Shane McCrae

Shane McCrae is Assistant Professor of Writing at Columbia University in New York City. His most-recent book is Language of My Captor (2017, Wesleyan University Press), and his new poetry collection The Gilded Auction Block will appear from Farrar, Straus & Giroux in February. He is the new Poetry Editor for the journal Image. He has received the Lannan Literary Award, and a Whiting Writers Award.

The following poem first appeared in West Branch and is from his collection The Animal Too Big To Kill (2015, Persea Books).

On the First Day of the Last Week of His Life
Jesus Overturns the Tables of the Money-Changers

For John Gallaher

I wrote to a friend yesterday and told him my new poems were
About or I was trying to say
Something about money to God

I think and I don't understand it why I think it Lord You don't
Understand money
but of course You do / And maybe even

Lord if You were You You on Earth used money maybe You
Didn't just overturn the tables of the money-changers
Maybe You sometimes ached to not

Lord have enough for even a few figs / Maybe You hated figs
-----and always had or always the
Conditioned always of Your time here
hated figs / And maybe figs were usually

The cheapest food available and still You sometimes didn't
-----have enough
Maybe You suffered in Your body first the suffering of in Your
-----body Lord
Inhabiting Your poverty

Maybe Your body Lord was shaped by foods You hated
Maybe You sometimes walking to the market / Felt everybody
-----even only
for a moment / Glancing at You

knew Lord You lived on figs
Lord and You hated figs and always had
And on the day You overturned the tables of the money-changers

You also cursed a fig tree never to produce / Fruit again
because You had come to it hungry Lord
and found it barren

Posted with permission of the poet.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest poetry collection is Ampersand (2018, Cascade). His books are available through Amazon, and Wipf & Stock, including the anthologies The Turning Aside, and Adam, Eve, & the Riders of the Apocalypse.

Paul Claudel

Paul Claudel (1868—1955) is a French dramatist and poet, who was nominated six times for the Nobel Prize. He was also a French diplomat, serving in the United States, China, Tokyo, Brazil, and in several European cities.

Although he had been an unbeliever in his teens, on Christmas Day when he was 18 years old he heard a choir singing Vespers in Notre Dame cathedral; he reported, "In an instant, my heart was touched, and I believed." He was a faithful Catholic for the rest of his life.

He is often criticized for his conservative beliefs, including the antisemitism common to the France of his day; he, however, was opposed to the views of Nazis as early as 1930, and in 1940 he actively interceded for the Jewish husband of a distant relative who had been arrested by the Vichy government.

W.H. Auden, whose political views differed from Claudel’s, wrote the following couplet:
-----"Time will pardon Paul Claudel,
-----Pardon him for writing well"
which speaks to the conundrum of admiring an artist who voices opinions quite different from your own. George Steiner paired Claudel with Brecht as the two greatest dramatists of the 20th century.

The following is from "Magnificat" which is the third of the Five Great Odes as translated by Edward Lucie-Smith.

from Magnificat

My soul doth magnify the Lord.

O those long bitter streets of years ago. And the time when I was
-----single and alone!
Walking through Paris, that long street which goes down to Notre
-----Dame!
I was like the young athlete going towards the Stadium, amidst
-----an eager group of friends and trainers,
One whispers in his ear, another, to strengthen the tendons,
-----bandages the arm given over to him.
It was thus that I walked amid the hurrying feet of my gods!
Fewer murmurs in the forest of St-Jean in summertime,
Less noise in Damascus when the sigh of the desert and the sound
-----of the plane-trees moving at evening in the ventilated air
Are joined to the speech of the waters that fall from the mountains
-----in tumult,
Than in this young heart filled with desires.
O Lord God a young man and the son of woman is more pleasing
-----to you than a young bull.
And, meeting you, I was like a wrestler who yields,
Not because he thinks himself weak, but because his opponent
-----is stronger.
You called me by my name
Like one who knew it, you chose me from among all those of my
-----generation.

This post was suggested by my friend Burl Horniachek.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest poetry collection is Ampersand (2018, Cascade). His books are available through Amazon, and Wipf & Stock, including the anthologies The Turning Aside, and Adam, Eve, & the Riders of the Apocalypse.

Joseph Seamon Cotter

Joseph Seamon Cotter (1861—1949) is the author of six books of poetry, including A White Song and a Black One (1909). He is also among the first black American playwrights to have their work published. Although he had received little formal education prior to adulthood, he became a grammar school teacher and principal — serving in Louisville schools for over fifty years. He was a close friend of the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar.

Cotter and his wife had four children, including Joseph Seamon Cotter Jr. — a promising young poet, who died of tuberculosis at age 23.
Cotter’s Collected Poems appeared in 1938.

Sonnet To Negro Soldiers

They shall go down unto Life's Borderland,
Walk unafraid within that Living Hell,
Nor heed the driving rain of shot and shell
That 'round them falls; but with uplifted hand
Be one with mighty hosts, an arméd band
Against man's wrong to man—for such full well
They know. And from their trembling lips shall swell
A song of hope the world can understand.
All this to them shall be a glorious sign,
A glimmer of that resurrection morn,
When age-long Faith crowned with a grace benign
Shall rise and from their brows cast down the thorn
Of prejudice. E'en though through blood it be,
There breaks this day their dawn of Liberty.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest poetry collection is Ampersand (2018, Cascade). His books are available through Amazon, and Wipf & Stock, including the anthologies The Turning Aside, and Adam, Eve, & the Riders of the Apocalypse.

Luis de León

Luis de León (1527—1591) is an Augustinian monk, and one of Spain’s greatest lyric poets. In 1560 he was appointed to the chair of theology at Salamanca. In 1546 the Council of Trent had declared the Latin translation known as the Vulgate to be the authentic text of the Bible. Because de León and others used Hebraic texts and the Septuagint, by 1572 he was arrested and accused of heresy by the Inquisition. Although he escaped punishment, he was hounded by them again in 1582, because of his views concerning predestination.

He wrote commentaries on the books of Job, Obadiah, Galatians, and Song of Songs. He also wrote translations of selections from Virgil, Horace and the Psalms. His prose masterpiece The Names of Christ is, according to Encyclopedia Britannica, “the supreme exemplar of Spanish classical prose style”. It echoes themes also found in his poetry. In 1588 he prepared and published the first collected edition of the writings of Teresa of Ávila.

The following translation is by Willis Barnstone

On The Ascension

---Do you leave, shepherd saint,
your flock here in this valley, deep, obscure,
---in loneliness and plaint,
---and rise piercing the pure
high air–to that immortal refuge sure?

---Those who were formerly
lucky are melancholy and grieving too.
---You nourished them. Suddenly
---they are deprived of you.
Where can they go? What can they now turn to?

---What can those eyes regard
(which one time saw the beauty of your face)
---that is not sadly scarred?
---After your lips’ sweet grace
what can they hear that isn’t blunt and base?

---And this tumultuous sea,
Who can hold it in check? Who can abort
---The gale’s wild energy?
---If you’re a sealed report,
Then what North Star will guide our ship to port?

---O cloud, you envy us
Even brief joy! What pleasure do you find
---Fleeing, impetuous?
---How rich and unconfined
You go! How poor you leave us and how blind!

This post was suggested by my friend Burl Horniachek.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest poetry collection is Ampersand (2018, Cascade). His books are available through Amazon, and Wipf & Stock, including the anthologies The Turning Aside, and Adam, Eve, & the Riders of the Apocalypse.

Tania Runyan*

Tania Runyan is the author of four poetry collections, including Second Sky (2013, Poiema Poetry Series) and her new book What Will Soon Take Place (2017, Paraclete Press). The former book focuses on the life and writing of the Apostle Paul, while the latter collection is inspired by the Book of Revelation. Luci Shaw endorses Runyan’s new book by saying, “This bold collection is stunning, with poems that reveal the visceral views of both the prophet and the writer.”

She has also written three nonfiction books: How To Read A Poem, How To Write A Poem, and — less exciting but very practical — How To Write A College Application Essay.

One of Runyan’s poems from Second Sky is the first poem to be posted on D.S. Martin’s new web-journal Poems For Ephesians which debuted this past week on the McMaster Divinity College website.

The following poem, which first appeared in The Christian Century is from What Will Soon Take Place.

Ephesus

I was in love with God for one afternoon.
Twenty, alone on a beach, I dropped rocks
by the edge and watched the ocean wash
gray into blue, brown into red. An hour
of my crunching steps, the clack of pebbles,
the water’s rippling response. Never mind
invisibility. We were the only ones, and I
so intoxicating—sand-blown hair,
denim cut-offs, no reason to believe
anyone’s faith could dissolve. My prayers
were as certain as the stones I threw,
the answers as sure as the cove’s blue floor.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about Tania Runyan: first post, second post.

Posted with permission of the poet.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest poetry collection is Ampersand (2018, Cascade). His books are available through Amazon, and Wipf & Stock, including the anthologies The Turning Aside, and Adam, Eve, & the Riders of the Apocalypse.