Luci Shaw*

Luci Shaw is 95 years old, and a trail-blazer for generations of Christian poets who value her accomplishments as a model for how to walk the precarious path of faith and art. Her seventeenth poetry collection Reversing Entropy appeared from Paraclete Press this spring. She says in the Prologue,

-----“Our universe, and the systems within it, constantly shift from
-----their created states of order towards disorder, or chaos. The
-----second law of thermodynamics asserts that entropy, or disorder,
-----always increases with time. Creative human activities such as art,
-----architecture, music, story, or film are human efforts to halt and
-----reverse this loss of meaning…. [Poems] reverse entropy because
-----they are moving from a state of disorder (all the random ideas,
-----words,and phrases available to the writer) into an orderly form
-----designed by the writer to create meaningful images and concepts
-----in the reader’s mind….This transfer of images, concepts, and ideas
-----into the mind of a reader is the task of poetry and the calling of
-----the poet. Just as a composer of music gathers rhythms, notes,
-----melodies, or harmony, organizing them into fugues or sonatas
-----or concertos, so poets work and write to discover ways of
-----arranging their responses to the world in words that introduce
-----meaning and beauty in the mind of the reader. Which is what I’ve
-----been trying to do for most of my life."

The following poem is from Reversing Entropy (2024, Iron Pen/Paraclete).

Older

Aging haunts, will hunt us all, a predator,
rapacious, ravenous, toothed with sharp anxieties.
The scars of old and unhealed wounds hide
in the folds of soul skin. Blood stains the ground.
Failures, regrets have left torn tissues,
ragged blemishes and a crimson trail
across the room. You feel it wet, sticky, seeping
between your bare toes. In the thick night,
You wrestle with dreams, contend with confusion.

How good it would be if the anxiety of aging,
bulky and useless, were a piece of furniture.
You might remove it from the living room and
store it somewhere dark, out of sight—
in the basement, perhaps, locked behind
the cellar door. Then you could climb back up to
the clean kitchen, a room predictable enough
to allay suspicion. You’d open a window,
maybe prepare a simple meal. Pray.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the fourth Kingdom Poets post about Luci Shaw: first post, second post, third post, fifth 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.

Yared

Yared (505—571) is an Ethiopian composer, hymn writer, and priest, who was a leader in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church which venerates him as a saint.

He is renowned for having established his own system of musical notation, which predates the familiar European system, and is still in use today.

One of the important festivals within the Ethiopian Church is Meskel, where they celebrate the reputed discovery of the true cross by Queen Helena, the mother of Constantine. The story goes that while she was seeking for the Holy Sepulchre, she prayed for assistance, and was directed to where the cross was buried by the smoke from a fire. What interests me most here, is not the artifact’s authenticity, but the extent to which Yared and his contemporaries valued it, because they celebrated the work Christ did on the cross.

The following selection from Yared’s “The Finding of the True Cross” was translated from the Ge’ez by Burl Horniachek with Ralph Lee, and appears in Burl Horniachek’s anthology, To Heaven’s Rim: The Kingdom Poets Book of World Christian Poetry (2023, Poiema/Cascade).

From The Finding of the True Cross

Look and proclaim, how good
it is that men have obtained
this exalted wood.
Brief gold was not the currency
----to purchase back man’s soul,
--------but with his precious blood
------------he chose to pay that toll.
The cross shines out.
The cross shines out and is so bright
that earthly kings do trail its light;
the thing that seemed so dark and damp
is now the world’s great guiding lamp.
The cross’s feast takes place
----both high in heaven’s face
and low upon the earth.
----We know its worth,
prize and praise it, with no dearth
----of trust. It is man’s rebirth
and help in need.

Posted with permission of Burl Horniachek.

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.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge*

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772—1834) is a significant figure in the Romantic Movement in English poetry — which he and William Wordsworth established. Besides the poetry he is known for, he wrote literary criticism, philosophy and theology.

Malcolm Guite writes in his biography Mariner: A Voyage with Samuel Taylor Coleridge (2017, Hodder & Stoughton) that “Prayer is not only the turning point, but the very subject of The Ancient Mariner, and any reader of Coleridge’s letters and notebooks will be struck by the frequency, range and depth of the prayers that weave through his writing.”

The following poem was sent in a letter to his friend and brother-in-law Robert Southey, in September of 1803, as Coleridge had just walked an incredible 263 miles in eight days in his efforts to defeat his addiction to opium. The poem was first published in Christabel (1816). Malcolm Guite emphasizes, “Once again, like so much of The Mariner, [this] poem is focused on prayer.” Listen to Guite reading The Pains of Sleep, here, where you'll also find his commentary.

The Pains of Sleep

Ere on my bed my limbs I lay,
It hath not been my use to pray
With moving lips or bended knees;
But silently, by slow degrees,
My spirit I to Love compose,
In humble trust mine eye-lids close,
With reverential resignation
No wish conceived, no thought exprest,
Only a sense of supplication;
A sense o’er all my soul imprest
That I am weak, yet not unblest,
Since in me, round me, every where
Eternal strength and Wisdom are.

But yester-night I prayed aloud
In anguish and in agony,
Up-starting from the fiendish crowd
Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me:
A lurid light, a trampling throng,
Sense of intolerable wrong,
And whom I scorned, those only strong!
Thirst of revenge, the powerless will
Still baffled, and yet burning still!
Desire with loathing strangely mixed
On wild or hateful objects fixed.
Fantastic passions! maddening brawl!
And shame and terror over all!
Deeds to be hid which were not hid,
Which all confused I could not know
Whether I suffered, or I did:
For all seemed guilt, remorse or woe,
My own or others still the same
Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame.

So two nights passed: the night’s dismay
Saddened and stunned the coming day.
Sleep, the wide blessing, seemed to me
Distemper’s worst calamity.
The third night, when my own loud scream
Had waked me from the fiendish dream,
O’ercome with sufferings strange and wild,
I wept as I had been a child;
And having thus by tears subdued
My anguish to a milder mood,
Such punishments, I said, were due
To natures deepliest stained with sin,
For aye entempesting anew
The unfathomable hell within,
The horror of their deeds to view,
To know and loathe, yet wish and do!
Such griefs with such men well agree,
But wherefore, wherefore fall on me?
To be loved is all I need,
And whom I love, I love indeed.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about Samuel Taylor Coleridge: first post, second 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.

Irina Ratushinskaya

Irina Ratushinskaya (1954—2017) is a Russian poet who in 1983 was accused of “Anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda in poetic form.” Her poetry has far more to do with her observations of the natural world than with politics, but its repression ironically brought international attention to human rights violations by the Soviet regime.

It is uncertain why she was singled out, being merely a primary school teacher who abhorred the government-sanctioned atheism, and sought to influence her students towards her Christian faith.

She spent three years in a forced-labour camp “where she worked to make gloves for Soviet workmen and was fed little more than bread and rotten fish broth”. Her poems were written on cigarette papers and smuggled out of the camp to her husband, who arranged for publication in the West. She was freed in 1986 on eve of the Reykjavik summit between the US president Ronald Reagan and the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Her collection Beyond the Limit appeared in 1987, and her memoir, Grey Is the Colour of Hope in 1988.

Joseph Brodsky said — “a crown of thorns on the head of a bard has a way of turning into a laurel,” and he wrote of her as “a remarkably genuine poet.” She and her husband returned to Russia in 1998, to raise their sons as Russians. She died of cancer in 2017.

Somewhere a pendulum moves

Somewhere a pendulum moves, and softly a cuckoo is weeping,
Why should she count the hours, and not the long years for us.
And in the abandoned house, the old woman opens the shutters,
At the appropriate time, and with the same care as before.

Somewhere in the gloom a lamp is burning, the knitting continues.
And the rare letters are kept, and news is awaited.
And she, as is her custom, grieves only with her eyes.
And needlessly straightens the portraits of the children who have grown.

And what is all this for, And who before her is not sinful?
And over whom, departing, did she not make the sign of the cross?
But the one that she loves, may be comforted, saved.
And the one whom she awaits, may he find her on his return.

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.

Barbara Crooker*

Barbara Crooker is a Pennsylvania poet whose poems have been well-received by many who know the artform well. They’ve been featured many times on The Writer’s Almanac as read by Garrison Keillor — and for The Slowdown podcast, read by then U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith.

I was pleased to see Barbara, along with other friends from our tight-knit poetry community, at the Festival of Faith and Writing in April. She gave me a copy of her tenth book, Slow Wreckage which had just appeared from Grayson Books. Her other recent books include: Some Glad Morning (University of Pittsburgh Press) and The Book of Kells (Poiema/Cascade) which was honoured as the Best Poetry Book of 2018 from Poetry by the Sea.

She has won numerous other awards including the Paterson Award for Literary Excellence, the WB Yeats Society of New York Award, the Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, and she is a sixty-one time nominee for the Pushcart Prize.

The following poem first appeared in my web-journal Poems For Ephesians — and is from Slow Wreckage.

Sonnet From The Ephesians

----- — Ephesians 1:16

I do not cease to give thanks, especially in November
even as we lose an hour of light, drawing
the curtains at 4:30 to keep out the cold. To remember
you are dust seems appropriate now. Crows are cawing
black elegies in the bare trees. Just past the Day of the Dead,
and I’m thankful for every friend who has blessed
my life, gold coins in a wooden chest. Who said
no man is an island? We’re all peninsulas, I guess,
joined to the mainland, part of the shore. We’re the sticks
in the bundle that can’t be broken. Even if
it doesn’t seem that way, the bickering of politics,
the blather on the nightly news. Maybe we speak in hieroglyphs,
unclear, always missing the mark? So let me be plain.
I’m grateful for the days of sun. I’m grateful for the rain.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the fourth Kingdom Poets post about Barbara Crooker: first post, second post, third 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.

John Bunyan*

John Bunyan (1628—1688) is an English writer and Puritan preacher who is the renowned author of The Pilgrim’s Progress.

At age sixteen he joined the Parliamentary Army during the early stages of the English Civil War, serving for three years. Years later he became involved with a nonconformist sect who met in Bedford, and he became a preacher. After the restoration of the monarchy he was arrested and spent twelve years in prison for refusing to abstain from preaching. During this time he wrote his spiritual autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, or a Brief Relation of the Exceeding Mercy of God in Christ to his Poor Servant John Bunyan, which was published in 1666. This was also when he began work on The Pilgrim’s Progress.

In the second part of The Pilgrim’s Progress, Christian is led by Mr. Greatheart through the Valley of Humilation, where he hears the following song being sung by a shepherd boy.

The Shepherd Boy

He that is down needs fear no fall,
He that is low, no pride;
He that is humble ever shall
Have God to be his guide.
I am content with what I have,
Little be it or much:
And, Lord, contentment still I crave,
Because Thou savest such.
Fullness to such a burden is
That go on pilgrimage:
Here little, and hereafter bliss,
Is best from age to age.

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

The most recent post at Poems For Ephesians is also a poem by John Bunyan.

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.

Scott Cairns*

Scott Cairns is Curators’ Distinguished Professor Emeritus at University of Missouri, and is presently facilitating the transition of the Seattle Pacific University low-residency MFA program in Creative Writing to Whitworth University.

He is the author of ten poetry collections, the most recent of which is Lacunae (2023, Iron Pen/Paraclete Press). The word “lacuna” means a blank space, missing part, or empty hollow — and Cairns uses the word in various contexts, such as in the introductory poem, “Recuperating Lacunae”:

-----No, not so much---------------an emptiness, never yet
-----an emptiness.------------------Think, rather, a discrete

-----cove proving still---------------to offer—and ever
-----to offer—what one-------------cannot, can never,

-----comprehend…

He has long been a poet striving to describe the indescribable, and slow to accept common theological interpretations as the whole truth.

Robert Cording recently wrote, “For Cairns, language is a form of faith, faith that reaches out towards what is inexhaustible and uncontainable, and faith that trusts words can be a means of coming nearer to what necessarily remains out of reach… Lacunae is the work of a faithful and faith-filled man unafraid of letting his ego be seared, of living in time that continues ‘ticking in perplexity.’”

The following poem is from Cairn’s new poetry collection, Lacunae.

Implicative Lacunae
-----…It was like
-----A new knowledge of reality.
-------------------------— Stevens

Entering the clearing, he knew
That he had heard it, the single
note expanding beyond the reach
of any single note, as if,
finally, his dim ideas
about things showed themselves to be
stick figures failing to evince
the fullness of the body. She
said to him so, at long last you
have heard it, yes? He stood just there
at the clearing’s edge, daring not
to speak. He closed his eyes that he
might better listen, and the note
became a space like the clearing
into which all that could be sung
found dwelling, and he became
like a man without a doctrine,
became a man intent on praise,
a man whose freedom would ever
expand, would ever reach toward.

Posted with permission of the poet.

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