Diane Glancy

Diane Glancy is a Christian writer with a joint Cherokee and English/German family heritage. She is professor emerita at Macalester College. She has received many honours, including a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas, and the 2016 Arrell Gibson Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oklahoma Center for the Book. Her Christian faith and native heritage intersect within her writing.

In her book The Cloister Walk, Kathleen Norris says:
-----"I once had the great pleasure of hearing the poet Diane Glancy
-----astound a group of clergy...by saying that she loved Christianity
-----because it was a blood religion. People gasped in shock; I was
-----overjoyed, thinking, Hit 'em, Diane; hit 'em where they live...
-----Diane told the clergy that she appreciated the relation of the
-----Christian religion to words. "The creation came into being when
-----God spoke," she said, reminding us of Paul's belief that "faith
-----comes through hearing." Diane saw this regard for words as
-----connected not only to writing but to living. "You build a world
-----in what you say," she said. "Words — as I speak or write them —
-----make a path on which I walk."

Some of Glancy's recent publications include three novels from Wipf & Stock — Uprising of the Goats, One of Us and Ironic Witness — and her most-recent poetry collection Report to the Department of the Interior (2015, University of New Mexico Press).

How to Explain Christ to the Unsaved

An awkward cousin who could not get a date, and you didn't know anyone who would go out with him. Too dark and ruddy. Too swarthy and crazy in the eye. He had a slow walk you could out-pace. He was someone you thought you could outrun. But he could stop you dead with something he said. Or his voice could break into thunder. He was? Concerned. Preoccupied. You remember Crazy Horse with his eye on the next world. His horse with a mission too. Not just holy but knowing how to get down to it of late. No one else would come by or call, but this cowboy who rode a donkey and would end up wearing a briar or thorns, would hang around. Who was this prophet, this traveling man, this nomad born with animals who never seemed to connect? He was jovial as a penitentiary. He became a grandfather spirit, and his believers, Black Elks who saw into the sky. He was too tall, too lanky. He was not always at the table for his cabbage and rabbit. He was a loner. Atonement was never a group act but for the sheep and bullocks and rams, I suppose, over the burnt alters of old encampments. But he was self-possessed. A mean Jesus and the soldiers nailed him to a cross. He was in hell three days and brought out everyone who wanted to take a salt bath in his seas and peel off their mind and squeal to enter his kingdom he had just named, heaven. Now he sleeps, they taunt, but it may be the sleep Adam slept when a rib was taken for you know who, and if Christ sleeps, it is the sleep while the cross is taken from him, called, rib bone for a bride.

Posted with permission of the poet.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Diane Glancy: second post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest 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.

John Berryman*

John Berryman (1914—1972) is a major figure in late 20th century American poetry, and is particularly significant within the confessional school. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his collection 77 Dream Songs in 1964. Even after his conversion to Christian faith, he suffered from alcoholism and depression, which led to his suicide in 1972.

According to Paul Mariani, whose biography Dream Song: The Life of John Berryman appeared in 1990, Berryman experienced "a sudden and radical shift from a belief in a transcendent God ... to a belief in a God who cared for the individual fates of human beings and who even interceded for them."

Dwight Cramer has said about Berryman's first posthumous collection Delusions, Etc., which had been edited for publication prior to his death, "A religious faith never entirely defined accompanies Berryman's despair. It is a faith that invokes God as a protector but does not explore the Divine nature. It revolves less around God than around the poet's personal need for Him." This can be seen in the following poem, in how Berryman chooses what he wants to believe, and what he doesn't, and his emphasis on happiness, as opposed to a life of sacrifice and service.

The Facts & Issues

I really believe He’s here all over this room
in a motor hotel in Wallace Stevens’ town.
I admit it’s weird; and could–or could it?–not be so;
but frankly I don’t think there’s a molecular chance of that.
It doesn’t seem hypothesis. Thank heavens
millions agree with me, or mostly do,
and have done ages of our human time,
among whom were & still are some very sharp cookies.
I don’t exactly feel missionary about it,
though it’s very true I wonder if I should.
I regard the boys who don’t buy this as deluded.
Of course they regard me no doubt as deluded.
Okay with me! And not the hell with them
at all–no!–I feel dubious on Hell–
it’s here, all right, but elsewhere, after? Screw that,
I feel pretty sure that evil simply ends
for the doer (having wiped him out,
but the way, usually) where good goes on,
or good may drop dead too: I don’t think so:
I can’t say I have hopes in that department
myself, I lack ambition just just there,
I know that Presence says it’s mild, and it’s mild,
but being what I am I wouldn’t care
to dare go nearer. Happy to be here
and to have been here, with such lovely ones
so infinitely better, but to me
even in their suffering infinitely kind
& blessing. I am a greedy man, of course,
but I wouldn’t want that kind of luck continued,–
or even increased (for Christ’s sake), & forever?
Let me be clear about this. It is plain to me
Christ underwent man & treachery & socks
& lashes, thirst, exhaustion, the bit, for my pathetic & disgusting vices,
to make this filthy fact of particular, long-after,
faraway, five-foot-ten & moribund
human being happy. Well, he has!
I am so happy I could scream!
It’s enough! I can’t BEAR ANY MORE.
Let this be it. I’ve had it. I can’t wait.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about John Berryman: first post

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest 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.

Thomas Ken

Thomas Ken (1637—1711) is an English poet, best known for his hymns. He grew up in the home of his sister and her husband — the poet Izaak Walton — and was ordained an Anglican priest in 1662.

Thomas Ken served as royal chaplain to Charles II, and earned the king's respect by refusing to let the king's mistress stay in the chaplain's residence. This eventually led to his being appointed Bishop of Bath and Wells in 1685. In this role he wrote the book Prayers for the Use of All Persons who Come to the Baths for Cure (1692).

Along with several other bishops, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1688 for refusing to sign the "Declaration of Indulgence" which James II, the next monarch, presented in support of Catholicism.

Thomas Ken's collected poetical works were published in four volumes in 1721, and the book — Bishop Ken's Christian Year: Or Hymns and Poems for the Holy Days and Festivals of the Church — appeared in 1868. His best known lyric comes at the end of the following hymn, sung around the world as "The Doxology."

Glory to Thee, My God This Night

Glory to thee, my God, this night
For all the blessings of the light;
Keep me, O keep me, King of kings,
Beneath thy own almighty wings.

Forgive me, Lord, for thy dear Son,
The ill that I this day have done,
That with the world, myself, and thee,
I, ere I sleep, at peace may be.

Teach me to live, that I may dread
The grave as little as my bed;
Teach me to die, that so I may
Rise glorious at the awful day.

O may my soul on thee repose,
And with sweet sleep mine eyelids close,
Sleep that may me more vigorous make
To serve my God when I awake.

When in the night I sleepless lie,
My soul with heavenly thoughts supply;
Let no ill dreams disturb my rest,
No powers of darkness me molest.

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow,
Praise him, all creatures here below,
Praise him above, ye heavenly host,
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest 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.

Osip Mandelstam

Osip Mandelstam (1891—1938) is a Russian poet, described by Ilya Kaminsky as "Russian poetry's central figure in the twentieth century." In 1911 he converted to Lutheranism, some would argue because Jews were excluded from entering the University of Saint Petersburg. Translator Christian Wiman argues that it would have been far more advantageous for him to convert to Russian Orthodoxy, if his conversion had merely been a matter of convenience.

Mandelstam himself writes that:
-----"[Christian art] is an 'imitation of Christ' infinitely various in its
-----manifestations, an eternal return to the single creative act that
-----began our historical era. Christian art is free. It is, in the full
-----meaning of the phrase, 'Art for art's sake.' No necessity of any
-----kind, even the highest, clouds its bright inner freedom, for its
-----prototype, that which it imitates, is the very redemption of the
-----world by Christ. And so, not sacrifice, not redemption in art,
-----but the free and joyful imitation of Christ—that is the keystone
-----of Christian esthetics."

In the 1930s, he and his wife Nadezhda were arrested by Stalin's government and sent into internal exile. In 1938 he was arrested again, and sent into exile in Siberia, which led to his death.

The following poems are from Wiman's translations - Stolen Air: Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam.

Cathedral, Empty

When light, failing,
Falling

Through stained glass,
Liquifies

The long grass
At the feet of christ,

I crawl diabolical
To the foot of the cross

To sip the infinite
Tenderness

Distilled
From destroyed

Hearts:
An air of thriving

Hopelessness
Like a lone cypress

Holding on
To some airless

Annihilating height.

Prayer

Help me, Lord, this night my life to save.
Hold me, Lord, your servant, your slave.
Hear me, O Lord, alive in Petersburg, my grave.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest 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.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828—1882) is a painter and poet who was born in London to Italian expatriate parents. He is only one of the Rossettis to have left his mark: His father was renown as a Dante scholar, his brother William Michael Rossetti was an influential art critic, and his sister Christina Georgina Rossetti is one of the leading poets of the nineteenth century.

In 1848, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and some friends founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of British artists who valued "truth to nature" in painting through attention to minute details, and symbolic imagery.

In 1861 he achieved success with his book of translations The Early Italian Poets. When his young wife died in 1862, in his grief, he had the only complete manuscript of his own poetry buried with her. In 1869, they were retrieved from Highgate Cemetery

His Sonnet sequence, "The House of Life", from Ballads and Sonnets (1881) is considered by some to be his finest poetic achievement.

Sacramental Hymn

On a fair Sabbath day, when His banquet is spread,
It is pleasant to feast with my Lord:
His stewards stand robed at the foot and the head
Of the soul-filling, life-giving board.
All the guests here had burthens; but by the King's grant
We left them behind when we came;
The burthen of wealth and the burthen of want,
And even the burthen of shame.
And oh, when we take them again at the gate,
Though still we must bear them awhile,
Much smaller they'll seem in the lane that grows strait,
And much lighter to lift at the stile.
For that which is in us is life to the heart,
Is dew to the soles of the feet,
Fresh strength to the loins, giving ease from their smart,
Warmth in frost, and a breeze in the heat.
No feast where the belly alone hath its fill,—
He gives me His body and blood;
The blood and the body (I'll think of it still)
Of my Lord, which is Christ, which is God.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest 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.

Jennifer Maier

Jennifer Maier is professor of English at Seattle Pacific University. She is the author of two poetry collections, the first of which — Dark Alphabet — won the Crab Orchard Review Series in Poetry First Book Award, and was named one of the Ten Remarkable Books of 2006 by the Academy of American Poets. In 2012 she received The Writer Magazine/Emily Dickinson Award for her poem "fly" which is inspired by a line in a Dickinson poem.

Maier is an associate editor with Image. The following is from her second poetry collection Now, Now (2013, University of Pittsburgh Press).

Annunciation with Possum and Tomatoes

Faith in spring, is a fertile bed, the hope of things
unseen — summer, round in the hand; toil, expectancy, ripe
weight. Grace, for a possum, is another thing:
a sleeping dog, an open gate, five soft globes,

each bite, a new beginning. She ate them all,
but afterward I dreamed I saw a jungle of tomatoes
grown wild against the house, the fruit hanging fat, allegorical,
as the red canopy in Dieric Bouts's Annunciation,

in which the Virgin, surprised in her bedchamber,
looks up from her book, as the Flemish angel, plain
and reliable as a school nurse, calmly delivers the news.
His right finger points up at the Father,

or at the tomato-shaped folds of the drapery, as he explains
about the fruit of the womb, how it will ripen and spill
to repair the blight in the garden, the one that begot death
and beauty in turn, having first made thieves of us all.

Bouts's Holland would not taste tomatoes for another century;
the plague was swallowing citizens left and right,
but the good people of Haarlem still donned their peasant
leggings and took to the field. Perhaps the ploughman,

framed moments ago in the Gothic arch of the Virgin's window,
has set down his rake and is resting in the shade of a tree,
thinking about the fall and its hungers, and about himself,
kin to all mortal creatures, the ones who sow, and the ones

who plunder after them, who wake famished in the night,
all furred appetite, dreaming of a fruit they have never known:
flesh and seed, crotch and vine, its taste in the mouth sharp
as the known world, delectable as Eden.

Posted with permission of the poet.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest 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.

John Clare

John Clare (1793—1864) is known as the "Peasant Poet", because his parents were illiterate, and his father a farm labourer. He is known for poems praising the natural world and God as creator. His 1820 book, Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery, carried him from obscurity to the attention of London literary society. For a time his work even outsold that of his contemporary John Keats.

As may be sensed in the following poem, he suffered from depression and even delusions, which eventually confined him to an asylum for the final 26 years of his life.

His poetry soon slipped into obscurity; however in recent years, the admiration of poets such as Dylan Thomas, Ted Hughes, John Ashbery, and Seamus Heaney has helped to restore his reputation. He is now considered by many to be one of the most important poets of the 19th century.

I Am!

I am — yet what I am none cares or knows;
My friends forsake me like a memory lost:
I am the self-consumer of my woes —
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes
And yet I am, and live — like vapours tossed

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;
Even the dearest that I loved the best
Are strange — nay, rather, stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man hath never trod
A place where woman never smiled or wept
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie
The grass below — above the vaulted sky.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about John Clare: second post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest 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.