Stephen Cushman

Stephen Cushman is a poet from Connecticut who moved south in 1982 to be a Professor of English at the University of Virginia, where he specializes in American literature.

He is the author of seven poetry books ― all published by Louisiana State University Press ― including his latest: Keep the Feast (2022). His other publications include two books of literary criticism, and three books about the American Civil War.

His publisher’s website says that Keep the Feast “sings in the tradition of the psalmists and devotional poets…” and that the title poem is structured after Psalm 119. Maurice Manning praised the book, saying, “Schooled equally in Thoreau and folklore, the poems in this book are nourishing in their humor, edifying in their precision, and enlivening all around.”

Atheism’s Easier

Abstain from staring too long at the sky.
Stick to screens, little keyboards;
block out birds with private earbuds;
never hear the wind breathe harder.
Watch TV. Always drive.
Try to avoid a night outside
in ladled moonlight, glowing broth.
Eschew solitude; cut back on silence;
call up someone just to gossip;
send lots of messages; read them, too.
Make sure not to spend a winter in the woods,
a month on a summit, a week in a desert,
time by the sea if it promotes thinking
how it’s acceptance without conditions
that makes me acceptable, and pretty soon,
though tough at first, atheism’s easier.

Posted with permission of the poet.

This post was suggested by Lisa Russ Spaar.

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 Wipf & Stock.

W.R. Rodgers

W.R. Rodgers (1909―1969) is a Belfast poet, who served as a Presbyterian minister, before becoming a broadcaster with the BBC in London, at the invitation of Louis MacNeice. His first collection, Awake! and Other Poems was published in 1941, with its first edition being almost completely wiped out during the London Blitz. His early poetry was greatly influenced by W.H. Auden.

At the BBC he broadcast a number of significant programs on Irish writers. In 1966 he moved to California to become Writer-in-Residence at Pitzer College. It was in California that he died in 1969.

A booklet, put together by the BBC concludes with the following: “Rodgers’ ashes were returned to Belfast and after a memorial service in First Ballymacarret Presbyterian Church ― which he had attended as a boy ― he was buried in Loughgall. The Minister-poet’s life had come full circle. Seamus Heaney read a short selection of Rodgers’ poetry at the memorial service ― reflecting his importance for a new generation of northern writers.”

The following poem, demonstrates Rodgers’ war-era modernism. It first appeared in Horizon in 1943, and later (I believe) in his 1952 collection Europa and the Bull.

Christ Walking on the Water

Slowly, O so slowly, longing rose up
In the forenoon of his face, till only
A ringlet of fog lingered round his loins;
And fast he went down beaches all weeping
With weed, and waded out. Twelve tall waves
Sequent and equated, hollowed and followed.
O what a cockeyed sea he walked on,
What poke-ends of foam, what elbowings
And lugubrious looks, what ebullient
And contumacious musics. Always there were
Hills and holes, pills and poles, a wavy wall
And bucking ribbon caterpillaring past
With glossy ease. And often, as he walked,
The slow curtains of swell swung open and showed,
Miles and smiles away, the bottle-boat
Flung on one wavering frond of froth that fell
Knee-deep and heaved thigh-high. In his forward face
No cave of afterthought opened; to his ear
No bottom clamour climbed up; nothing blinked.
For he was the horizon, he the hub,
Both bone and flesh, finger and ring of all
This clangorous sea. Docile, at his toe's touch,
Each tottering dot stood roundaboutly calm
And jammed the following others fast as stone.
The ironical wave smoothed itself out
To meet him, and the mocking hollow
Hooped its back for his feet. A spine of light
Sniggered on the knobbly water, ahead.
But he like a lover, caught up,
Pushed past all wrigglings and remonstrances
And entered the rolling belly of the boat
That shuddered and lay still. And he lay there
Emptied of his errand, oozing still. Slowly
The misted mirror of his eyes grew dear
And cold, the bell of blood tolled lower,
And bright before his sight the ocean bared
And rolled its horrible bold eyeballs endlessly
In round rebuke. Looking over the edge
He shivered. Was this the way he had come?
Was that the one who came? The backward bowl
And all the bubble-pit that he had walked on
Burst like a plate into purposelessness.
All, all was gone, the fervour and the froth
Of confidence, and flat as water was
The sad and glassy round. Somewhere, then,
A tiny flute sounded, O so lonely.
A ring of birds rose up and wound away
Into nothingness. Beyond himself he saw
The settled steeples, and breathing beaches
Running with people. But he,
He was custodian to nothing now,
And boneless as an empty sleeve hung down.
Down from crowned noon to cambered evening
He fell, fell, from white to amber, till night
Slid over him like an eyelid. And he,
His knees drawn up, his head dropped deep,
Curled like a question-mark, asleep.

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 Wipf & Stock.

Zach Czaia

Zach Czaia is a Minneapolis poet with two collections available: Saint Paul Lives Here (in Minnesota) (2015, Wipf & Stock) and his recent Knucklehead: poems (2021, Nodin Press). He has been teaching high school English for several years.

In Knucklehead, Czaia speaks honestly of his life ― at one point looking back to his first year of teaching high school down in Belize, where the boys called him Dante since he was leading the group of seventeen-year-olds through Inferno ― at another time reflecting self-deprecatingly on himself as a husband ― at yet another being overwhelmed by the murder of George Floyd, in part, because it happened in his own backyard.

He hosts a new poetry podcast called “Open Your Hands” where he reads a contemporary poem, and interacts with it. One recent episode features Mark Jarman’s poem “Questions For Ecclesiastes.”

The following Zach Czaia poem first appeared in Ekstasis and is from Knucklehead.

Saint Paul Talks Strategy

So I went down to a potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. Whenever the vessel he was making went wrong, as clay is apt to do in a potter’s hand, he would remake it in a different shape, such as he thought suitable. — Jeremiah 18:3-4

It’s a go-to, I’ll admit it,
the potter at his wheel. I say,
“I’m the stuff in his hands, the clay—
a pot gone wrong, he remade it,
remade me, my life.” The prophet
knows more than I do. Hearts don’t change
that much from age to age, the range
of feelings the same now as then.
We’re all still waiting for the moment when
these hearts we carry don’t feel so strange.

Posted with permission of the poet.

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 Wipf & Stock.

Bruce Beasley

Bruce Beasley is the author of ten poetry collections, and has won several awards, including from University of Georgia Press, and Ohio State University Press. His books include The Corpse Flower: New and Selected Poems (2007, University of Washington Press), and his new collection Prayershreds (2023, Orison Books). In 1996 Charles Wright selected his book Summer Mystagogia to receive the Colorado Prize for Poetry.

Prayersheds is a fascinating collection, woven both from Beasley’s obsession with words, and our attempts at communication through words that we call prayer. His brain seems to continually be in a musical whirl of homonyms, homophones, etymologies, and nonce words combining familiar syllables for greater precision of meaning. Kathleen Norris insightfully compares his playfulness to that of E.E. Cummings. His word-wrestling doesn’t seem to be intended to distance himself from the reader, since many of the poems are quite accessible, however the poems sometimes take a path that require us to make our paradigm of what a poem should be more flexible. Rather than a book of prayer poems, this is more a book of poems about prayer.

The following poem first appeared as “The Responsive Amens” in the journal Subtropics, and it is from Prayershreds.

Verily

------------I

Shut your eyes―we were taught
in the Children’s Sermon
on how to pray―
shut your eyes tight until
you hear the pastor say Amen

but sometimes when I forgot to listen

for that end-signal word, sleep and prayer
would indistinguish themselves

------------II

Mandatory postrequisite
of creed
prerequisite for exit Amen

Vocally italicized Yes

that compelled and terminal
assent

It means Verily, so be it, decidedly it’s true,
means Here is where we go
back to normal-talk
We make it
mean

Please Lord let it end make it
mean Oh God
would would would
that it were so

------------III

To my body I will be as the
amen
is to the flesh’s
Let us pray Let us pray Let us pray

------------IV

Every amen
scissors the traced
outline of the prayer, ripping
the cut-out space of what we say to God

from the scrapped
silver silk of all we’d never say

Posted with permission of the poet.

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 Wipf & Stock.

Hildegard of Bingen*

Hildegard of Bingen (1098—1179) was the youngest of ten children. Her parents dedicated her to God as a tithe, placing her under the anchoress Jutta as her servant and apprentice.

As a child she received visions of light she could not interpret. These visions persisted, reaching a pinnacle when she was 42 years old. She said: "A fiery light, flashing intensely, came from the open vault of heaven and poured through my whole brain. Like a flame that is hot without burning, it kindled all my heart and all my breast. … Suddenly I could understand."

Jutta and Hildegard had formed a Benedictine convent, which Hildegard moved to the Rhine River town of Bingen after Jutta’s death. She also established monasteries at Rupertsberg, and Eibingen as the community expanded.

Hildegard wrote of her visions, and her interpretations of those visions in books, and went on speaking tours throughout the Rhine region. Opposition came when she criticized church leaders for abuses of power; however, both Bernard of Clairvaux and Pope Eugenius III supported her efforts. She also started writing music for her nuns to sing as part of the Divine Office.

She is primarily known today for her music and poetry, although she also wrote practical books on biology, botany, medicine, theology and the arts.

O Comforting Fire of Spirit

O comforting fire of Spirit,
Life, within the very Life of all Creation.
Holy you are in giving life to All.

Holy you are in anointing
those who are not whole;
Holy you are in cleansing
a festering wound.

O sacred breath,
O fire of love,
O sweetest taste in my breast
which fills my heart
with a fine aroma of virtues.

O most pure fountain
through whom it is known
that God has united strangers
and inquired after the lost.

O breastplate of life
and hope of uniting
all members as One,
O sword-belt of honor,
enfold those who offer blessing.

Care for those
who are imprisoned by the enemy
and dissolve the bonds of those
whom Divinity wishes to save.

O mightiest path which penetrates All,
from the height to every Earthly abyss,
you compose All, you unite All.

Through you clouds stream, ether flies,
stones gain moisture,
waters become streams,
and the earth exudes Life.

You always draw out knowledge,
bringing joy through Wisdom's inspiration.

Therefore, praise be to you
who are the sound of praise
and the greatest prize of Life,
who are hope and richest honor
bequeathing the reward of Light.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Hildegard of Bingen: first post.

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 Wipf & Stock.

Nola Garrett

Nola Garrett is a Pittsburgh poet who taught literature and writing for many years at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. Her books include a collection of sestinas The Dynamite Maker’s Mistress (2009), and The Pastor’s Wife Considers Pinball (2013). In this latter collection she has created the persona of the pastor’s wife, whom she imagines as seperate from herself, and yet in relationship with her. Mayapple Press released Garrett's Ledge: New & Selected Poems in 2016.

She is one of the poets whose work appears in Taking Root in the Heart (2023, Paraclete Press) ― a new anthology, of poets whose work has appeared in The Christian Century, edited by Jill Peláez Baumgaertner. Some of the other featured poets include Brett Foster, Julie L. Moore, Luci Shaw, and Anya Silver.

Nola Garrett has also translated Macedonian poetry, along with her daughter-in-law Natasha Garrett.

The Pastor’s Wife and I

The pastor’s wife does not go out to play.
Outside it is Tuesday—merciless and far
from Sunday. She is all righteous carrots
and earnest potatoes. Sometimes she hurts
me with her notions, makes my shoulders droop,
reminds me that Nola’s dreams are a troupe
of untrained monkeys. She recycles
my prayers, drags me away from dark angels.
But, when her hair grew prim and gray, I made
her dye it brown. Then, she chose our second husband,
a good man given to chills—him, I seduced.
Now, like a gun, she holds her watch
to my ear, forces me to write these poems.
It was I who fed her those wild greens,
a salad cut from the last of my pagan
garden’s rue. Her mouth burns
for benedictions and shooting stars.
Into my mirror she stares, worries
I might disappear—her feral woman—
the woman who met Christ at the well.

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 Wipf & Stock.

Abigail Carroll*

Abigail Carroll is a poet living in Vermont whose new collection is one written in conversation with the Psalms. Cup My Days Like Water (2023) like it’s predecessor Habitation of Wonder (2018) has been published by Cascade Books as part of the Poiema Poetry Series. I selected both of these books and worked with the poet as editor to ready them for publication.

Walter Brueggemann has said of her new book, “This rich poetic collection is overwhelming in its rich imagery, its simplicity of wording, and its unflinching witness to the reality and goodness of God. Abigail Carroll is fixed on the concreteness of life as she sees it, even as she makes winsome linkages to the specificities of Scripture. If you love poetry, get this book! If you do not yet love poetry, get this book and you will promptly learn to love poetry—along with the honest knowing faith of this poet.”

Carroll holds a PhD in American Studies from Boston University, where she has taught both history and writing. She is pastor of arts and spiritual formation at Church at the Well, in Burlington, Vermont. Her other passions include photographing nature, and playing the harp.

The following poem is from Cup My Days Like Water and relates to the following quotation from Psalm 10:1 — “O LORD, why do you stand so far away?”

Where is the Lord?

Always hiding—
a well deep in the earth,
a herring gull’s feather, white,
waiting to be picked up.
Where is the Lord?
Always riding
the space between
breath and branches, light-years
and stars—
the bright, slow rendering
of who we were into who
we at last are.

Where is the Lord?
Always in song
behind a curtain, behind
a wall,
behind a truth too tall to scale.
Yes, always behind a strong veil,
a fire screen,
a heat shield by which we’re spared
the brunt of a vast love—
scouring, wild.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Abigail Carroll: first post.

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 Wipf & Stock.