Steven Peterson

Steven Peterson is a poet and playwright who divides his time between Chicago and northern Wisconsin. His plays have been produced at theatres across the States, from coast to coast. He turned to poetry when the Covid pandemic halted live performances, and he continues in this new passion.

His debut poetry book, Walking Trees and Other Poems (2025) is published by Finishing Line Press. They are known as a chapbook press (perhaps the best known in the U.S. — I have Finishing Line chapbooks on my shelf by Ryan Apple, Susan Cowger, Dave Harrity, and Laura Reece Hogan) but this is clearly a full-length collection.

Peterson’s voice is quite diverse — sometimes writing structured, rhyming poems. Personally, I prefer his free verse, but he also charms me with some of his light, humorous pieces:
------“My doctor said I’m diabetic,
------But here’s what’s even more pathetic…”

He has contributed several times to my Poems For Ephesians web-journal. I was fortunate to see him again at The Christian Century event at the Festival of Faith & Writing this spring. The following poem is from Walking Trees, and previously appeared in First Things.

All Bright Things

At Chartres, we see the stained-glass windows slump
from centuries of gravity, becoming
thicker glass at bottom than the top,
like waterfalls of slow and liquid sand.

In Athens, temples, sculpture, palaces
had first been painted bright as Disneyland,
but when the paint was gone we strangely liked
them bleached and bare like piles of human bone.

And in Jerusalem, Ezekiel wrote,
the Glory of the Lord rose like a cloud,
lingered at the Temple door, floated up
the hill to look back once before the Exile.

So all bright things return to dust and cloud;
the psalmist sang, “Go back, O child of earth.”
Yet in that cloud is rain, and in that dust
is Christ arisen, making all things new.

Posted with permission of the poet.

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

Wendell Berry*

Wendell Berry (1934—2026) is a poet who has touched me deeply over the years, and so I mourn the news of his passing. He died on Monday, August 31, at his home in Port Royal, Kentucky — a place he celebrated under the disguised name of Port William in his twelve novels.

According to Christianity Today, Berry “attended Port Royal Baptist Church in his small town of fewer than 100 people. He joked about his erratic Sunday morning attendance, labeling himself a ‘marginal’ or ‘forest’ Christian who preferred to wander into the woods in nice weather than to plant himself in the pews.” This description corresponds with the poems he wrote known as “Sabbaths” primarily written from his meditative Sunday morning walks.

In one of them, from his recent book Another Day he says:
----"On the morning of the first day
----the old shepherd comes early
-------------------…It is the morning
----also of the resurrection of Christ,
----the lamb of God, His people’s shepherd…"

In one interview he said, “I still consider myself a person who takes the gospels very seriously. And I read in them and am sometimes shamed by them and sometimes utterly baffled by them.”

The following is a Wendell Berry poem I included a decade ago in my anthology The Turning Aside: The Kingdom Poets Book of Contemporary Christian Poetry.

The Wish to Be Generous

All that I serve will die, all my delights,
the flesh kindled from my flesh, garden and field,
the silent lilies standing in the woods,
the woods, the hill, the whole earth, all
will burn in man's evil, or dwindle
in its own age. Let the world bring on me
the sleep of darkness without stars, so I may know
my little light taken from me into the seed
of the beginning and the end, so I may bow
to mystery, and take my stand on the earth
like a tree in a field, passing without haste
or regret toward what will be, my life
a patient willing descent into the grass.

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

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

Gail Fox

Gail Fox is a Canadian poet who was raised in Connecticut and upper New York State, but moved to Kingston, Ontario in 1967. It was there she began writing seriously and became associated with the poets at Queen’s University. The first of her many poetry collections, The Dangerous Season, appeared in 1969. She also became editor of the Kingston-based journal Quarry.

She later was married for a season to New Brunswick poet Fred Cogswell, who died in 2004. Her selected poems The End of Innocence (Oberon) was published in 1988, and The Dark Side of the Moon (St. Thomas Poetry Series) in 2000. At this point Fox, who lived in New Brunswick, began focussing on her painting.

The Beginning of Contemplation

(For Margaret Avison)

The countryside sparks and blazes, and
diehard leaves upon the branches burn with
the same intensity that collapses stars.

I tell you truly that now I know the shape
of goldenrod, that God, the fireball, against
a backdrop of deep pines, is sinking into my
head at the velocity of light.

From undisclosed sources, the pain in my
head is as quiet as overhanging grasses,
brown, frozen, stiff as driftwood from some
immense ocean.

This is the beginning of contemplation.
This, the sparkling rocks and golden
butterflies, is the living Jesus. Gorgeous
the sun over the slim legs of the evening.

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

Vassar Miller*

Vassar Miller (1924—1998) is another Texas poet of faith who served as the state’s Poet Laureate — in her case, twice. She is the author of ten books of poetry including her collected volume If I Had Wheels or Love (Southern Methodist University Press, 1991).

She was born with Cerebral Palsy, which confined her to a wheelchair. Despite barriers, she earned her BA and MA from the University of Houston. She also taught creative writing for many years at the University of St. Thomas.

Denise Levertov said, “I love Vassar Miller’s poetry for its qualities of density, stone-carved complexity, earned hardness, unsentimental compassion…. I salute [her] artistry and strength, and the beauty of her somber, profoundly experienced creations.”

The following poem is from her book Struggling to Swim on Concrete (The New Orleans Poetry Journal Press, 1984).

Morning Person

God, best at making in the morning, tossed
stars and planets, singing and dancing, rolled
Saturn’s rings spinning and humming, twirled the earth
so hard it coughed and spat the moon up, brilliant
bubble floating around it for good, stretched holy
hands till birds in nervous sparks flew forth from
them and beasts — lizards, big and little, apes,
lions, elephants, dogs and cats cavorting,
tumbling over themselves, dizzy with joy when
God made us in the morning too, both man
and woman, leaving Adam no time for
sleep so nimbly was Eve bouncing out of
his side till as night came everything and
everybody, growing tired, declined, sat
down in one soft descended Hallelujah.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about Vassar Miller: first post, second post.

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

Walt McDonald*

Walt McDonald (1934—2022) is a former United States Air Force pilot, who served in Viet Nam, and taught at the Air Force Academy. He was Professor of English Emeritus at Texas Tech University, teaching there for thirty years; and was Poet Laureate of Texas. He also served as Poet Laureate of Lubbock.

He authored 23 poetry books, including Night Landings (Harper & Row, 1989), and Counting Survivors (Pittsburgh, 1995). According to his obituary, “Giving church talks on God's grace and love was his favorite work.” He and his wife were long-time members of the Broadway Church of Christ, in Lubbock, Texas.

The Essential Walt McDonald (Texas Tech University Press), appeared a few months after his death. The following poem is from Faith Is a Radical Master (Abilene Christian University Press 2005).

Faith Is a Radical Master

God bats on the side of the scrubs.
With a clean-up hitter like that, who needs
to worry about stealing home, a double squeeze,
cleat-pounding triples? If nothing else works,

take a walk, lean into the wicked pitch
careening inside at ninety miles an hour.
At bat, just get on base and pray the next nerd
doesn’t pop up. When someone’s already on, the coach

never calls me Mr. October, seldom signals Hit away.
If Johnson with the wicked curve owns the strike zone
or the ump, I’ll bunt. No crack of the bat,
no wildly cheered Bambino everyone loves.

Lay it down the line like the weakest kid in school,
disciple of the sacrifice. Some hour my time will come,
late in the game, and I’m on third, wheezing from the run
from first after a wild pitch, and Crazy Elmore

waving like a windmill by the third-base line.
Hands on my knees, I’ll watch the pitcher
lick two fingers, wipe them on his fancy pin stripes
and try to stare me dead. I’ll be almost dead,

gasping, wondering how I’ll wobble home if someone bunts
or dribbles a slow roller and the coach yells
Go! But there, there in the box is God,
who doesn’t pound home plate like an earthquake

but slowly points the bat like the Babe toward center field,
and all my family in the clouds go wild, all friends
I’ve loved and lost, even the four-eyed scrubs
In the dugout slugging each other and laughing,

tossing their gloves like wild hosannas, and why not –
it’s bottom of the ninth, two outs, a run behind
and a hall-of-fame fast baller on the mound,
but I’m on third and leaning home, and look who’s up.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Walt McDonald: first post.

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

George David Clark

George David Clark, born and raised in the South, is an associate professor at Washington & Jefferson College in Pennsylvania. He is also editor-in-chief at 32 Poems. His first poetry collection Reveille (Arkansas, 2015) won the Miller Williams Poetry Prize, and his latest collection is Newly Not Eternal (LSU, 2024). I had the privilege of meeting him in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he was reading his poetry at an event with James Matthew Wilson, and John Poch.

His poetry is a musical experience, playing with rhythm, rhyme, alliteration, and onomatopoeia — sometimes cascading down the page in unexpected ways, that are more than mere measure. They are often fun to read, yet also engage with matters of significance — both relationally and spiritually.

The following poem originally appeared in The Hopkins Review. And is from Newly Not Eternal.

Ultrasound: Your Picture

-------------—Henry Thomas Clark, 10/7/14

We’ve framed an ultrasound
--------of you and Peter
holding hands
--------(or almost) in the womb,
your moon-bright arms
--------crossed in a black balloon
with week, and weights,
--------and heights in millimeters
penciled on the side.
--------We say it’s good
that he, at least, was with you
--------when you died,
that unlike us
--------you’ll never know the why
of being lonely
--------or what naked falsehood
feels like in one’s mind.
--------You see, it’s false

to say your death
--------was somehow grace. It’s grace
that spared Cain’s life
--------and later gave Eve other
sons, despite creation’s
--------wastes and faults.
I wish you could have known
--------love’s aftertastes.
I wish you’d had a chance
--------to hate your brother.

Posted with permission of the poet.

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

Joyce Kilmer

Joyce Kilmer (1886—1918) is a poet, lecturer, editor, journalist, and literary critic born in New Jersey. Shortly after his graduation from Columbia University he married fellow-poet Aline Murray; they had five children. Early on, he worked for Funk and Wagnall’s, contributing to The Standard Dictionary which eventually appeared in 1912. His first poetry collection, Summer of Love was published in 1911.

His work has been dismissed by critics and fellow poets as archaic in style and too simple in its thought. This is exemplified in his much-anthologised poem “Trees”
----I think that I shall never see
----A poem lovely as a tree…

Such views of his status were influenced by the radical shifts in poetic taste following WWI. His poem shares his confidence in God as creator, and is self-deprecating to the point of undermining the esteem his success would have otherwise brought. This simplicity, however, is what has attracted the editors of anthologies for school children to the poem. “Trees” first appeared in Poetry Magazine in August 1913 — quickly gaining him popularity as a poet in the U.S. — and subsequently became the title piece in Trees and Other Poems (1914).

He enlisted to fight in WWI, and was killed by a sniper at the Second Battle of the Marne at age 31.

Citizen of the World

No longer of Him be it said
"He hath no place to lay His head."

In every land a constant lamp
Flames by His small and mighty camp.

There is no strange and distant place
That is not gladdened by His face.

And every nation kneels to hail
The Splendour shining through Its veil.

Cloistered beside the shouting street,
Silent, He calls me to His feet.

Imprisoned for His love of me
He makes my spirit greatly free.

And through my lips that uttered sin
The King of Glory enters in.

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