Madeleine L’Engle

Madeleine L’Engle (1918–2007) is best known for her novels for teens — particularly for A Wrinkle in Time and it’s sequels. Although these books may most logically be classified as science-fiction, they really have more in common with fantasy novels; they seem less concerned with the technical side (although they certainly cover that) than with the human and spiritual story. In 1963 A Wrinkle in Time won the prestigious Newbery Award. Her novel A Ring of Endless Light (the title comes from a Henry Vaughan poem) was selected as a Newbery Honor Book for 1980. My favourite L’Engle fiction is the Wrinkle sequel Many Waters (1986), which takes twentieth century twins back to the time of the flood. The depth of these books is not limited by the youth of her protagonists.

In Walking on Water, her book of reflections on faith and art, she put the role of all writers and artists in perspective when she writes: “the artist is truly the servant of the work”.

In her poetry Madeleine L’Engle primarily uses traditional rhyming and rhythmic structures. She often writes on spiritual themes — sometimes taking on the persona of a biblical character — and about her relationship with her husband, Hugh Franklin who died in 1986.

She co-authored three books with her good friend, the poet Luci Shaw; their Advent and Christmas poetry and reflections were gathered in the 1996 book Wintersong, which I return to every year. Her new and collected poems — The Ordering of Love — was published in 2005. The following poem reflects her interest in both science and faith.

Sonnet, Trinity 18

Peace is the center of the Atom, the core
Of quiet within the storm. It is not
A cessation, a nothingness; more
The lightning in reverse is what
Reveals the light. It is the law that binds
The atom’s structure, ordering the dance
Of proton and electron, and that finds
Within the midst of flame and wind, the glance
In the still eye of the vast hurricane.
Peace is not placidity; peace is
The power to endure the megatron of pain
With joy, the silent thunder of release,
The ordering of Love. Peace is the atom’s start,
The primal image: God within the heart.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Madeleine L'Engle: 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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772—1834) was the son of an Anglican vicar, although in his rebellious youth he served as a Unitarian preacher. In 1798 the book Lyrical Ballads by Coleridge and William Wordsworth established the careers of both poets, and the entire Romantic movement. He is best known for such fanciful poems as “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and “Kubla Khan”.

Coleridge’s marriage was not a happy one; this and his lengthy addiction to laudanum undermined his creative productivity for years. During this time he flitted from one philosophy to another. In 1814 he returned to the Church of England, and declared himself to be orthodox. Although he still permitted himself broad speculations, the doctrine of the Trinity became central to his thought. In 1817 he published Biographia Literaria, his most important work of literary criticism.

In his essay “Symbol And Allegory” Coleridge said, “It is among the miseries of the present age that it recognizes no medium between literal and metaphorical.” His “Mariner” carries significant symbolism of sin and redemption, and, as it nears its end, expresses:
-----"He prayeth best who loveth best
-----"All things both great and small;
-----"For the dear God who loveth us,
-----"He made and loveth all."
Coleridge said, “an allegory is but a translation of abstract notions into picture language.” Such picture language was his greatest poetic gift.

Epitaph (1833)

Stop, Christian passer-by!–Stop, child of God,
And read with gentle breast. Beneath this sod
A poet lies, or that which once seem'd he.–
O, lift one thought in prayer for S. T. C.;
That he who many a year with toil of breath
Found death in life, may here find life in death!
Mercy for praise–to be forgiven for fame
He ask'd, and hoped, through Christ. Do thou the same!

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Samuel Taylor Coleridge: 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

Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry is a Kentucky farmer — a man of deep insight, renowned for his essays on agricultural issues, and ecology. He is the author of more than forty books, known as a religious thinker, and for his resistance to computer technology (He would not be interested in websites or blogs — even this blog — no matter how fascinating the topic). His poetry and fiction reflect his love of creation, of God and of rural life. Although he has taught at New York University, among others, and lived abroad in Italy and France, when we read Wendell Berry we are immersed in his connection to rural Kentucky; such connection to place is important in his work.

He’s been writing his rural novels of the fictitious town of Port William, Kentucky for half a century; the earliest, Nathan Coulter, was published in 1960, and one recent installment, Andy Catlett: Early Travels, appeared in 2007.

My connection to Wendell Berry is through his poems. They are simple, honest and profound — permitting us to reflect along with him, on the things that matter to him. He often speaks of faith, as in the following brief poem:
(IX from “Sabbaths 1999”)
--------The incarnate Word is with us,
--------is still speaking, is present
--------always, yet leaves no sign
--------but everything that is.

In his poetry, Berry reminds us of the issues that concern him — issues that concern us all. The following poem is from his collection Entries:

Air

This man, proud and young,
turns homeward in the dark
heaven, free of his burden
of death by fire, of life in fear
of death by fire, in the city
now burning far below.

This is a young man, proud;
he sways upon the tall stalk
of pride, alone, in control of the
explosion by which he lives, one
of the children we have taught
to be amused by horror.

This is a proud man, young
in the work of death. Ahead of him
wait those made rich by fire.
Behind him, another child
is burning; a divine man
is hanging from a tree.

In Rock & Sling (Volume 3 Issue 1 Spring 2006), you can read my review of Wendell Berry’s poetry collection Given.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Wendell Berry: 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

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

Francis Thompson

English poet Francis Thompson (1859–1907) did not have a promising start. When he attended medical school, he was not interested in his studies, but instead by 1885 moved to London to become a writer. He lived as a vagrant, selling newspapers and matches, and during a bout of ill health became addicted to opium. When he submitted poems to the magazine, Merrie England, its editors, Wilfrid and Alice Meynell, recognized his potential, rescued him from the street and arranged for the publication of his first book, Poems (1893).

Francis Thompson’s most famous poem “The Hound of Heaven” describes God pursuing a reluctant man.

--------I fled Him down the nights and down the days
-----------I fled Him down the arches of the years
--------I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways
-----------Of my own mind, and in the midst of tears...

Knowing Thompson’s story, the following lines from the middle of the poem ring so true.

--------In the rash lustihead of my young powers,
-------------I shook the pillaring hours
--------And pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears,
-------------I stand amidst the dust o' the mounded years—
--------My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap...

I hope that taste will cause you to seek out the entire poem. Below is a shorter poem, that also expresses the truth of God reaching into our dark world.

In No Strange Land

----The kingdom of God is within you

O world invisible, we view thee,
O world intangible, we touch thee,
O world unknowable, we know thee,
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!

Does the fish soar to find the ocean,
The eagle plunge to find the air—
That we ask of the stars in motion
If they have rumour of thee there?

Not where the wheeling systems darken,
And our benumbed conceiving soars!—
The drift of pinions, would we hearken,
Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.

The angels keep their ancient places;—
Turn but a stone and start a wing!
'Tis ye, 'tis your estrangèd faces,
That miss the many-splendoured thing.

But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
Cry;—and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.

Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,
Cry,—clinging Heaven by the hems;
And lo, Christ walking on the water,
Not of Genesareth, but Thames!

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Francis Thompson: 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

Vassar Miller

Texas poet Vassar Miller (1924–1998) lived all her life with cerebral palsy. She often wrote of her disability — which made it difficult to walk and talk, and which made her feel isolated — but even more often she wrote of her faith. She published nine volumes of poetry between 1956 and 1985, and then in 1991 her collected poems If I Had Wheels or Love appeared. Although many have said she did not receive the attention her poetry deserves, she was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1961, and was twice named Poet Laureate of Texas.

When she was asked to describe the meaning of her life she said, “To write. And to serve God.”

Cologne Cathedral

I came upon it stretched against the starlight,
a black lace
of stone. What need to enter and kneel down?
It said my prayers for me,

lifted in a sculptured moment of imploring
God in granite,
rock knees rooted in depths where all men
ferment their dreams in secret.

Teach marble prayers to us who know no longer
what to pray,
like this dumb worship’s lovely gesture carven
from midnight’s sweated dews.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Vassar Miller: 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

Hannah Main-van der Kamp

Hannah Main-van der Kamp lives in Victoria, British Columbia, on Vancouver Island — and summers in BC’s Desolation Sound. These locales provide a rich backdrop for her poems. She is an observant nature poet who paints each scene in multi-layered language that often carries our thoughts to the broader meanings of significant biblical texts: A log-boom proposing an opportunity to walk on water — or a contemplative, echoing The Lord’s Prayer, receiving her “daily allotment of gazing” as her daily bread.

In “Seeing Through”, an old man with a chainsaw is cutting beached logs for firewood. “Sun breaks in, / grey so bright you need fog glasses / to see darkly / two loons resting on bevelled glass.”

In the anthology Poetry As Liturgy she says, “The practice of observing one’s own physical environment is much like participating in religious liturgy. These holy tasks ask me to approach with a certain openness and then they expand that opening.” She adds, “How to transmute that wordlessness into words is the poetic calling which engages me and will never be fully achieved.”

The following poem is from her fourth collection, According to Loon Bay (The St. Thomas Poetry Series).

Where Thieves Do Not Break Through. An Aside

Washed up, relinquished of haste, the butt log
on its side in Scuttle Bay, attends the mantra of tides.

At 300 feet, a Douglas fir is wealth
laid up in the heavens. But here in the lost timber graveyard,
it begrudges nothing, makes no effort
to add even a cubit to its stature.

All the engines are shut off. The chain saws, logging trucks,
even the whine of the tugboats. Only the sound
of confident kingfishers breathing over water.

Left for dead, humble as bones,
now the hero is a beginner. Relinquished
of complexities, he discovers wealth in waiting.
Wherever the heart wood is, there is the treasure.

Cork bark furrowed by beetles.
Cambium in depredation by tussock moth and bud worm.
The Big Tree Epic toppled.
In place of the dense crown, a wreath of dry kelp.

Stormy channel of the Shearwater Passage
has brought Vigour down to sea level.

All the time in the world now.
The first life thrown away, that the second
might be established.

(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