Todd Davis

Todd Davis is the author of four poetry collections, the most recent of which are In the Kingdom of the Ditch (2013) and The Least of These (2010), both from Michigan State University Press. He taught from 1996 to 2002 at Goshen College, but is now Professor of English at Altoona College, Penn State University.

Eric Pankey has said, "Todd Davis, in his new collection of stunning poems, In the Kingdom of the Ditch, marries the ordinary names of things to their extraordinary enigma. His acts of taxonomy lead not only to knowledge of this world but as well to gnosis of that other ineffable realm we might call the sacred. His poems see into the mystical and their song reaches toward the visionary, which is to say he is a lyric poet of breathtaking brilliance."

In the Kingdom of the Ditch

where Queen Anne’s lace holds
its saucer and raspberry its black

thimble, the shrew and the rat snake
seek after the same God

who mercifully fills the belly
of one, then offers it to the other.

Veil

In this low place between mountains
fog settles with the dark of evening.
Every year it takes some of those
we love—a car full of teenagers
on the way home from a dance, or
a father on his way to the paper mill,
nightshift the only opening.
Each morning, up on the ridge,
the sun lifts this veil, sees what night
has accomplished. The water on our window—
screens disappears slowly, gradually,
like grief. The heat of the day carries water
from the river back up into the sky,
and where the fog is heaviest and stays
longest, you’ll see the lines it leaves
on trees, the flowers that grow
the fullest.

Posted with permission of the poet.

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

Kevin Hart

Kevin Hart is an Australian poet, philosopher and theologian. He has published thirteen books of poetry, beginning with The Departure (1978). His poetry has received numerous awards such as the NSW Premier's Award, and the Greybeal-Gowen Prize. His most-recent collection is Morning Knowledge (2011). His earliest poetry influence was Percy Bysshe Shelley—particularly the poem "Ozymandius".

Hart is the Edwin B. Kyle Professor of Christian Studies and Chair of the Religious Studies Department at the University of Virginia.

The Room

It is my house, and yet one room is locked.
The dark has taken root on all four walls.
It is a room where knots stare out from wood,
A room that turns its back on the whole house.

At night I hear the crickets list their griefs
And let an ancient peace come into me.
Sleep intercepts my prayer, and in the dark
The house turns slowly round its one closed room.

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

Simeon the New Theologian

Simeon the New Theologian (949—1022) is a Byzantine monk, poet and mystic. He was born at Galatia, and educated at Constantinople.  In about 980, he became Abbott of the monastery at St. Mamas. He is one of three saints of the Orthodox church given the title theologian—the others being John the Apostle (John the Revelator), and Gregory of Nazianus.

Simeon's Hymns of Divine Loves describe his spiritual experiences.

We Awaken in Christ's Body

We awaken in Christ’s body

 as Christ awakens our bodies,

and my poor hand is Christ. He enters

my foot and is infinitely me.

I move my hand, and wonderfully

my hand becomes Christ, becomes all of Him

(for God is indivisibly

whole, seamless in his Godhood).

I move my foot, and at once

He appears in a flash of lightning.

Do my words seem blasphemous? – Then

open your heart to Him.

And let yourself receive the one

who is opening to you so deeply.

For if we genuinely love Him,

We wake up inside Christ’s body

Where all our body, all over,

every most hidden part of it,

is realized in joy as Him.

And he makes us utterly real.

And everything that is hurt, everything

that seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful,

maimed, ugly, irreparably

damaged, is in him transformed

and recognized as whole, lovely,

radiant in his light.

We awaken as the Beloved

in every last part of our body.

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

Jeanne Murray Walker*

Jeanne Murray Walker is a poet who writes of the everyday, and yet is able to make it all brand new. Her new poetry collection is Helping the Morning: New and Selected Poems (2014, WordFarm), which draws on her previous seven poetry books. Luci Shaw has written of it, "What a world this is, that arouses a poet to write ordinary things into gifts for the spirit!" Mark Jarman has similarly said of her new book, "I have always admired Jeanne Murray Walker's gift for finding the poetry in the everyday, the song in the mundane, the epiphany in the moment..."

Walker has also recently had The Geography of Memory: A Pilgrimage through Alzheimer's appear from Center Street Books (2013). This memoir is primarily about the decade she and her sister spent, caring for their aging mother. It encourages caregivers to connect with Alzheimer's patients by knowing and recounting their past.

The following is one of the new poems in Helping the Morning.

Miniature Psalm of Complaint

You claim you've weighed the mountains
in your scales. But have you noticed smaller

chunks of the world are flaking off?
I sweep leaves from the walk. The oak,

like the mainmast of a warship, towers
above me, sending down its brown hands,

which hardly weigh a thing. So many friends
sick now. As for me? A bit of bone and hair.

My arteries ordinary as the pipes and spigots
that bring us water. Your thunder shakes my teeth.

On our hillside, your fingers of drizzle pick the final
chrysanthemums to pieces. I don't bear a grudge,

mind you, only wonder if you would step closer,
say something smaller. Back in the house,

wiping my feet, I hear a scratching. A dentist
with his pick. Or maybe a mouse. Two brilliant eyes,

cowlicky fur, in her genetic coding, years
of wiles. As she helps herself to our birdseed,

I hear her tiny breathing. Okay, I think,
okay. What she is, can't help, didn't ask for,

and is doomed to love—herself. I flick on
the porch light to keep her safe from owls.

I can almost see us from the road, our tiny house,
hanging like one last gold leaf in the oak tree.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Jeanne Murray Walker: first post

Posted with permission of the poet.

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