Boris Pasternak*

Boris Pasternak (1890—1960) is a Russian poet, whose father was a painter who taught at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, and whose mother was a concert pianist.

His poetry collections include My Sister, Life (1922), Second Birth (1932), and Selected Poems (1946). Pasternak is the author of just one novel, Doctor Zhivago (1957), for which he won the Nobel Prize.

At the time the Soviet government pressured him into rejecting the award. In a 1958 article interpreting these events, Time Magazine reported, “Pasternak wrote his novel Doctor Zhivago out of a passionate Christian conviction that salvation is possible only through the individual human spirit.” In Israel the novel was criticized as assimilationist, because Pasternak was in favour of his fellow-Jews converting to Christian faith.

After World War II, a series of his Christian poems on Easter themes, were said to have been written as a form of protest against communism.

The following poem draws an unlikely parallel betweeen an actor in a Shakespearean play and Christ fulfilling the role set out for him.

Hamlet

The murmurs ebb; onto the stage I enter.
I am trying, standing in the door,
To discover in the distant echoes
What the coming years may hold in store.

The nocturnal darkness with a thousand
Binoculars is focused onto me.
Take away this cup, O Abba Father,
Everything is possible to Thee.

I am fond of this Thy stubborn project,
And to play my part I am content.
But another drama is in progress,
And, this once, O let me be exempt.

But the plan of action is determined,
And the end irrevocably sealed.
I am alone; all round me drowns in falsehood:
Life is not a walk across a field.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Boris Pasternak: first post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), and three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is forthcoming from Paraclete Press.

William Cullen Bryant*

William Cullen Bryant (1794—1878) is one of the most significant poets in early American history. He studied law privately and was admitted to the bar when he was 21years of age. His dislike of the profession led him and his wife to move to New York in 1829 where he became the editor of the New York Review, and shortly thereafter became editor-in-chief of the New York Evening Post; he continued in that role for the rest of his life.

His poetry collections include Thanatopsis (1817), A Forest Hymn (1824), and Poems (1839). He is known as an American Romantic for his nature poetry, being significantly influenced by William Wordsworth.

Under the influence of his father, Bryant had started shifting toward Unitarian belief away from the Calvinism of his childhood. In his blank verse poem “A Forest Hymn,” however, he demonstrated a return toward Christian orthodoxy — seeing nature as the most suited place for communion with God.

The William Cullen Bryant Homestead, in Massachusetts, is a National Historic Landmark. It is located on a hillside overlooking the Westfield River Valley, on the site of the original Cummington community which was founded in 1762.

The Battle-Field

Once this soft turf, this rivulet's sands,
Were trampled by a hurrying crowd,
And fiery hearts and armed hands
Encountered in the battle-cloud.

Ah! never shall the land forget
How gushed the life-blood of her brave, —
Gushed, warm with hope and courage yet,
Upon the soil they fought to save.

Now all is calm and fresh and still;
Alone the chirp of flittering bird,
And talk of children on the hill,
And bell of wandering kine, are heard.

No solemn host goes trailing by
The black-mouthed gun and staggering wain;
Men start not at the battle-cry, —
O, be it never heard again!

Soon rested those who fought; but thou
Who minglest in the harder strife
For truths which men receive not now,
Thy warfare only ends with life.

A friendless warfare! lingering long
Through weary day and weary year;
A wild and many-weaponed throng
Hang on thy front and flank and rear.

Yet nerve thy spirit to the proof,
And blench not at thy chosen lot;
The timid good may stand aloof,
Men start not at the battle-cry, —
The sage may frown, — yet faint thou not.

Nor heed the shaft too surely cast,
The foul and hissing bolt of scorn;
For with thy side shall dwell, at last,
The victory of endurance born.

Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again, —
The eternal years of God are hers;
But Error, wounded, writhes in pain,
And dies among his worshippers.

Yea, though thou lie upon the dust,
When they who helped thee flee in fear,
Die full of hope and manly trust,
Like those who fell in battle here!

Another hand thy sword shall wield,
Another hand the standard wave,
Till from the trumpet's mouth is pealed
The blast of triumph o'er thy grave

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about William Cullen Bryant: first post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), and three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is forthcoming from Paraclete Press.

Allen Tate*

Allen Tate (1899—1979) is a Southern writer, born in Kentucky and educated at Vanderbilt University, where his roommate was Robbert Penn Warren. Rather than identifying primarily as an American, he saw himself as a Southerner — holding traditional agrarian values which reflect artistic beauty, rather than adopting Yankee industrialism and materialism.

He was not naïve to the sins of the South — first among these being bigotry and slavery — nor was he seeking to turn back towards an idealized past. He wrote, “A society which has once been religious cannot, without risk of spiritual death, secularize itself.” He was essentially a critic of American culture.

His poetry collections include Mr. Pope and Other Poems (1928), The Mediterranean and Other Poems (1936), The Winter Sea (1944), and Two Conceits for the Eye to Sing, If Possible (1950), His Collected Poems appeared in 1970.

Tate was poetry editor at Sewanee Review from 1944 to 1947, and a professor of English at the University of Minnesota from 1951 until his retirement. He converted publicly to Roman Catholicism in 1950.

Ah, Christ, I love you rings to the wild sky

Ah, Christ, I love you rings to the wild sky
And I must think a little of the past:
When I was ten I told a stinking lie
That got a black boy whipped; but now at last
The going years, caught in an after-glow,
Reverse like balls englished upon green baize—
Let them return, let the round trumpets blow
The ancient crackle of the Christ's deep gaze.
Deafened and blind, with senses yet unfound,
Am I, untutored to the after-wit
Of knowledge, knowing a nightmare has no sound;
Therefore with idle hands and head I sit
In late December before the fire's daze
Punished by crimes of which I would be quit.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Allen Tate: first post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), and three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is forthcoming from Paraclete Press.

Chad Walsh*

Chad Walsh (1914—1991) wrote six poetry collections, and several other books. He served as an English professor for more than thirty years at Beloit College in Wisconsin. His name comes up frequently these days, as Beloit College has named a poetry prize in his honour, as well as the Chad Walsh Chapbook Series from Beloit Poetry Journal. His anthology Today’s Poems: American and British Poetry since the 1930s was published in 1964.

He is also remembered by C.S. Lewis devotees. It’s hard to look into Walsh without being swamped by information about him in relation to Lewis. It was through reading Lewis — particularly the novel Perelandra — that he was first drawn to faith. Walsh had first written an article about Lewis in The Atlantic Monthly, and then travelled to Oxford to interview him, in preparation for his book C.S. Lewis: Apostle to the Skeptics (first published in 1949, and recently republished by Wipf & Stock in 2008). This book led to the growing popularity of Lewis in the US, which had already started in the UK.

A Quintina Of Crosses

Beyond, beneath, within, wherever blood,
If there were blood, flows with the pulse of love,
Where God’s circle and all orbits cross,
Through the black space of death to baby life
Came God, planting the secret genes of God.

By the permission of a maiden’s love,
Love came upon the seeds of words, broke blood,
And howled into the Palestine of life,
A baby roiled by memories of God.
Sometimes he smiled, sometimes the child was cross.

Often at night he dreamed a dream of God
And was the dream he dreamed. Often across
The lily fields he raged and lived their life,
And Heaven’s poison festered in his blood,
Loosing the passion of unthinkable love.

But mostly, though, he lived a prentice’s life
Until a singing in the surge of blood,
Making a chorus of the genes of God,
Flailed him into the tempest of a love
That lashed the North Star and the Southern Cross.

His neighbors smelled an alien in his blood,
A secret enemy and double life;
He was a mutant on an obscene cross
Outraging decency with naked love.
He stripped the last rags from a proper God.

The life of God must blood this cross for love.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Chad Walsh: first post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), and three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is forthcoming from Paraclete Press.

Marilyn Nelson*

Marilyn Nelson is an American poet, translator, children’s book author, professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut, and the former Poet Laureate of Connecticut. She has won several awards, including the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Denise Levertov Award, and the Frost Medal.

Mark Doty has said, “Nelson’s bold and sure poems long for heaven and—happily for us—continue a lifelong affair with the occasions of earth.”

In an interview with Jeanne Murray Walker she said, “I’m not particularly interested in writing about my life. I’m one of the lucky ones, with too happy a life for poetry.” This has led her to researching and writing about the lives of such people as Emmett Till, George Washington Carver, Venture Smith, and some lesser-known people.

The following poem is from For The Body (Louisiana State University Press, 1978).

Churchgoing

The Lutherans sit stolidly in rows;
only their children feel the holy ghost
that makes them jerk and bobble and almost
destroys the pious atmosphere for those
whose reverence bows their backs as if in work.
The congregation sits, or stands to sing,
or chants the dusty creeds automaton.
Their voices drone like engines, on and on,
and they remain untouched by everything;
confession, praise, or likewise, giving thanks.
The organ that they saved years to afford
repeats the Sunday rhythms song by song,
slow lips recite the credo, smother yawns,
and ask forgiveness for being so bored.

I, too, am wavering on the edge of sleep,
and ask myself again why I have come
to probe the ruins of this dying cult.
I come bearing the cancer of my doubt
as superstitious suffering women come
to touch the magic hem of a saint's robe.

Yet this has served two centuries of men
as more than superstitious cant; they died
believing simply. Women, satisfied
that this was truth, were racked and burned with them
for empty words we moderns merely chant.

We sing a spiritual as the last song,
and we are moved by a peculiar grace
that settles a new aura on the place.
This simple melody, though sung all wrong,
captures exactly what I think is faith.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
That slaves should suffer in his agony!
That Christian, slave-owning hypocrisy
nevertheless was by these slaves ignored
as they pitied the poor body of Christ!
Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble,
that they believe most, who so much have lost.
To be a Christian one must bear a cross.
I think belief is given to the simple
as recompense for what they do not know.

I sit alone, tormented in my heart
by fighting angels, one group black, one white.
The victory is uncertain, but tonight
I'll lie awake again, and try to start
finding the black way back to what we've lost.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about Marilyn Nelson: first post, second post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), and three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is forthcoming from Paraclete Press.

Desmond Tutu

Desmond Tutu (1931—2021) is a South African theologian who served as Bishop of Johannesburg (1985—1986) and Archbishop of Cape Town (1986—1996); the first black clergyman to hold either position. He is best known for his active fight against apartheid. In 1990 when Nelson Mandela was released from prison, Tutu and Mandela worked together to establish a multi-racial democracy. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.

Archbishop Tutu is the author of An African Prayer Book. It is an anthology which includes prayer poems ranging from early fathers and mothers of the church such as Monica, Augustine, and Clement of Alexandria, to modern writers of the African diasporas. Like the following poem, most of Tutu’s poems are written as prayers.

Disturb us, O Lord

when we are too well-pleased with ourselves
when our dreams have come true because we dreamed too little,
because we sailed too close to the shore.
Disturb us, O Lord
when with the abundance of things we possess,
we have lost our thirst for the water of life
when, having fallen in love with time,
we have ceased to dream of eternity
and in our efforts to build a new earth,
we have allowed our vision of Heaven to grow dim.
Stir us, O Lord
to dare more boldly, to venture into wider seas
where storms show Thy mastery,
where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars.
In the name of Him who pushed back the horizons of our hopes
and invited the brave to follow.
Amen

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), and three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is forthcoming from Paraclete Press.

Gregory of Nazianus*

Gregory of Nazianus (c. 320—390) is an early Church Father who championed the doctrine of the Trinity against the heresy of Arianism. Along with Basil the Great, he edited a volume of Origen’s theological and devotional writings known as Philocalia.

Gregory was Archbishop of Constantinople from 380 to 381, and served as president of the Second Ecumenical Council in Constantinople in 381.

John A. McGuckin in the Preface to The Poetry of Gregory of Nazianzus (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2023) wrote, “Gregory elevated poetry as one of the most inspired of all ways to seek the truth, and estimated that the real poet, the profound teacher of deep truths to their generation, was the one who had quietly studied, reflected and learned the trade of expressing those truths…” The following was translated by Brian Dunkle, S.J. and is from Poems on Scripture (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2012).

Invocation Before the Reading of Scripture

Attend, O all-seeing Father of Christ, to these our petitions.
Be gracious to your servant’s evening song;
for I am one who sets his footstep on the sacred
paths, who knows God to be the only self-generate among the living
and Christ to be the king who wards off ills from mortals.
He who once, with mercy on the dread race of suffering mortals,
willingly altered his form upon the Father’s offer.
Incorruptible God, he became a mortal, in order that by his blood
he might free all who toil from the chains of Tartarus.
Come now and tend to your servant’s soul
with inspired accounts from the book of holiness and purity.
For thus you might gaze on your servants of the truth
proclaiming true life with a voice as high as heaven.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Gregory of Nazianus: first post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), and three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is forthcoming from Paraclete Press.