Monday, May 30, 2022

Eugene Warren

Eugene Warren (1941―2015) is a poet, and former chair of English and Technical Communication at Missouri S&T, where he taught for 42 years. He served as Poetry Editor for Christianity and Literature, and authored seven poetry collections, including: Christographia, Geometries of Light, and Fishing at Easter. His fascination with World Literature manifest itself in his teaching, in his promotion of many non-western poetic forms ― particularly the ghazal ― and in his own poetry.

Eugene Warren is the name he was known by until 1988 ― Warren being his adoptive father’s family name. After this he took on his birth father’s surname and became known as Gene Doty. To delightfully confuse matters further he used the pseudonym, “gino peregrini” for some of his publishing and editing activities.

Victoria Emily Jones, who blogs frequently and informatively at Art & Theology, reports that Eugene Warren’s Christographia is ― “a chapbook of thirty-two numbered poems that ‘attempt to express personal views of, & perspectives on, Christ.’ The book’s title comes from a series of sermons by the Puritan poet and preacher Edward Taylor.” The above link brings you to a poem, which Jones featured, from Christographia.

Christographia XXIV

now I come back
now I press on
now I descend
now I rise
-------------remaining
--------at the center
----------of the lovely abyss
hearing the pocket watch
tick itself mad

now I am silent
now I shout
now I sleep
now I wake
-------------spelling
--------a sentence
----------longer than time
forming words
----------that vanish into ink

the diagrams we invent
or discover,
at the mind’s edge
or core
-----------that what is inner
-----------is the form of what is outer,
-----------dream & world keys
-----------to the same lock

the charts
of word, color, number
tone
that graph precisely
the contours of mind
which are the shapes
of life
-----------its tensions, desires
-----------its silence & absence

-----------as when the stars turn
-----------at once
--------------on two axes

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.