Svetlana Marisova

Svetlana Marisova (1990—2011) is a poet who specialized in haiku and other Japanese poetic forms. She was born in Russia, where her family experienced religious persecution. In 2004 they moved to New Zealand. In her late teens she believed she was being called to a life of contemplative prayer. In 2009 she was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer.

The first book to gather her poetry is the posthumous Be Still and Know (with Ted van Zutphen) which was published by Karakia Press. In 2014 Language and Silence (Karakia) also appeared.

Four Untitled Haiku

-----(1)
silent night
the flute hiding
in bamboo

-----(2)
born of grief and pain
the ceremony of blood —
a dark rose blooming

-----(3)
deep within
I dissolve; I dissolve
into God

-----(4)
silent night —
the unacceptable word
takes flesh

This post was suggested by Ryan Apple.

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.

James Montgomery

James Montgomery (1771—1854) is a Scottish poet, hymn writer and journalist, who was raised in the Moravian Church. In his youth he desired to be a poet, and travelled to London to find a publisher. When this was unsuccessful he moved to Sheffield, where he apprenticed himself to Joseph Gales: a bookseller and the publisher of The Sheffield Register.

These were not the days of a free press. In 1794, Gales fled England to avoid political persecution. James Montgomery immediately took over the paper, renaming it The Sheffield Iris. In this role he was twice imprisoned for sedition; once in 1795 for publishing a poem celebrating the fall of the Bastille, and again the following year for criticizing a magistrate who forcibly broke up a protest in Sheffield.

His poems were often political in theme and epic in proportions, such as his The Wanderer of Switzerland (1806). This poem was criticized in the conservative Edinburgh Review, but subsequently defended by Lord Byron. Montgomery condemned the use of poor children as chimney sweeps in The Climbing Boys' Soliloquies, a theme William Blake had addressed in “The Chimney Sweeper.”

Montgomery also wrote many hymns, and suspected that these would be his best chance to be remembered. The following Christmas hymn remains popular, although not all of its fine stanzas are commonly sung.

Angels From The Realms Of Glory

Angels from the realms of glory,
Wing your flight o’er all the earth;
Ye who sang creation’s story
Now proclaim Messiah’s birth.

Come and worship, come and worship,
Worship Christ, the newborn King.

Shepherds, in the field abiding,
Watching o’er your flocks by night,
God with us is now residing;
Yonder shines the infant light:

Come and worship, come and worship,
Worship Christ, the newborn King.

Sages, leave your contemplations,
Brighter visions beam afar;
Seek the great Desire of nations;
Ye have seen His natal star.

Come and worship, come and worship,
Worship Christ, the newborn King.

Saints, before the altar bending,
Watching long in hope and fear;
Suddenly the Lord, descending,
In His temple shall appear.

Come and worship, come and worship,
Worship Christ, the newborn King.

Sinners, wrung with true repentance,
Doomed for guilt to endless pains,
Justice now revokes the sentence,
Mercy calls you; break your chains.

Come and worship, come and worship,
Worship Christ, the newborn King.

Though an Infant now we view Him,
He shall fill His Father’s throne,
Gather all the nations to Him;
Every knee shall then bow down:

Come and worship, come and worship,
Worship Christ, the newborn King.

All creation, join in praising
God, the Father, Spirit, Son,
Evermore your voices raising
To the eternal Three in One.

Come and worship, come and worship,
Worship Christ, the newborn King.

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.

Richard Wilbur*

Richard Wilbur (1921—2017) is one of the most significant poets of his generation. Twice he won the Pulitzer Prize, and he was the U.S. Poet Laureate in 1987-1988.

He said in an interview with the Paris Review: “I feel that the universe is full of glorious energy, that the energy tends to take pattern and shape, and that the ultimate character of things is comely and good. I am perfectly aware that I say this in the teeth of all sorts of contrary evidence, and that I must be basing it partly on temperament and partly on faith, but that’s my attitude.”

Several of his poems appear in my anthology The Turning Aside: The Kingdom Poets Book of Contemporary Christian Poetry (2016, Cascade Books).

Besides the extensive contribution of his own poetry, Wilbur is also an important translator of French plays into English, particularly those of Molière (10 plays), Racine (3 plays) and Corneille (3 plays).

My first encounter with the following poem, was in a beautiful musical rendition of it by the Canadian singer Steve Bell.

A Christmas Hymn

"And some of the Pharisees from among the multitude said unto him, Master, rebuke thy disciples.

And he answered and said unto them, I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out."
—St. Luke XIX, 39-40

A stable-lamp is lighted
Whose glow shall wake the sky;
The stars shall bend their voices,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry,
And straw like gold shall shine;
A barn shall harbor heaven,
A stall become a shrine.

This child through David's city
Shall ride in triumph by;
The palm shall strew its branches,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry,
Though heavy, dull, and dumb,
And lie within the roadway
To pave his kingdom come.

Yet he shall be forsaken,
And yielded up to die;
The sky shall groan and darken,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry
For stony hearts of men:
God's blood upon the spearhead,
God's love refused again.

But now, as at the ending,
The low is lifted high;
The stars shall bend their voices,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry
In praises of the child
By whose descent among us
The worlds are reconciled.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about Richard Wilbur: first post, second post.

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.

John Heath-Stubbs

John Heath-Stubbs (1918—2006) is an English poet, who was almost completely blind right from childhood. He didn’t see this as a hindrance, but once said, “As a poet, I have found that blindness actually tends to stimulate the imagination.”

He was one of the editors (and one of the eight poets) of Eight Oxford Poets (1941) which helped establish his career. Later, he taught at various universities, including Leeds and Merton College, Oxford. Among his accomplishments are translations of poetry from Latin, Greek, Persian, Italian and French — and significant awards, including the Queen’s Gold Medal for poetry in 1973, and an OBE in 1989.

Heath-Stubbs often explored his Christian faith within his poems — and expressed his interest in “the reaffirmation of orthodox religious themes in the poetry of T.S. Eliot and Charles Williams and others.”

The following poem was set to music in 1966 by composer Peter Dickinson.

For The Nativity

Shepherds, I sing you, this winter’s night
Our Hope new-planted, the womb’d, the buried Seed:
For a strange Star has fallen, to blossom from a tomb,
And infinite Godhead circumscribed, hangs helpless at the breast.

Now the cold airs are musical, and all the ways of the sky
Vivid with moving fires, above the hills where tread
The feet—how beautiful!—of them that publish peace.

The sacrifice, which is not made for them,
The angels comprehend, and bend to earth
Their worshipping way. Material kind Earth
Gives Him a Mother’s breast, and needful food.

A Love, shepherds, most poor,
And yet most royal, kings,
Begins this winter’s night;
But oh, cast forth, and with no proper place,
Out in the cold He lies!

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.

Eugene H. Peterson*

Eugene H. Peterson (1932—2018) is the author of more than thirty books, including A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, and his vernacular Bible translation The Message. Before retiring in 2006, he served as Professor of Spiritual Theology at Regent College in Vancouver.

In early October Eugene Peterson was hospitalized after “a sudden and dramatic turn in his health caused by an infection.” The hope at that time was that he might live for a few more months; he passed away on October 22nd.

He has greatly influenced millions through his books — most-famously the rock singer Bono of U2 who describes Peterson’s book about the prophet Jeremiah, Run With The Horses, as “a powerful manual for me.” Bono visited the Petersons at their isolated home in Flathead Lake, Montana in 2015, as documented in a video (produced by Fuller Theological Seminary) where he and Eugene discuss their common love of the Psalms.

I included one of Peterson's poems in the anthology The Turning Aside: The Kingdom Poets Book of Contemporary Christian Poetry. He generously wrote an endorsement for my subsequent anthology Adam, Eve, & the Riders of the Apocalypse (both of which are available here).

The following poem is from Peterson’s poetry collection Holy Luck (2013, Eerdmans).

Cradle

She gave birth to her first-born son
And wrapped him in swaddling clothes,
And laid him in a manger. — Luke 2:7

For us who have only known approximate fathers
And mothers manqué, this child is a surprise:
A sudden coming true of all we hoped
Might happen. Hoarded hopes fed by prophecies,

Old sermons and song fragments now cry
Coo and gurgle in the cradle, a babbling
Proto-language which as soon as it gets
A tongue (and we, of course, grow open ears)

Will say the big nouns: joy, glory, peace;
And live the best verbs: love, forgive, save.
Along with the swaddling clothes the words are washed

Of every soiling sentiment, scrubbed clean
Of all failed promises, then hung in the world’s
Backyard dazzling white, billowing gospel.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Eugene Peterson: first post.

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.