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.

Catherine Chandler

Catherine Chandler is a Canadian poet who was born in New York City, raised in Pennsylvania, and then emigrated to Canada in 1971. Until her retirement, she was a lecturer in Spanish in McGill University’s Department of Languages and Translation, in Montreal. She and her husband divide their time between Quebec and Uruguay.

She is the author of three chapbooks, and four full-length poetry collections ― most recent of which is Pointing Home (2019, Kelsay Books). She won the Richard Wilbur Award for her book The Fragile Hour. Along with her own poems, Pointing Home also includes ten poems Chandler translated from Uruguayan women poets.

Catherine Chandler’s poetry is characterized by forms ― such as the sonnet, pantoum, villanelle, and cento. Three of her poems have been included in the National Poetry Registry in the Library of Parliament in Ottawa.

The following poem first appeared in The Agonist, and is from Pointing Home.

Matthew 7:1-5

The fix. The stealth. The stoop. The swoop. The kill—
a barb more brutal than a falcon’s bill.

Words meant to wound. What are you on, some kind
of guilt trip? (So much for the ties that bind).

Yet I, the speck-eyed sister, turned away,
keeping my counsel till another day,

trusting my mother hadn’t heard, although
her sense of hearing was the last to go.

-------------------------—Hospice of the VNA, Heritage House, July 2011

Posted with permission of the poet.

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.

Maura Eichner*

Maura Eichner (1915—2009) is a Catholic nun, and the author of ten poetry collections including Hope Is A Blind Bard (1989) and After Silence: Selected Poems of Sister Maura Eichner S.S.N.D. (2011). She was Chair of the English Department at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland (now Notre Dame of Maryland University), teaching English there for 49 years. Through the years she maintained a correspondence with several significant writers, including, Katherine Anne Porter, Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, and Richard Wilbur. 

 

One tribute to her life concluded, “As a teacher and as a poet, Sister Maura was a believer. She believed in beauty ― in art, in nature, in music, in painting, in language. Sister Maura believed in life, and she believed in people. Above all, she believed simply and deeply in a God who believed in beauty, and in life, and in people. In one of her later notebooks, Sister Maura wrote 'One writes poetry in order to find God.' One may well read Sister Maura's poetry for the same reason."

 

Mother Theresa: Her Blessing 

May the God of peace be with you – 

calms the heart that hammers fear 

Her prayers for us. The hope she knew. 

She is our prophet of fidelity, true 

to the triune single voice: now, here. 

May the peace of God be with you. 

 She spoke rarely of the Thabor-glory view. 

Her creed was everyday: The Lord near. 

Vision for us. A love she knew. 

 

She lives in her letters: light breaks through 

the script: be one in heart. My dear ones, hear: 

May the God of peace be with you. 

 

Breaking bread to share, she, too, 

learned the miracle of loaves, her clear, 

testament to us. The faith she knew. 

Mother Theresa, serenely magnetized to 

the will of God, still speak your dear 

words: The God of peace be with you. 

Your prayer for us. The love you knew. 

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Maura Eichner: 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.

William Baer*

William Baer is a poet, playwright, fiction writer and university professor. He is the author of twenty two books, including six poetry collections ― the most recent of which is Love Sonnets (2016, White Violet Press). He has won the T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize, and the X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize. Baer is a champion of the New Formalism, having edited several poetry anthologies highlighting metrical poetry, and he founded the journal The Formalist. He is also the founding director of the Richard Wilbur Poetry Series.

William Baer has taught creative writing, cinema, and world cultures at the University of Evansville, in Indiana.

The following poem first appeared in Louisiana English Journal, and is from his collection Psalter.

Gethsemani

--------------------(Luke 22:44)

This is the bloody chalice of agony
borne of what’s to come. Which catches his breath
with wracking fears of what will come to be:
the whips, the thorns, the crucifixion and death.
It is an agony borne of sacrifice:
taking upon himself, in this lonely place,
every single evil, sin, and vice,
redeeming the entire human race.
It is an agony borne of the dreadful fact
that despite his efforts from now to Pentecost,
not all the world will properly react,
and many will still reject him and be lost.
And so, his blood, like sweat, without a sound,
Seeps through his flesh and trickles to the ground.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about William Baer: 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.

Richard Wilbur*

Richard Wilbur (1921—2017) is one of the most significant poets of his generation. Twice he won the Pulitzer Prize, and he was the U.S. Poet Laureate in 1987-1988.

He said in an interview with the Paris Review: “I feel that the universe is full of glorious energy, that the energy tends to take pattern and shape, and that the ultimate character of things is comely and good. I am perfectly aware that I say this in the teeth of all sorts of contrary evidence, and that I must be basing it partly on temperament and partly on faith, but that’s my attitude.”

Several of his poems appear in my anthology The Turning Aside: The Kingdom Poets Book of Contemporary Christian Poetry (2016, Cascade Books).

Besides the extensive contribution of his own poetry, Wilbur is also an important translator of French plays into English, particularly those of Molière (10 plays), Racine (3 plays) and Corneille (3 plays).

My first encounter with the following poem, was in a beautiful musical rendition of it by the Canadian singer Steve Bell.

A Christmas Hymn

"And some of the Pharisees from among the multitude said unto him, Master, rebuke thy disciples.

And he answered and said unto them, I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out."
—St. Luke XIX, 39-40

A stable-lamp is lighted
Whose glow shall wake the sky;
The stars shall bend their voices,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry,
And straw like gold shall shine;
A barn shall harbor heaven,
A stall become a shrine.

This child through David's city
Shall ride in triumph by;
The palm shall strew its branches,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry,
Though heavy, dull, and dumb,
And lie within the roadway
To pave his kingdom come.

Yet he shall be forsaken,
And yielded up to die;
The sky shall groan and darken,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry
For stony hearts of men:
God's blood upon the spearhead,
God's love refused again.

But now, as at the ending,
The low is lifted high;
The stars shall bend their voices,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry
In praises of the child
By whose descent among us
The worlds are reconciled.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about Richard Wilbur: 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.

Pierre Corneille

Pierre Corneille (1606—1684) is one of France’s three great seventeenth-century dramatists — alongside Racine and Moliere. He wrote a very popular French verse translation of Thomas a Kempis' Imitation of Christ. His most-celebrated plays include Le Cid (1637), Polyeuct (1642) and Cinna (1643). American poet Richard Wilbur is one of the many translators of his works.

Corneille’s play Polyeuct is based on the life of Polyeuctus (a Saint according to the Greek Orthodox Church). He was an Armenian officer in Rome’s army who converted to Christianity even though it was likely to mean his death.

In the play, the following section is spoken by Nearchus, trying to convince his friend Polyeuct to not postpone his baptism. Polyeuct’s wife Pauline, whom he loves dearly, is afraid that if his conversion is public, he will be martyred. Later in the play, after Polyeuct’s death, both Pauline, and her father become Christians.

The following translation is by Noel Clark.

From Polyeuct (Act One)

But how can you be sure you’ll live that long,
Or guarantee resolve will prove that strong?
Has God, in whose hands your soul and lifespan rest,
Promised to grant you a delayed request?
God is all-good, all-just but, still, His grace
Is varied in effect by time and place.
Those shafts can lose their powers of penetration,
If hearts repel them by procrastination.
The soul grows callous and God’s grace, deflected,
Less freely is bestowed, when once rejected.
That holy gift, designed to save the soul,
Descends more rarely and can find no role.
The grace inspiring you to be baptised,
Already languishes, its aim revised —
Despite the sighs of love that reached your ear,
The flames are dying and will disappear.

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.

Paul Lake

Paul Lake is the winner of the 2012 Richard Wilbur Award (as selected by Dana Gioia) which resulted in Lake's third book of poems, The Republic of Virtue, being published by the University of Evansville Press. He has also published two "poetry chapter books" and two novels — the most recent of which is Cry Wolf: A Political Fable (2008).

He has recently retired from his Professorship at Arkansas Tech University. Paul Lake is the Poetry Editor of First Things, where the following poem first appeared.

Saving Jesus

"BrickHouse Security saves Jesus for 8th year in a row,
offers free GPS tracking of nativity scenes and holiday displays."

Somehow escaping
The sharp eye
Of angels, shepherds,
And magi,

Thieves snatch the infant
From the crèche
To spirit God off
In the flesh.

Clearly, it’s
The thieves’ intent
To massacre
The innocent

Like Herod
In the dark of night,
Forcing parents
To take flight.

To empty Christmas
Of the Christ
Would seem the purpose
Of the heist—

Unless the abject
And forlorn
Hijack the babe
To feel newborn

Themselves, and think
By robbing churches
They gain a love
They cannot purchase.

Unlike the soulless
Figurine
With planted chip,
The Nazarene

Restores the lost
Sans GPS,
And covers crime
With holiness.

Posted with permission of the poet.

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.

François Villon

François Villon (1431—1463) is a French poet — the best known of the middle ages — who was also a thief, a brawler, and a murderer. His most famous work is The Testament (1461) which he wrote while imprisoned for some unknown crime. He was familiar enough with Christian concepts to write the following (rather tongue-in-cheek) lines about the Bishop whose prison he was in,

-------But since the Church says we should pray
-------For those who hate us, I am leaving
-------To Him who said, "I shall repay,"
-------The last, eternal reckoning.
It is true that Villon often expresses regrets for his wasted life, and repents of his sins, but his repentance doesn't appear to bring any change in his behaviour.

Was he ever able to embrace Christian discipline, to truly turn and follow God? His circumstances at the time of the following poem suggests, he hadn't yet, but perhaps this was that moment. I pray to the God who exists outside of time that Villon may have truly found salvation.

His work has been translated by many, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Richard Wilbur, although the translator of the following poem is unknown. "Ballad of the Gibbet" is an epitaph for himself and those with him, who expected they were about to be hanged. It is believed to have been written in late 1462, when Villon was in the Châtelet prison under sentence of death.

Ballad of the Gibbet

Brothers and men that shall after us be,
Let not your hearts be hard to us:
For pitying this our misery
Ye shall find God the more piteous.
Look on us six that are hanging thus,
And for the flesh that so much we cherished
How it is eaten of birds and perished,
And ashes and dust fill our bones' place,
Mock not at us that so feeble be,
But pray God pardon us out of His grace.

Listen, we pray you, and look not in scorn,
Though justly, in sooth, we are cast to die;
Ye wot no man so wise is born
That keeps his wisdom constantly.
Be ye then merciful, and cry
To Mary's Son that is piteous,
That His mercy take no stain from us,
Saving us out of the fiery place.
We are but dead, let no soul deny
To pray God succour us of His grace.

The rain out of heaven has washed us clean,
The sun has scorched us black and bare,
Ravens and rooks have pecked at our eyne,
And feathered their nests with our beards and hair.
Round are we tossed, and here and there,
This way and that, at the wild wind's will,
Never a moment my body is still;
Birds they are busy about my face.
Live not as we, nor fare as we fare;
Pray God pardon us out of His grace.

L'Envoy

Prince Jesus, Master of all, to thee
We pray Hell gain no mastery,
That we come never anear that place;
And ye men, make no mockery,
Pray God pardon us out of His grace.

This post was suggested by my friend Burl Horniachek.

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.

Paul Verlaine

Paul Verlaine (1844—1896) is a French poet — famous for his verse, and notorious for his drinking and debauchery. In 1870 he married 16-year-old Mathilde Mauté, who he believed would save him from his erring ways. Instead Verlaine became obsessed with poet Arthur Rimbald and travelled across France, Belgium and England with him. In 1874, he was imprisoned for having wounded Rimbald with a revolver in Brussels.

During this time he made a sincere return to Christianity, and upon release from prison he participated in a Trappist retreat. During this time (1873—1878) he wrote his book Sagesse (Wisdom), which expressed well his Catholic faith. In January of 1886, however — after the death of a pupil and an unsuccessful attempt to become reconciled to his wife — Verlaine descended into alcoholism and drug addiction, having abandoned hope of leading a respectable life.

Richard Wilbur has included a translation of a previously unpublished Paul Verlaine poem in his most-recent collection, Anterooms.

The Sky’s Above The Roof….

(Sagesse: Bk III, VI)

The sky’s above the roof

--------So blue, so calm!
A tree above the roof
--------Waves its palm.

The bell in the sky you see
--------Gently rings.
A bird on the tree you see
--------Sadly sings.

My God, my God, life’s there,
--------Simple and sweet.
A peaceful rumbling there,
--------The town’s at our feet.

— What have you done, O you there
--------Who endlessly cry,
Say: what have you done there
--------With Youth gone by?

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.

Wilmer Mills

Wilmer Mills (1969—2011) is an American poet and painter, influenced by the formal techniques of such poets as Robert Frost and Richard Wilbur. He grew up, first in Brazil—as the son of Presbyterian missionaries—and later in his home state of Louisiana. For several years, he and his young family lived in a bungalow in Sewanee, Tennessee which he had built himself. His poems have appeared in many journals, and in the Penguin Anthology of Contemporary Younger Poets. He died at age 41, less than three months after being diagnosed with liver cancer.

He only had one full-length book of poems published in his lifetime, Light for the Orphans (2002). Fortunately, the University of Evansville Press has just published his Selected Poems, which also includes newer poems and some from his earlier chapbook, Right as Rain (1999).

The following poem first appeared in First Things.

Near Starbucks

A homeless woman sleeps outside the door.
She smells of urine so the customers
Who eat brioche and talk about the poor
Step wide of her in winter and in summer.
But she has noticed them in their retreat
Of tea and café latte ambiance.
Oh, yes, she sees their pious nonchalance.
They give her quarters on the holidays
And she would give them stories with her gaze:
A childhood served on white enamel plates;
A father's drunk abuse; teen runaway;
The search for something—love, or merely dates—;
A candy-wrapper life in lingerie.
But eye contact is precious on the street.
She takes their pocket change and falls asleep.

And I'm no better in my arrogance
And its complacent little cubicle.
If I could be like Jesus, just for once,
I'd wake her up and make her beautiful.

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.

Brett Foster

Brett Foster is Associate Professor of English at Wheaton College. His first poetry collection, The Garbage Eater (2011) has now appeared from TriQuartely Books/Northwestern University Press.

His literary influences come from a variety of sources. He’s eager to praise the work of such renaissance poets as Milton, Spenser, Shakespeare and Marlowe — but then again if you were to speak of such mid-century voices as Charles Williams, Owen Barfield and C.S. Lewis (Foster is Poetry Editor at the Lewis-inspired journal Sehnsucht) he’d engage you in a lively discussion. Similarly he is an enthusiast of diverse contemporary poets including Seamus Heaney and Richard Wilbur. Foster’s academic love of literature shows itself strongly in his own verse; his work as a literary critic also reflects his wide interests.

The following poem first appeared in Image.

Devotion: For Our Bodies

Yes, Love, I must confess I’m at it again,
struggling in vain with my Greek declensions.
I know it’s common, but I want to show
you what I found in Praxeis Apostolon,

chapter one, verse twenty-four: this exquisite
epithet, kardiognosta. Forget
briefly its context, that the Eleven,
genuflecting, implore the Lord to give

wisdom. Between Justus and Matthias,
who replaces Judas? Let this word pass
to private sharpness toward love’s dominion.
Let me kiss it across your collarbones—

knower of hearts. Its sweetness fills my mouth
and our twin lots, as if they’d chosen both.

Posted with permission of the poet.

Read my Ruminate review of The Garbage Eater here.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Brett Foster: 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

Richard Wilbur*

Richard Wilbur has recently had a new poetry collection published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Anterooms (2010) is a slender volume — which consists of just eighteen new poems, five poems translated from French, Latin and Russian, and his translation of 37 riddles. Even so, it invites us intimately to join Wilbur in his poetic vision and his view of life.

It may suggest humility for such a celebrated poet to give as much attention to translating the work of others as Richard Wilbur has in recent years. One particular focus for Wilbur has been the plays of Molière — seven of which he’s now translated.

In Anterooms, his first new poetry book in a decade, Richard Wilbur remains dedicated to traditional structures. Only one poem neglects rhyme. Some poems are deeply reflective — springing from such things as a verse in Ecclesiastes, or the poet’s observations of an inch worm; some poems are playful — such as “Some Words Inside of Words” which is addressed, in part, to children.

The following poem first appeared in First Things (May 2009).

Psalm

Give thanks for all things
On the plucked lute, and likewise
The harp of ten strings.

Have the lifted horn
Greatly blare, and pronounce it
Good to have been born.

Lend the breath of life
To the stops of the sweet flute
Or capering fife,

And tell the deep drum
To make, at the right juncture,
Pandemonium.

Then, in grave relief,
Praise too our sorrows on the
Cello of shared grief.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Richard Wilbur: 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

Mark Jarman

Mark Jarman is a poet associated with the new formalism — a movement of contemporary poets who have returned to the use of many elements from poetry’s past; their poems often include metre, rhyme and symmetrical stanzas — but don’t use archaic language, or awkward inverted sentence structures in order to make a poem rhyme. Like Richard Wilbur, who continued writing with formal rhythm and rhyme when others were exclusively writing free verse, newer poets such as Dana Gioia and Mark Jarman seek to maintain that tradition. Jarman co-edited the influential 1996 anthology Rebel Angels: 25 Poets of the New Formalism.

He has taught at Vanderbilt University in Nashville since 1983, where he is the Centennial Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing. His ninth and most recent collection, Epistles was published by Sarabande Books in 2007.

As the journal Image has said, Jarman is courageous, in that he is not only “a champion of the formalist tradition in poetry” which is diametrically opposed to the prevailing trends of recent decades, but he is “unafraid to place [his] religious faith and doubt at the center of his work”. His collection Unholy Sonnets (an uneasy echo of John Donne’s Holy Sonnets), from which the following poem is taken, respects the traditional sonnet structure, and yet is open to its potential variations.

Sonnet #16

And if when he returned he found his mother
Behind the stone that rolled away for him,
Her muscles limp, her memory grown dim,
Unable to respond when he said, “Mother?”
And if he even recognized his mother,
Her outer light and inner light both dim,
Would he do for her what had been done for him?
Would God’s son give a new life to his mother?

I think he would balk. And I know why.
And I know this will sound unorthodox,
For she, like any mother, would have given
A kidney if she could have or an eye
To see her boy alive. The paradox
Is that he’d rather see her safe in heaven.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Mark Jarman: 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

Richard Wilbur

American Episcopalian (Anglican) poet Richard Wilbur was born in 1921. He has received many honours including the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. In 1987 he was appointed as the second Poet Laureate of the United States. He stands out among contemporary poets, in that he uses metre in most of his poems, and frequently also uses rhyme.

In his work he seeks to make connections between the visible and the invisible — between the physical and spiritual worlds. This is demonstrated well in the following poem, which is one of his favourites, and one of his best known:

Love Calls Us To The Things Of This World

--The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul
Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple
As false dawn.
------------------Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with angels.

--Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses,
Some are in smocks: but truly there they are.
Now they are rising together in calm swells
Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear
With the deep joy of their impersonal breathing;

--Now they are flying in place, conveying
The terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving
And staying like white water; and now of a sudden
They swoon down in so rapt a quiet
That nobody seems to be there.
---------------------------------------The soul shrinks

--From all that it is about to remember,
From the punctual rape of every blessed day,
And cries,
-------------------"Oh, let there be nothing on
-----earth but laundry,
Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam
And clear dances done in the sight of heaven."

--Yet, as the sun acknowledges
With a warm look the world's hunks and colors,
The soul descends once more in bitter love
To accept the waking body, saying now
In a changed voice as the man yawns and rises,

--"Bring them down from their ruddy gallows;
Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves;
Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone,
And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating
Of dark habits,
------------------keeping their difficult balance."

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Richard Wilbur: 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