian, why do I write? I'm as vulnerable to vanity
--------as Solomon and anybody I know, often ‘Desiring this
--------man's art and that man's scope,’ as Shakespeare said.
--------I go back to the book for assurance that working with words
--------is alright, even a good thing to do: ‘Whatever your
--------hand finds to do, do it with all your might.’ I take
--------heart from Paul's advice: ‘Whatever you do, work at it with
--------all your heart, as working for the Lord.’ After his
--------conversion, John Berryman wrote, ‘Father Hopkins said the
--------only true literary critic is Christ. Let me lie down
--------exhausted, content with that’."

(The John Berryman poem McDonald quotes from here, is available elsewhere on this blog.)

Walt McDonald’s poetry demonstrates his faith and his faithfulness to his calling.

Alone at Dawn with the Blinds Raised

How does faith come—like a hummingbird darting by—
or a pair of elk cows clipping our grass at dawn,
sniffing the picnic table while we wait
with the blinds raised. Soon, beams will splash
the mountain peak, lights will come on,

a cabin door will close, the elk will lift their heads
and stare, and trot with eyes wide back to the tree line.
But suddenly, others come, almost glowing in their blond,
thick, winter coats, bowing to grass we’ve watered
and not mowed, hoping for this moment—four,

fourteen, the whole herd here on our lawn,
sisters and mothers on our green slope,
cougars and coyotes a thousand yards behind them,
calves on their way within weeks—but all that’s later,
and the best grass since last summer is right now.

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

John Berryman

John Berryman (1914–1972) was raised in the Catholic church, but had abandoned it. Throughout his life he suffered from alcoholism and depression; the suicide of his father, when Berryman was eleven years old, also haunted him throughout his life.

His early poems show the influences of Auden, Yeats and Hopkins. In 1964 he won the Pulitzer Prize for his innovative collection 77 Dream Songs — which demonstrated his originality and established his reputation.

During 1969 and 1970 he checked himself in for rehab several times, and soon had also embraced Christianity. Even in his faith statement Eleven Addresses to the Lord — which concludes his book Love & Fame (1970) — he questions more than he acknowledges.

On New Years’ Eve 1971 he celebrated eleven months alcohol free, but his emotional instability caught up with him a week later; he jumped to his death from the Washington Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis.

from Eleven Addresses to the Lord

10

Fearful I peer upon the mountain path
where once Your shadow passed, Limner of the clouds
up their phantastic guesses. I am afraid,
I never until now confessed.

I fell back in love with you, Father, for two reasons:
You were good to me, & a delicious author,
rational & passionate. Come on me again,
as twice you came to Azarias & Misael.

President of the brethren, our mild assemblies
inspire, & bother the priest not to be dull;
keep us week-long in order; love my children,
my mother far & ill, far brother, my spouse.

Oil all my turbulence as at Thy dictation
I sweat out my wayward works.
Father Hopkins said the only true literary critic is Christ.
Let me lie down exhausted, content with that.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about John Berryman: second 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

Paul Mariani

Paul Mariani is a contemporary American poet, who was born in New York City. He holds a Chair in Poetry at Boston College, and is known for the biographies he’s written of poets, such as William Carlos Williams (for which he was a finalist for the American Book Award), John Berryman, Robert Lowell, and, most recently, Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Paul Mariani has written six collections of poetry, including his latest — Deaths & Transfigurations (Paraclete Press, 2005). The following poem comes from his collection, The Great Wheel (W.W. Norton).

The Cistern

In the limestone cistern
beneath St. Peter Gallicantu
in Jerusalem, my back against
the wall, try as I might,
I could not keep from weeping.
I am a man gone down into the pit,
we listened to Fr. Doyle reading,
a man shorn of his strength,
one more among the dead,
among those You have forgotten.

And did he call upon the psalms
to warm him in his need?
The night before he died
they dragged him here to try him.
What answers he could give
lay shattered on the pavement.
Later his quizzers grew tired
and impatient. Let others try him
in the morning. Enough for now
to knot a rope across his chest
and drop him into darkness.

Hanging by his wrists, Eli
he would cry out, Eli, and again
they would misread him, thinking
he was calling on Elijah.
As each of us will be alone,
friends scattered to the winds.
Except for one out in the courtyard
growing cold, poised now to deny him.
Darkness, the psalmist ended.
The one companion left me.

*This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Paul Mariani: second post, third post.

(Posted with permission of the poet)

Read my Books & Culture review of Paul Mariani's poetry collection
Deaths & Transfigurations here

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