Søren Kierkegaard

Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813—1855) could also be described as a theologian and poet. He lived all his life in Copenhagen, with the exception of two years in Germany.

Called the father of existentialism, Kierkegaard focussed on the subjective and personal. He considered a leap of faith essential to a passionate Christian life, and distrusted attempts to prove Christian claims objectively. He believed people choose to live within the aesthetic sphere (which is unfulfilling), the ethical sphere (which leads to compromise), or the faith sphere (which may lead to a purposeful life).

Without God at the centre, existentialism often leads to despair. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, one of Russia’s greatest writers, demonstrates Christian existentialist thought in many of his novels.

Kierkegaard’s emphasis was often on the individual; theologically this includes our need as individuals to have a relationship with Jesus Christ, rather than merely being connected to him through an institutional church. He was very critical of the Danish National Church, and in much conflict with it.

Many of Kierkegaard’s poetic prayers have been translated into English.

Calm My Heart

O Lord, calm the waves of this heart; calm its tempests.
Calm yourself, O my soul, so that the divine can act in you.
Calm yourself, O my soul, so that God is able to repose in you,
so that his peace may cover you.

Yes, Father in heaven,
often have we found that the world cannot give us peace,
O but make us feel that you are able to give peace;
let us know the truth of your promise:
that the whole world may not be able to take away your peace.

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

Andrew Lansdown

Andrew Lansdown is a Baptist writer living in Perth, Australia, who has authored ten collections of poetry. He writes both adult and children’s poetry, has more than fifty published short stories and a trilogy of popular fantasy novels. Les Murray has called him Australia’s greatest Christian poet. The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-century Poetry in English, suggests that because of the Christian stance in Andrew Lansdown’s poetry, perhaps “his work has been neglected and undervalued.” Even so, he is the recipient of many awards, fellowships, and honours.

He is an imagist poet — preferring to share the brief glimpses of his perceptive eye, rather than longer, rambling verse. It has been suggested that the effect of his poetry is cumulative, and can be best appreciated when reading many poems, one after another. His most recent collection of adult poetry is Far From Home (2010).

Rose

The day after I cut it
I notice the white rose
in the pottery vase
on my desk start to wilt.

All day it has been
drooping lower and lower,
until now its small head
is hanging upside down,

lolling loose-haired
against the shoulder
of the vase, as if given
entirely to sorrow.

Parable

for Leroy Randall

Plant a seed, reap a song:
such are the ways of God.

Jesus said his kingdom
is like a mustard seed

which when buried rises
to a tree, and the birds

alight in its branches.
So, from a grain, a surge

of sap and shade, a haunt
of gladness and surprise.

Oh, beyond all desire,
the tree of God abounds

with nests—and a choir!

The Raven

The raven is a black and craven bird,
a bird by the Law unclean.
Its carrion cry on the wind is heard ―
the raven, that black and craven bird.
Yet it is the one the Lord by His word
has sent for my keep and keen.
Oh, the raven’s a black and craven bird,
a bird by the Law unclean!

Posted with permission of the poet

I first encountered Andrew Lansdown through “An anthology of Australian Christian Poets” in the journal Stonework. Issue 3, available here

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Andrew Lansdown: 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

Edmund Spenser

Edmund Spenser (1552–1599) is best known for his epic poem The Faerie Queene. Spenser himself described it as an allegory, with the knights which appear in the various books symbolizing various Christian virtues. The Redcrosse Knight in Book 1, for example, represents holiness, and also suggests the patron saint of England — St. George. It was the C.S. Lewis book The Allegory of Love (1936) which helped to re-establish the importance of The Faerie Queene.

Spenser was not born to an influential family, but gained attention with the assistance of such contemporaries as Sir Philip Sydney and Sir Walter Raleigh.

The spelling in his poetry traditionally is not standardized since he often deliberately wrote in an archaic style, partly in tribute to Chaucer. He was an influential innovator in poetic forms, including what is called the Spenserian sonnet (with a rhyme scheme of a-b-a-b-b-c-b-c-c-d-c-d-e-e) as exemplified in the following poem.

Sonnet #68

Most glorious Lord of lyfe, that on this day,
---Didst make thy triumph over death and sin:
---And having harrowd hell, didst bring away
---Captivity thence captive us to win:
This joyous day, deare Lord, with joy begin,
---And grant that we for whom thou diddest dye
---Being with thy deare blood clene washt from sin,
---May live for ever in felicity.
And that thy love we weighing worthily,
---May likewise love thee for the same againe:
---And for thy sake that all lyke deare didst buy,
---With love may one another entertayne.
So let us love, deare love, lyke as we ought,
---Love is the lesson which the Lord us taught.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Edmund Spenser: 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

Paul Willis

Paul Willis is an English professor at Westmount College in Santa Barbara, California. Besides writing poetry, he has published essays such as those in his book Bright Shoots of Everlastingness (WordFarm); he also has a novel forthcoming.

A dominant influence on his life and writing has been being a mountaineer. He grew up in Oregon, close to the Cascade Mountains, where he was wholly “summit bound”. He and his brother recklessly sought to climb every peek in their state, and were “very nearly obliterated” doing it. In one attempt to climb Alaska’s Mount McKinley, Paul’s brother lost his hands and feet to frostbite, while Paul was hallucinating — still 800 feet from the top.

Mountaineering has also drawn him towards the work of pioneer naturalist John Muir, and inspired him to pursue ecological issues. The following is the title poem from his most-recent poetry collection.

Rosing from the Dead

We are on our way home
from Good Friday service.
It is dark. It is silent.
“Sunday,” says Hanna,
“Jesus will be rosing
from the dead.”

It must have been like that.
A white blossom, or maybe
a red one, pulsing
from the floor of the tomb, reaching
round the Easter stone
and levering it aside
with pliant thorns.

The soldiers overcome
with the fragrance,
and Mary at sunrise
mistaking the dawn-dewed
Rose of Sharon
for the untameable Gardener.

(Posted with permission of the poet)

This is the first of three Kingdom Poets posts about Paul Willis: second post, third post, fourth 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

Scott Cairns

Scott Cairns is the author of six poetry collections — the most recent being his new and selected poems, Compass of Affection (Paraclete Press). His poems have appeared in such publications as The Atlantic Monthly, Image and Poetry. He has taught at several universities, and is currently Director of Creative Writing at University of Missouri.

Cairns has long believed that poetry should be more than merely a record of something that has previously happened, but that it needs to be something of significance in itself. In discussing positive changes that have occurred within the art of poetry, Scott Cairns said in Image just over a decade ago, “The new poetry, a poetry which employs language as agency and power rather than merely as name for another and prior thing, demands that it be read and re-read, and poked, and puzzled over as an event of its own. The poem is not about a thing; it is a thing.”

The following poem is from his 1998 collection, Recovered Body.

The More Earnest Prayer of Christ

And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly…
----------------------------------— Luke 22:44

His last prayer in the garden began, as most
of his prayers began–in earnest, certainly,
but not without distraction, an habitual…what?

Distance? Well, yes, a sort of distance, or a mute
remove from the genuine distress he witnessed
in the endlessly grasping hands of multitudes

and, often enough, in his own embarrassing
circle of intimates. Even now, he could see
these where they slept, sprawled upon their robes or wrapped

among the arching olive trees. Still, something new,
unlikely, uncanny was commencing as he spoke.
As the divine in him contracted to an ache,

a throbbing in the throat, his vision blurred, his voice
grew thick and unfamiliar; his prayer–just before
it fell to silence–became uniquely earnest.

And in that moment–perhaps because it was so
new–he saw something, had his first taste of what
he would become, first pure taste of the body, and the blood.

(Posted with permission of the poet)

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Scott Cairns: second post, third post, fourth 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

Gabriela Mistral

Chilean poet, Gabriela Mistral (1889—1957) was the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1945). Her work is significantly influenced by her faith — with death and rebirth being important themes. She was an early encourager of the young, Chilean poet Pablo Neruda.

In 1909, the man she loved, Romelio Ureta, committed suicide — an event which significantly impacted her early poetry. Her second collection Desolación (1922), which brought her international attention, is primarily about Christian faith and death.

She lived outside of Chile for many years — including in Mexico, France, Italy and the United States — serving as a consul in several European, Latin American and US cities. American poet Langston Hughes translated several of her poems, which appeared shortly after her death.

Decalogue Of The Artist

I. You shall love beauty, which is the shadow of God
over the Universe.

II. There is no godless art. Although you love not the
Creator, you shall bear witness to Him creating His likeness.

III. You shall create beauty not to excite the senses
but to give sustenance to the soul.

IV. You shall never use beauty as a pretext for luxury
and vanity but as a spiritual devotion.

V. You shall not seek beauty at carnival or fair
or offer your work there, for beauty is virginal
and is not to be found at carnival or fair.

VI. Beauty shall rise from your heart in song,
and you shall be the first to be purified.

VII. The beauty you create shall be known
as compassion and shall console the hearts of men.

VIII. You shall bring forth your work as a mother
brings forth her child: out of the blood of your heart.

IX. Beauty shall not be an opiate that puts you
to sleep but a strong wine that fires you to action,
for if you fail to be a true man or a true woman,
you will fail to be an artist.

X. Each act of creation shall leave you humble,
for it is never as great as your dream and always
inferior to that most marvellous dream of God
which is Nature.

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