David E. Poston

David E. Poston is a poet living in North Carolina who has published two chapbooks ― My Father Reading Greek (1999) and Postmodern Bourgeois Poetaster Blues (2007) ― and the full-length collection Slow of Study (2015, Main Street Rag). He taught for thirty years in public school, at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and at Charlotte’s Young Writers’ Workshop.

His poetry has appeared at Your Daily Poem. David is a book reviewer for Pedestal Magazine and is one of the core editors of Kakalak ― an anthology which began as a regional publication but has grown well beyond that.

The following poem first appeared in The Windhover.

Suffering Servant

--------------Acts 8: 26-39, Isaiah 53: 7-8
-------Oppressed and afflicted,----he did not open his mouth.

As the Ethiopian struggles
to parse the words of Isaiah,
help comes from a stranger
with a tongue of fire.

-------A lamb is led to the slaughter,
-------a sheep before its shearers------------------------is silent.

Empires come and go.
One persecutes believers,
another provides the Middle Passage—
that’s not Philip’s news.

-------He did not open his mouth.-------By a perversion
-------------------------------------------------------of justice he was taken.

Across the sea lies a promised land
with cotton fields vaster than all Egypt.
There will be new songs:
-------“Follow the Drinking Gourd”
-------“Wade in the Water”
-------“I’ll Fly Away”

There it will not be harps
hanging from the trees.

-------Who could have imagined
-------his future,-------------------cut off
------------------------------------------------from the land of the living.

Here is water, the eunuch says.
Baptize me.
So the journey begins.

Posted with permission of the poet.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.

Countee Cullen*

Countee Cullen (1903—1946) is one of the key poets of the Harlem Renaissance. In 1925 he published his first collection — Color — and entered Harvard University to earn his Masters degree. Educated in a white system, he was influenced by poets such as John Keats and Edna St. Vincent Millay; he utilized their traditional poetic forms to wrestle through the difficulties of being black in a racist society.

In the Poetry Foundation’s biography of Cullen it says, “On the subject of religion, Cullen waywardly progressed from uncertainty to Christian acceptance. Early on he was given to irony and even defiance in moments of youthful skepticism…” But later he overcame his uncertainties “in favor of Christian orthodoxy by 1929, when he published The Black Christ, and Other Poems.”

Written for the Reverend Frederick A. Cullen — who was pastor of Harlem’s largest congregation, Salem Methodist Episcopal Church, and Cullen’s adoptive father — this poem is from My Soul’s High Song: The Collected Writings of Countee Cullen.

Lines to My Father

The many sow, but only the chosen reap;
Happy the wretched host if Day be brief,
That with the cool oblivion of sleep
A dawnless Night may soothe the smart of grief.

If from the soil our sweat enriches sprout
One meagre blossom for our hands to cull,
Accustomed indigence provokes a shout
Of praise that life becomes so bountiful.

Now ushered regally into your own,
Look where you will, as far as eye can see,
Your little seeds are to a fullness grown,
And golden fruit is ripe on every tree.

Yours is no fairy gift, no heritage
Without travail, to which weak wills aspire;
This is a merited and grief-earned wage
From One Who holds His servants worth their hire.

So has the shyest of your dreams come true,
Built not of sand, but of the solid rock,
Impregnable to all that may accrue
Of elemental rage: storm, stress, and shock.

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

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.

Robert Browning*

Robert Browning (1812—1889) is seen today, not only as one of the major poets of the 19th century, but as a celebrated romantic figure. He and the poet (then known as) Elizabeth Barrett eloped against her father’s wishes, escaping to Italy, where her health concerns had a greater chance of recovery.

It is for Robert Browning that Elizabeth wrote the famous sequence Sonnets from the Portuguese (his affectionate nickname for her, because of her olive complexion). This collection includes her Sonnet #43 — one of the most famous love poems of all time.

Robert Browning is particularly known for his lengthy dramatic poems — influenced by Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound, and in turn influencing such poets as Thomas Hardy and T.S. Eliot.

God, Thou Art Love

If I forget,
Yet God remembers! If these hands of mine
Cease from their clinging, yet the hands divine
Hold me so firmly that I cannot fall;
And if sometimes I am too tired to call
For Him to help me, then He reads the prayer
Unspoken in my heart, and lifts my care.

I dare not fear, since certainly I know
That I am in God’s keeping, shielded so
From all that else would harm, and in the hour
Of stern temptation strengthened by His power;
I tread no path in life to Him unknown;
I lift no burden, bear no pain, alone:
My soul a calm, sure hiding-place has found:
The everlasting arms my life surround.

God, Thou art love! I build my faith on that.
I know Thee who has kept my path, and made
Light for me in the darkness, tempering sorrow
So that it reached me like a solemn joy;
It were too strange that I should doubt Thy love.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about Robert Browning: first post, second post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Amazon, and Wipf & Stock.

A.M. Juster

A.M. Juster is a champion of formal verse in his work as a poet, as a translator, and as a critic. His tenth book of poetry is Wonder and Wrath (2020, Paul Dry Books). He also serves as Poetry Editor for Plough Quarterly.

As a translator he has brought to English Latin works by Petrarch, Horace, Tibullus, St. Aldelm, and Maximianus, as well as a book-length collection of John Milton’s Latin elegies. He has also translated poems from French, Italian, Chinese, and the east African language Oromo.

In 2010, Paul Mariani revealed, in the pages of First Things, A.M. Juster’s alternate identity. He is Michael James Astrue, who at the time was the Commissioner of the Social Security Administration in Washington, D.C. Mariani pointed out the subtle hint in Juster’s poem “Candid Headstone”―
-------Here lies what’s left of Michael Juster,
-------A failure filled with bile and bluster.
-------Regard the scuttlebutt as true.
-------Feel free to dance; most others do.

Juster is a Catholic, who is celebrated for his wit and finely-crafted light verse. The title of his 2016 collection, Sleaze & Slander: New and Selected Comic Verse, 1995-2015, makes this clear enough. His wit and creativity also comes through in his parody The Billy Collins Experience (2016, Kelsay Books).

Cancer Prayer

Dear Lord,

Please flood her nerves with sedatives
and keep her strong enough to crack a smile
so disbelieving friends and relatives
can temporarily sustain denial.

Please smite that intern in oncology
who craves approval from department heads.
Please ease her urge to vomit; let there be
kind but flirtatious men in nearby beds.

Given her hair, consider amnesty
for sins of vanity; make mirrors vanish.
Surround her with forgiving family
and nurses not too numb to cry. Please banish

trite consolations; take her in one swift
and gentle motion as your final gift.

Posted with permission of the poet.

This post was suggested by my friend Burl Horniachek.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.