Li-Young Lee

Li-Young Lee was born in Jakarta, Indonesia to Chinese parents; as political refugees they eventually made it to the United States in 1964, where they settled. His debut poetry collection, Rose (1986), won the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Poetry Award from New York University. In 2006 Breaking the Alabaster Jar, a collection of interviews, was published.

Many of Li-Young's poems are flavoured with memories of being:
-----"a child at mid-century
-----following your parents from burning
-----village to cities on fire to a country at war
-----with itself and anyone
-----who looks like you..."
----------("After the Pyre")
and those of his father, a Presbyterian minister,
-----"In the room with the shut curtains, of course.
-----He's talking to God again, who plays
-----hide and seek among His names..."
----------("God Seeks a Destiny")

In 2012, I attended an interview with Li-Young Lee at the Festival of Faith & Writing at Calvin College. He said, that his real desire is not to be a poet, but to make contact with the divine. His poems "need a word from God [but] sometimes they are just me talking." Lee also described speech as the "out-going breath", and said, "life is in the in-going breath". "A poem," he said, "is a musical score for the dying breath." The following poem is from his fourth poetry book, Behind My Eyes (Norton, 2008), as are the poems referenced above.

Descended from Dreamers

And what did I learn, a child, on the Sabbath?
A father is bound to kill his favorite son,
and to his father's cherishing
the beloved answers Yes.

The rest of the week, I hid from my father,
grateful I was not prized. But how deserted
he looked, with no son who pleased him.

And what else did I learn?
That light is born of dark to usurp its ancient rank.
And when a pharaoh dreams of ears of wheat
or grazing cows, it means
he's seen the shapes of the oncoming years.

The rest of my life I wondered: Are there dreams
that help us to understand the past? Or

is any looking back a waste of time,
the whole of it a too finely woven
net of innumerable conditions,
causes, effects, countereffects, impossible
to read? Like rain on the surface of a pond.

Where's Joseph when you need him?
Did Jacob, his father, understand
the dream of the ladder? Or did his enduring
its mystery make him richer?

**

Why are you crying? my father asked
in my dream, in a which we faced each other,
knees touching, seated in a moving train.

He had recently died,
and I was wondering if my life would ever begin.

Looking out the window,
one of us witnessed what kept vanishing,
while the other watched what continually emerged.

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

Maura Eichner

Maura Eichner (1915—2009) grew up in New York City where she was educated by the School Sisters of Notre Dame, whose order she joined at age eighteen. From 1943 to 1993 she taught in the English department of Notre Dame of Maryland University in Baltimore. After her death the many tributes to Sister Maura painted her equally as being a beloved teacher, as well as a talented poet.

The first of the eight poetry collections she published in her lifetime, Initiate the Heart, appeared in 1946. In 2011, her selected poems After Silence became available.

Sister Maura Eichner once said in a New York Times interview, that a poet needs to write "with the humility of a craftsman and the ardor of a saint" and to be "flaming with the good tidings of the Incarnation."

What My Teachers Taught Me
I Try To Teach My Students

A bird in the hand
is not to be desired.
In writing, nothing
is too much trouble.
Culture is nourished, not
by fact, but by myth.
Continually think of those
who were truly great
who in their lives fought
for life, who wore
at their hearts, the fire’s
center. Feel the meanings
the words hide. Make routine
a stimulus. Remember
it can cease. Forge
hosannahs from doubt.
Hammer on doors with the heart.
All occasions invite God’s
mercies and all times
are his seasons.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Maura Eichner: 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 Cowper

William Cowper (1731—1800) is celebrated as a poet and hymn writer. Samuel Taylor Coleridge called him "the best modern poet". Even though he was a significant influence on the romantics, and the author of many well-loved hymns, his life was troubled. When he was six years old his mother died, and he was sent away to a boarding school where he was neglected and bullied. Cowper struggled with mental illness throughout his life — both before and after he embraced Evangelicalism — experiencing four extreme bouts of depression during which he unsuccessfully attempted to take his own life.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning expresses well the paradox of Cowper's melancholy in her poem "Cowper's Grave", which begins, as follows, with struggle but concludes with a vision of hope.

---It is a place where poets crowned may feel
--------the heart's decaying —
---It is a place where happy saints may weep
--------amid their praying;
---Yet let the grief and humbleness as low as
--------silence languish!
---Earth surely now may give her calm to whom
--------she gave her anguish

---O poets! from a maniac's tongue was poured
--------the deathless singing!
---O Christians! at your cross of hope a hopeless
--------hand was clinging...

One of the most important friendships in his life was with John Newton — the former slave ship captain and writer of "Amazing Grace". Newton encouraged Cowper in his faith, and in the writing of hymns. In 1779 the two published Olney Hymns, which included many famous songs. Cowper experienced what he called his "fatal dream" which caused him to feel, during his darkest days, that the truth he believed in God's plan of salvation applied to everyone but himself.

In 1782 his first poetry collection — Poems by William Cowper, of the Inner Temple — was published and very well received. Read John Piper's excellent reflection on the tragic life of William Cowper, here

God Moves In A Mysterious Way

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants his footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.

Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never failing skill,
He treasures up his bright designs
And works his sovereign will.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break
In blessings on your head.

Judge not the lord by feeble sense,
But trust him for his grace;
behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.

His purpose will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour;
the bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.

Blind unbelief is sure to err,
And scan his work in vain:
God is his own interpreter,
And he will make it plain.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about William Cowper: 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

John Terpstra*

John Terpstra — poet, writer and cabinet maker — is the author of nine volumes of poetry, including Disarmament (which was short-listed for the Governor General's Award for poetry in 2004) and Two or Three Guitars, his selected poems. His newest collection, Brilliant Falls, has just appeared from Gaspereau Press — the publisher behind Terpstra's poetry and prose books since 2000.

Don McKay has said, “John Terpstra’s meditations have the soundness and snug fit of consummate carpentry, measure in language and in thought showing ‘the ultimate patience involved / in all things made.’ His writing is religious writing from the ground up, negotiating the difficult moral terrain between wildness and ‘development’ with an imaginative grasp reminiscent of Dennis Lee’s Civil Elegies. His are important books, with the toughness of maple, and the compassion of cedar.”

The following poem is from his new book — Brilliant Falls (2013).

Topographies of Easter

We are walking in the mild mid-winter
snow and thin ice, up Coldwater Creek,
its many tributaries, their steep ravines
tracing the blue and brown lines that wind
dizzily over the unfolded whiteness of our new
map, like staves for the crazy earth song we've been
sight-reading with our feet. We are singing the impossible
pitch of these slopes and cliffs, losing our place
in a landscape that lives to improvise, and the map
helps, but nothing written is in stone,
and it's always a revelation, stopping to
compare what's on paper with being there.

Because I did not for a moment doubt in childhood
the story of this rising, shall I, now
I am wiser? The world still has no
boundary. The lines still shiver and wave;
the impossible takes place; people are kind.
And these woods are still as real and magic
as when I first chased and followed any path
that found me, and just as fearful, and brown death
still haunts the green, discolouring all
in brilliant falls ground to sodden mulch,
from which, in deepest regions of the wood,
the bright stem still rises, witnessed by
those few who run like children home to tell us.

I'll say this: whom she supposed to be
the gardener sings and dances the contour lines
that are his body; this body that is broken
for us to wonder at the source, broken
into beauty that lures our present rambling
and leads us to the edge of this escarpment,
where the waters fall, where all our many streams
cascade and plunge, in curtain and ribbon, over
terrace and washboard
--------------------------(our terms for the living text:
earth's open veins)
----------------------and where we meet her,
who has run and sung and danced these trails
since the day she first saw
the massive rock dislodged
from the cliff-face
----------------------of any reasonable expectation.
And all these years removed from childhood
we still leap aboard, to feel if it shifts
of moves us, trusting and not trusting,
not willing and willing
--------------------------the rock to roll on.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about John Terpstra: 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

Vernon Watkins

Vernon Watkins (1906—1967) is a Welsh Poet who grew up in Swansea, and is associated with his close friend Dylan Thomas. He also knew William Butler Yeats, T.S. Eliot, and Philip Larkin. His parents were nonconformists, but Watkins' education, including his time at Cambridge University, influenced him to join the Church of England. At the time of his death he had published seven collections of his own poetry with Faber & Faber — including The Lady with the Unicorn (1948) and The Death Bell (1954) — and had selected the poems for his eighth. Several subsequent books also gradually appeared from his previously unpublished work. His Collected Poems (1986) includes more than 500 poems.

Watkins was devoted in his friendship to Dylan Thomas, even though his friend was unreliable. Thomas, who was supposed to be the best man at Watkins' wedding, never showed up. Unsurprisingly, only one half of their extensive correspondence survives — the half received by Watkins.

Watkins had suffered a breakdown in 1927, as he sought to come to terms with the direction of his life. According to Jane L. McCormick, this was when "...he began the long-avoided struggle with God that is the mystic's first step toward spiritual rebirth; and from then till the day of his death, love of God was foremost in his life."

Since his death the poetry of Vernon Watkins has slipped from public attention. Rowan Williams argues that Watkins' is a significant twentieth century voice, worthy of our attention.

Infant Noah

Calm the boy sleeps, though death is in the clouds.
Smiling he sleeps, and dreams of that tall ship
Moored near the dead stars and the moon in shrouds,
Built out of light, whose faith his hands equip.
It was imagined when remorse of making
Winged the bent, brooding brows of God in doubt.
All distances were narrowed to his waking:
"I built his city, then I cast him out."
Time's great tide falls; under that tide the sands
Turn, and the world is shown there thousand-hilled
To the opening, ageless eyes. On eyelids, hands,
Falls a dove's shade, God's cloud, a velvet leaf.
And his shut eyes hold heaven in their dark sheaf,
In whom the rainbow's covenant is fulfilled.

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 Keble

John Keble (1792—1866) is an English poet and churchman who held the chair as Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1831 to 1841. He was a significant influence on such poets as Thomas Hardy, Christina Rossetti and Matthew Arnold. His 1827 book, The Christian Year, may have been the best-selling volume of verse in the nineteenth century. He was also influential as part of the Oxford Movement: a group of Anglicans who sought to revive fading High Church traditions. In 1870 Keble College, Oxford, was named in his honour.

Although changes in literary fashion have undermined Keble’s popularity today — Malcolm Guite, in the introduction to his 2012 sonnet collection Sounding the Seasons, acknowledges his debt to The Christian Year.

Blest Are the Pure In Heart

Blest are the pure in heart,
For they shall see our God;
The secret of the Lord is theirs;
Their soul is Christ’s abode.

The Lord, Who left the heavens
Our life and peace to bring,
To dwell in lowliness with men
Their Pattern and their King.

Still to the lowly soul
He doth Himself impart;
And for His dwelling and His throne
Chooseth the pure in heart.

Lord, we Thy presence seek;
May ours this blessing be;
Give us a pure and lowly heart,
A temple meet for Thee.

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

Marilyn Chandler McEntyre

Marilyn Chandler McEntyre has taken her ekphrastic poetry to a unique level. She is the author of three poetry collections (all published by Eerdmans) which individually take on the paintings of three different Dutch painters. In Quiet Light (2000) shows us Vermeer’s paintings of women, Drawn to the Light (2006) highlights Rembrandt’s religious paintings, and The Color of Light (2007) is about Van Gogh’s late paintings. In these collections each poem accompanies a colour reproduction of the painting which inspired it.

McEntyre has taught at Westmount College, and at the University of California. She has also reflected deeply on the value of language in her study Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies. The following poem came to me through poet Richard Osler, who in turn came upon it propped up within a bookcase belonging to Dana Gioia. The latter poem, of course is from Drawn to the Light.

The Purposes of Poetry

To find a way of putting what can’t be said
To startle us into seeing
To train words to dance
To rescue worthy words from slow death
To reassert the power of whim
To combat mind erosion
To make us feel what we think
And visa versa
To resuscitate the media-impaired
To remind us that truth is round
With holes and corners
To notice what will never happen
Just that way again
To make us consider how our light is spent
Or that the world is too much with us
Or petals on a black bough

The Raising of Lazarus

I wonder how often Jesus surprised
even himself. In Rembrandt's Lazarus
he looks amazed.
The enormity of what he has
set in motion stops him cold.
Hand raised like a lightning rod,
the life force passes through him.
The once dead man struggles to sit up,
gripping the edge of the tomb, wrenched
from a place he might rather have stayed,
called out of darkness into this
questionable light.
It's not at all clear
that this return will give him
reason to rejoice.
Breath comes back to him
with a sigh too deep for tears.
Martha, who insisted,
badgered, accused—"If you had been here
my brother would not have died!"—
holds out her hand, not yet to touch him,
but as if to shield herself
from what she sees.
She didn't know what she asked.
Harsh light falls full on her face.
She is not wreathed in smiles.
Over her head the carpenter's muscled arm
still points toward heaven, raised
in submission to the power that courses
through those veins. A shadow falls
across his face, something almost like fear
fixes his gaze on the miracle from which
there is no turning back.

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