Boethius

Boethius (c.480—c.526) is a philosopher who was born into an aristocratic family in Rome. He became known for his theological tracts, and for his poetic work, The Consolation of Philosophy, which he wrote while imprisoned. He was also known as an Aristotle scholar, and for his theories on mathematics and music. The Consolation of Philosophy became one of the most popular and influential philosophical works of the Middle Ages. According to The Catholic Encyclopedia, "The main argument of the discourse is the transitoriness and unreality of all earthly greatness and the superior desirability of the things of the mind."

Eventually Boethius was executed by King Theodoric the Great who thought he was conspiring against him with the Eastern Roman Empire.

Margaret Avison, in her 1993 Pascal Lectures at the University of Waterloo, quoted Boethius as saying, "Eternity, then, is clearly a property of the mind of God. God ought not to be considered as older than the created world in the extent of time, but rather in the immediacy of his nature."

The following passage was translated by David R. Stavitt.

from The Consolation of Philosophy

What strife breaks the civil bonds
of the things of this world? What God would set
such incompatible truths loose
to struggle thus with one another?
Either could stand alone, but together
how can their contradictions be joined?
Or is there some way that they can get on
that the human mind, enmeshed in flesh,
cannot discern? The flame is covered,
and in the darkness the world's subtle
connections are hidden. And yet we feel
the warmth of the love that holds together
all that there is in eternal truth
that knows what it seeks and has its end
in its beginning. But which of us yearns
to learn those things he already knows?
And is that wisdom or is it blindness?
(And how do we know that we not know
what we do not know?) If it were found,
could the ignorant seeker recognize it?
From our minds to the mind of God
is an awesome leap: the infinite number
of separate truths that are yet all one
leave us breathless. The body's dense
flesh obscures our recollection
of the separate truths and the one truth
and yet allows us at least to suspect
that we all live in an awkward state
with inklings of our ignorance
that turn out to be our greatest wisdom—
as if we had long ago ascended
and beheld from on high the exalted vision
of which we now retain nothing
but the sense of loss of that exaltation.

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.

Pier Giorgio Di Cicco

Pier Giorgio Di Cicco, was born in Italy, and grew up in Montreal, Baltimore, and Toronto. His early poetry was significantly influenced by Pablo Neruda. He became an Augustinian Brother in 1984, and was ordained in 1990; he stepped back from direct involvement with literary pursuits, for a time, and served as a friar with a parish in Brampton, Ontario. Di Cicco has published well over a dozen books of poetry including his 2009 collection Names of Blessing. From 2004 to 2009 he served as Toronto's second Poet Laureate, and currently teaches at the University of Toronto.

I selected one of his poems to be the 2009 poetry winner at the Canadian Church Press Awards. The following poem is from the anthology Poetry As Liturgy which was edited by Margo Swiss for the St. Thomas Poetry Series (2007).

from Poetry and Liturgy

God is a musician too, and all mediums are
arbitrary to Him, a blind man tapping with a cane
is tapping the poem of His prayer, for it is only the sentiment
that means anything to God; not the medium, it
is like water; if it will not flow here, it will flow there.
What matters to God is the flow of sentiment;
He does not know what to do with art forms; so that
artists go blind, and musicians go deaf —
but the sentiment goes on; and it is the poem of His hymn;
everything sings, even without song.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Pier Giorgio Di Cicco: second post.

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.

Philip Sidney

Sir Philip Sidney (1554—1586) may be considered the father of English literary criticism. In his "The Defence of Poesy", Sidney argued that poetry, by which he meant literature, was able to rouse its readers to virtue. Although this is not the intent of many writers today, this was Sidney's focus and purpose. In 1583 he began his project of versifying the Psalms, which was interrupted by his death. His sister, Mary Sidney Herbert, completed the project in 1599.

He was involved politically in the cause of uniting Protestant Europe against the Roman Catholics of Spain. In 1581 he became a member of parliament, and in 1584 Queen Elizabeth I appointed him governor of Flushing (in the Netherlands). In fighting against the Spanish at the Battle of Zutphen, a musket-shot broke his thighbone; twenty three days later he died.

Psalm 93

Clothed with state, and girt with might,
Monarch-like Jehovah reigns,
He who earth's foundation pight—
Pight at first, and yet sustains;
He whose stable throne disdains
Motions shock and age's flight;
He who endless one remains
One, the same, in changeless plight.

Rivers,—yea though the rivers roar,
Roaring though sea-billows rise,
Vex the deep, and break the shore,—
Stronger art thou, Lord of skies!
Firm and true thy promise lies
Now and still as heretofore:
Holy worship never dies
In thy house where we adore.

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.

Brad Davis*

Brad Davis is the author of two full-length poetry collections, Opening King David, and his new book, Still Working It Out. He is a counselor and poetry writing teacher at the Promfret School in Connecticut. His poetry has appeared in such journals as Image, The Paris Review, Poetry and Spiritus. I have been very fortunate to have edited Still Working It Out with Brad for the Poiema Poetry Series from Cascade Books.

Poet Margaret Gibson has said of this book, "Brad Davis has mastered the art of presenting the ordinary moment with all its stunning strangeness. Reading these poems, we become mindful that we live by mystery, by beauty, and by grace."

The following is the title poem from his new collection:

Still Working It Out

for Robin Needham, killed in the 2004 Christmas tsunami

Something
shuddered in the un-

fathomable dark, and a wave
shouldered forth

like an eighteen wheeler
skidding sideways

into oncoming traffic—a wave
inhering by the power

of a word lovely
as snow on a navy sleeve,

the same word
that shuddered in each

dark cell of the dead
Christ, a wave shouldering forth

like a new heaven, new
earth, clearing away

the old, the impossible—a wave,
a word, terrible as it is

great, great as it is holy
and terrible.

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

Posted with permission of the poet.

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.

Mark A. Noll

Mark A. Noll is a prolific author and historian, whose scholarly work over-shadows his poetry. He is celebrated, according to Time, as one of the most influential evangelicals in America. His 1994 book The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Eerdmans), an analysis of Evangelical anti-intellectualism, has been significant in shaping Evangelical institutions, according to Christianity Today. He taught for 27 years at Wheaton College, and now is on the faculty of Notre Dame.

His poetry collection Seasons of Grace was published by Baker in 1997. The following poem appears in A Widening Light, a poetry anthology compiled by Luci Shaw.

Christ's Crown

The leaves emerge—a growing
garland lying lightly on his head.
The dance of Spring, or resurrection,
quicks his feet; from all directions
caper those he'll call his own.
The sun shines warming down upon
the dancers and their pivot. Only those
up close can smell and see the thick
black-red the flowers nurse upon.

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.

Mary Elizabeth Coleridge

Mary Elizabeth Coleridge (1861—1907) is a British writer, who also wrote poetry under the pseudonym Anodos (a character in the George MacDonald novel Phantastes). During her lifetime she was best known for such novels as The King With Two Faces (1897). Today she is more remembered for her verse.

She was raised in a home that encouraged the arts, and which was visited by such writers as Robert Browning and Alfred Tennyson. She is the great-grand-niece of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Mary Elizabeth Coleridge taught literature and grammar for twelve years at Working Women's College, seeing it as her Christian duty to help the poor.

Good Friday In My Heart

GOOD FRIDAY in my heart! Fear and affright!
My thoughts are the Disciples when they fled,
My words the words that priest and soldier said,
My deed the spear to desecrate the dead.
And day, Thy death therein, is changed to night.

Then Easter in my heart sends up the sun.
My thoughts are Mary, when she turned to see.
My words are Peter, answering, ‘Lov’st thou Me?’
My deeds are all Thine own drawn close to Thee,
And night and day, since Thou dost rise, are one.

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.

William Everson

William Everson (1912—1994) is a beat poet of the San Francisco Renaissance. When he discovered the poetry of Robinson Jeffers, he dropped out of university and decided to become a poet himself. During WWII he was a conscientious objector, working in lumber camps in Oregon. In 1947 Kenneth Rexroth wrote a bold endorsement of Everson's work that helped launch him as a national poet.

After having recently read Augustine's Confessions, at midnight mass on Christmas Eve 1948 he had a mystical experience, which led to his conversion. He took on the name Brother Antoninus, having become a lay brother with the Dominican order. The three books he wrote during this time are often considered his finest work: The Crooked Lines of God (1959), The Hazards of Holiness (1962) and The Rose of Solitude (1967). The media grew intrigued at the thought of a monk being associated with the Beat movement, and so Everson was in demand for public readings. Dana Gioia says that "Fame proved Everson's undoing." He left the order in 1969 to marry a woman he'd been counselling.

He was poet-in-residence at University of California, Santa Cruz during the '70s and '80s.

The Making of the Cross

Rough fir, hauled from the hills. And the tree it had been,
Lithe-limbed, wherein the wren had nested.
Whereon the red hawk and the grey
Rested from flight, and the raw-head vulture
Shouldered to his feed—that tree went over
Bladed down with double-bitted axe; was snaked with winches;
The wedge split it; hewn with adze
It lay to season toward its use.

So too with the nails: milleniums under the earth,
Pure ore; chunked out with picks; the nail-shape
Struck in the pelt-lunged forge; tonged to a cask,
And the wait against that work.

Even the thorn-bush flourished from afar,
As do the flourishing generations of its kind,
Filling the shallow soil no one wants.
Wind-sown, it cuts the cattle and the wild horse;
It tears the cloth of man, and hurts his hand.

Just as in life the good things of the earth
Are patiently assembled: some from here, some from there;
Wine from the hill and wheat from the valley;
Rain that comes blue-bellied out of the sopping sea;
Snow that keeps its drift on the gooseberry ridge,
Will melt with May, go down, take the egg of the salmon,
Serve the traffic of otters and fishes,
Be ditched to orchards…

So too are gathered up the possibles of evil.

And when the Cross was joined, quartered,
As is the earth; spoked, as is the Universal Wheel—
Those radials that led all unregenerate act
Inward to innocence—it met the thorn-wove Crown;
It found the Scourges and the Dice;
The Nail was given and the reed-lifted Sponge;
The Curse caught forward out of the heart corrupt;
The excoriate Foul, stoned with the thunder and the hail—
All these made up that miscellaneous wrath
And were assumed.

The evil, the wastage and the woe,
As if the earth's old cyst, back down the slough
To Adam's sin-burnt calcinated bones
Rushed out of time and clotted on the Cross.

Off there the cougar
Coughed in passion when the sun went out; the rattler
Filmed his glinty eye, and found his hole.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about William Everson: second post.

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.