Jane Kenyon*

Jane Kenyon (1947–1995) is an American poet who was a student at University of Michigan when she met her future husband, the much-older poet Donald Hall, who was a teacher there. Her first poetry collection, From Room to Room (Alice James Books), appeared in 1978.

Kenyon had had four critically-acclaimed poetry collections published, when she was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. She fought it for a year, and after a stem-cell transplant, the cancer returned. She died a few days later; she was only 47.

In the New York Times Book Review, poet Carol Muske said of Otherwise – the book of new and selected poems Kenyon had been working on at the time of her death – “In ecstasy, [Kenyon] sees this world as a kind of threshold through which we enter God’s wonder.”

Her papers, including manuscripts, personal journals, and notebooks are held at the University of New Hampshire Library Special Collections and Archives.

The following poem first appeared in Poetry magazine in December of 1995, and was published in Otherwise: New & Selected Poems (1996, Graywolf).

Mosaic of the Nativity: Serbia, Winter 1993

On the domed ceiling God
is thinking:
I made them my joy,
and everything else I created
I made to bless them.
But see what they do!
I know their hearts
and arguments:

“We’re descended from
Cain. Evil is nothing new,
so what does it matter now
if we shell the infirmary,
and the well where the fearful
and rash alike must
come for water?”

God thinks Mary into being.
Suspended at the apogee
of the golden dome,
she curls in a brown pod,
and inside her mind
of Christ, cloaked in blood,
lodges and begins to grow.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about Jane Kenyon: 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 Wipf & Stock.

Irene Zimmerman

Irene Zimmerman is a Franciscan nun who was born in 1932 and grew up in Westphalia, Iowa. She taught in a Catholic high school in Milwaukee for 20 years, was a French tutor at a boarding school in Germany, and later served as poet-in-residence at St. Joseph Retreat in Bailey's Harbor, Wisconsin. She is now retired.

Sister Irene has published five poetry books, including Woman Un-Bent (1999, St. Mary’s Press) and Where God is at Home (2019, ACTA Publications).

She reminisces about entering Alverno College at age 21: “The community’s charism of fostering the arts was [a] powerful influence. Singing in the sisters’ choir made me feel that this community was where I belonged.” Later during her years teaching in Milwaukee she found her poetic voice.

The following poem is from Incarnation: New and Selected Poems for Spiritual Reflection (2004, Cowley Publications).

Incarnation

In careful hands
God held the molten world—
fragile filigree
of unfinished blown glass.

Then Mary’s word: Yes!
rose like a pillar of fire,
and Breath blew creation
into Christed crystal.

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.

Leslie Leyland Fields

Leslie Leyland Fields is an Alaskan writer who has published twelve books, including Your Story Matters (2020, NavPress), Crossing the Waters (2016), and the poetry collection The Water Under Fish (1994). She has taught at the University of Alaska, and is a founding faculty member of Seattle Pacific University’s MFA program. She also founded the Harvester Island Wilderness Workshop, an annual writing retreat on her family’s wilderness island in Alaska.

She and the poet Paul J. Willis have just had a new collection of Advent readings published by IVP: A Radiant Birth: Advent Readings for a Bright Season. It consists of 42 readings from the first Sunday of Advent through to Epiphany written by members of the Chrysostrom Society. Some of these readings are poems, while others are stories and essays, and they come from such highly regarded writers as Luci Shaw, Robert Siegel, Diane Glancy, Eugene Peterson, and Madeleine L’Engle ― all of whom are (or were) members of the Chrysostrom Society.

The following poem is from Leslie Leyland Fields, and appears in A Radiant Birth.

Let the Stable Still Astonish

Let the stable still astonish:
Straw-dirt floor, dull eyes,
Dusty flanks of donkeys, oxen;
Crumbling, crooked walls;
No bed to carry that pain,
And then, the child,
Rag-wrapped, laid to cry
In a trough.
Who would have chosen this?
Who would have said: "Yes,
Let the God of all the heavens and earth
be born here, in this place?”
Who but the same God
Who stands in the darker, fouler rooms
Of our hearts and says, "Yes,
Let the God
of Heaven and Earth
be born here―
In this place."

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.

Pamela Mordecai

Pamela Mordecai is a Jamaican-born poet, who migrated to Canada in 1993. She has authored eight collections of poetry, five children’s books, a novel, and a collection of short fiction. A video collection of her poetry was produced in 2015 at Memorial University, St. John’s, Newfoundland. A Fierce Green Place: New and Selected Poems appeared from New Directions in 2022.

She often writes in Jamaican Creole, particularly for her New Testament trilogy , which has been written and published in reverse order. Dionne Brand said of the first section de book of Joseph (2022), "Pamela Mordecai is a wonder, a teller and a burnisher, working the syntax, rhetorical devices and pragmatics of Jamaican language to its perfection."

The second book is de book of Mary: a performance poem (2015), and the final book de man: a performance poem, written as an eyewitness account of Christ’s crucifixion, appeared in 1995.

I met Pamela Mordecai at a literary event presented by Imago at the University of Toronto in September. She was accompanied by her friend the St. Lucian poet Jane King.

Martin Mordecai, Pamela’s husband of 54 years ― a writer, TV producer, civil servant, and diplomat ― passed away in 2021. Pamela Mordecai now lives in Toronto.

The following poem was recently reprinted in the Humber Literary Review and comes from de book of Mary.

Archangel Explains

Archangel, him smile wide, take a next
sip, give out, “Do not fret, holy one.
For de Spirit shall seize you. De power
of De-One-Who-Run-Things take you in.
Too besides, dem will call de pikni
you going bear ‘Son of God’.
El Shaddai going give him David throne
for David is him forefather long time aback.
And him going reign over de tribe
of Jacob for all time to come,
and him kingdom going last forever.
It never going end.
Not just dat. Hear dis news!
Your cousin Eliza who bad mind
people take to make sport and call mule
she making baby too – gone six month

already never mind she well old,
for Jehovah, him do what him please.”
As for whether is El Shaddai send
me to you, if you think to yourself,
you will know if is so.

Posted with permission of the poet.

This post was first 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.

C.S. Lewis*

C.S. Lewis (1898—1963) is one of the most influential Christian writers of all time. He taught English at Oxford (1925—1954) and then at Cambridge (1954—1963), and was a close friend and significant encourager to J.R.R. Tolkien.

Known to his friends as Jack, Lewis published more than thirty works, which have been translated into more than thirty languages, and have sold millions of copies. Ten years ago, this month, on the anniversary of his death, a memorial stone honouring him was unveiled in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.

As we approach November 29th (this Wednesday), his birthday, the podcast Pints with Jack, along with “over thirty Lewis societies and content creators” will be marking for the first time “C.S. Lewis Reading Day.” Watch the promotional video, and then, if you are so inclined, listen to the Pints With Jack podcast from when they interviewed me about my book Conspiracy of Light: Poems Inspired by the Legacy of C.S. Lewis. (Poiema/Cascade).

The following poem is available in his book Poems (1964, Harcourt, Inc.)

Footnote to All Prayers

He whom I bow to only knows to whom I bow
When I attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring Thou,
And dream of Pheidian fancies and embrace in heart
Symbols (I know) which cannot be the thing Thou art.
Thus always, taken at their word, all prayers blaspheme
Worshiping with frail images a folk-lore dream,
And all men in their praying, self-deceived, address
The coinage of their own unquiet thoughts, unless
Thou in magnetic mercy to Thyself divert
Our arrows, aimed unskilfully, beyond desert;
And all men are idolaters, crying unheard
To a deaf idol, if Thou take them at their word.
Take not, O Lord, our literal sense. Lord, in thy great
Unbroken speech our limping metaphor translate.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about C.S. Lewis: 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 Wipf & Stock.

Marly Youmans

Marly Youmans has written sixteen books of poetry and fiction ― which is a good way to put it, since some of her books straddle the divide between genres.

Her most recent book is Seren of the Wildwood (2023, Wiseblood) ― an epic poem written within the strict limitations Marly Youmans has placed upon herself. Its 61 chapters each consist of 21 lines of blank verse (iambic pentameter):
----------Never speak of your passions by the wildwood—
----------The needfulness that might have saved their lives…
followed by five lines of rhyming verse:
----------And trees
----------May shelter eyes and ears
----------That do not care to please—
----------The shade where something hears,
----------The dark where something sees.
It tells the story of a girl, born after the death of her brothers, seemingly because her father had said,
----------“I wish I had a daughter, not you boys
----------Who shut your ears and are no help to me!”
Be careful what you wish for, indeed!

Earlier poetry collections include Claire: poems (2003, LSU Press), and The Book of the Red King (2019, Phoenicia Publishing). She lives in New York State.

The following poem appeared in [A New] Decameron.

The Hand

I found a hand, half-buried in a field—
Like light, it held all colors in itself,
A sparkling white, perhaps alabaster
Or moonlight pooled and then solidified.
I bought the field. I dug around the hand,
Hired men to drag it from the hiding place.
They marveled at the size; I crossed their palms
With silver, bribing them to tell no one.
I scrubbed the dirt, the lichen flourishes
And stains until the hand was luminous
By day or night. It shone below the moon
As if it were the glove to catch that ball.
In summer, I lay naked in its curl,
The coolness of the skin against my skin.
In fall, leaves settled in the fingers’ bowl.
In snow, the hand was lost beneath the stars.
One night I dreamed the fingers held three keys.
The first was silvery, a key of rain.
The second, bronze, unlocking a great chest
Where all the souls of those to be were stored.
The third was golden, notched and nicked with signs,
But what it meant, or why the angels flew
Backwards and forwards, hunting the bright key,
I didn’t know. I reached to them in sleep.
Stories say that God could make a mountain
With just one hand. To make a man took two.
All I know is story. I called and woke,
And dew was on my face like chilly tears.

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.

Elizabeth Melville

Elizabeth Melville (c.1578―c.1640), also known as Lady Culross, is a Scottish poet. The first edition of her Ane Godlie Dreame appeared in 1603, making her the first known woman in Scotland to have her poetry published. Her father, Sir James Melville of Halhill, served in the courts of Mary Queen of Scots, and King James VI (who became England’s James I in 1603).

She described her 60-stanza, 480-line poem as an account of a dream she had had when in deep spiritual anguish. It has been suggested that John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress was influenced by Ane Godlie Dreame.

Elizabeth Melville was active among those resisting English attempts to bring the Presbyterian Kirk under the authority and influence of the Church of England. She wrote the following sonnet for the Calvinist preacher John Welsh, when ― for holding a General Assembly at Aberdeen in July, 1605 ― he was imprisoned in Blackness Castle.

A Sonnet Sent to Blackness
To Mr. John Welsh by the Lady Culross

My Dear Brother with courage bear the cross.
---Joy shall be joined with all your sorrow here;
High is your Hope. Disdain this worldly dross:
---Anew shall you for this wished day appear.

Though it is dark, the sky cannot be clear.
---After the cloud, it shall be calm anon.
Wait on his will who with Blood hath bought you dear
---Extol his name though outward joys be gone.

Look to the Lord: you are not left alone.
---Since he is yours, oft pleasure can you take.
He is at hand and hears your every groan
---End out your fight and suffer for his sake.

---A sight most bright your soul shall shortly see
---When show of glore your rich reward shall be.

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.

William Shakespeare*

William Shakespeare (1564―1616) is considered by many to be the greatest writer this world has ever known. All hype aside, he is easily one of the most influential.

His personal religious views can only be determined by things voiced by the characters in his plays, by what the persona of his sonnets expressed, and by his religious practice. According to the latter he would be seen as an Anglican Christian, although regular attendance at Church of England services was compulsory.

He would have heard the Bishop’s Bible regularly read in church, but based on the language of his plays he was also familiar with the Geneva Bible, a personal Bible not used in the church, but owned by individuals for devotional study. Shakespeare clearly spent much time reading this translation.

Being an Englishman of his age, he would certainly have seen himself as Christian. The following sonnet could only have been written by someone who did.

Sonnet 146

Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,
[......] these rebel powers that thee array,
Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?
Why so large cost, having so short a lease,
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?
Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,
Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body's end?
Then soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss
And let that pine to aggravate thy store;
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;
Within be fed, without be rich no more.
So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,
And, Death once dead, there's no more dying then.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about William Shakespeare: 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.

William Everson*

William Everson (1912—1994) is a northern California poet, known as part of the beat movement of San Francisco in the 1950s. His early books such as These Are The Ravens (1935) established him as a nature poet. He embraced Catholicism in 1948, and he entered the Dominican Order as Brother Antoninus in 1951.

His rise to fame came during this time of discovered faith — as his second wife returned to church, and encouraged him to join her. Ironically, because they had both previously been married their union was not recognized by the Catholic church, and so they separated and, years later, divorced.

In 1957 Kennoth Rexroth’s “San Francisco Letter” in the Evergreen Review declared the significance of this new movement of poets — including William Everson — which established him in the popular press as “The Beat Friar,” and led to readings across the US and as far away as Europe.

He left the Dominican Order in 1969 for a secular life to allow himself to pursue a romantic relationship with the woman who would become his third wife; he did, however, maintain his poetic vocation and his Christian faith.

Out of the Ash

Solstice of the dark, the absolute
Zero of the year. Praise God
Who comes for us again, our lives
Pulled to their fisted knot,
Cinched tight with cold, drawn
To the heart’s constriction; our faces
Seamed like clinkers in the grate,
Hands like tongs—Praise God
That Christ, phoenix immortal,
Springs up again from solstice ash,
Drives his equatorial ray
Into our cloud, emblazons
Our stiff brow, fries
Our chill tears. Come Christ,
Most gentle and throat-pulsing Bird!
O come, sweet Child! Be gladness
In our church! Waken with anthems
Our bare rafters! O phoenix
Forever! Virgin-wombed
And burning in the dark,
Be born! Be born!

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about William Everson: 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.

Gwenallt

Gwenallt (1899―1968) is a Welsh poet, born as David James Jones, who adopted Gwenallt as his bardic name which he created “by transposing Alltwen, the name of the village across the river from his birthplace”. At age 16 he joined the Marxist Labour Party, and during the latter part of WWI was imprisoned as a conscientious objector. After the war he studied Welsh, and by 1927 was appointed Lecturer in the Welsh Department of University College Wales, Aberystwyth.

He outgrew the political idealism of his youth, but also faced disillusionment with other structures. He was passed over, time and again, for a professorship by college authorities, and he was unsettled in his search for a spiritual home ― reacting strongly to what was said or done by church leadership. He was raised as a Nonconformist, flirted with Catholicism, became a member of the Church of Wales for many years, but ended his days as a member of a Methodist Chapel at Aberystwyth.

Gwenallt wrote his poetry in Welsh, and the first of his five poetry collections, Ysgubau’r Awen (1939), was published to much critical acclaim; in time he became a major voice in Welsh poetry. He also eventually wrote two novels, although his poetry remains more influential. He is noteworthy for his passionate, spiritual voice, his precise local imagery, and the universal significance of his themes.

Here are two English versions of one of Gwenallt’s poems ― which I include for comparison, and to demonstrate how the translating of poetry is akin to writing the poem afresh, hopefully as close to the spirit of the original as possible. The first version was translated by Patrick Thomas ― from Sensuous Glory: The Poetic Vision of D. Gwenallt Jones (2000, Canterbury Press); and the second is translated by Rowan Williams, from his book Headwaters (2008, Perpetua Press). Patrick Thomas and Rowan Williams have both granted me permission to include their translations.

Sin

When we strip off every kind of dress,
The cloak of respectability and wise knowledge,
The cloth of culture and the silks of learning;
The soul's so bare, so uncleanly naked:
The primitive mud is in our poor matter,
The beast's slime is in our marrow and our blood,
The bow's arrow is between our finger and thumb
And the savage dance is in our feet.
As we wander through the original, free forest,
We find between the branches a piece of Heaven,
Where the saints sing anthems of grace and faith,
The Magnificat of His salvation;
We raise our nostrils up like wolves
Baying for the Blood that redeemed us.

Sin

Take off the business suit, the old-school tie,
The gown, the cap, drop the reviews, awards,
Certificates, stand naked in your sty,
A little carnivore, clothed in dried turds.
The snot that slowly fills our passages
Seeps up from hollows where the dead beasts lie;
Dumb stamping dances spell our messages,
We only know what makes our arrows fly.
Lost in the wood, we sometimes glimpse the sky
Between the branches, and the words drop down
We cannot hear, the alien voices high
And hard, singing salvation, grace, life, dawn.
Like wolves, we lift our snouts: Blood, blood, we cry,
The blood that bought us so we need not die.

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.

Thomas á Kempis

Thomas á Kempis (1380–1471) is the author of the well-known devotional book The Imitation of Christ, which was anonymously published in Latin in the Netherlands in 1418. He was born in Kempen, near Dusseldorf, Germany. He received Holy Orders in 1413 and was made sub-prior of the Monastery of Mount St. Agnes in the Dutch city of Zwolle in 1429.

Thomas’s responsibilities included copying manuscripts ― he is said to have copied the entire Bible at least four times ― and in teaching novices. He wrote four booklets for this purpose, which were eventually compiled as The Imitation of Christ.

Christian History says of The Imitation of Christ, “Sir Thomas More…said it was one of the three books everybody ought to own. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, read a chapter a day from it and regularly gave away copies as gifts. Methodist founder John Wesley said it was the best summary of the Christian life he had ever read.” Many consider it the most influential Christian book, next to the Bible itself.

Oh, Love

O love, how deep, how broad, how high,
beyond all thought and fantasy,
that God, the Son of God, should take
our mortal form for mortals' sake!

He sent no angel to our race,
of higher or of lower place,
but wore the robe of human frame,
and to this world himself he came.

For us baptized, for us he bore
his holy fast and hungered sore;
for us temptation sharp he knew,
for us the tempter overthrew.

For us he prayed, for us he taught;
for us his daily works he wrought,
by words and signs and actions thus
still seeking not himself but us.

For us, by wicked men betrayed,
for us, in crown of thorns arrayed,
he bore the shameful cross and death;
for us he gave his dying breath.

For us he rose from death again,
for us he went on high to reign;
for us he sent his Spirit here
to guide, to strengthen, and to cheer.

All glory to our Lord and God
for love so deep, so high, so broad,
the Trinity whom we adore
forever and forevermore.

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.

Sofia Starnes

Sofia Starnes is the author of six poetry collections, including The Consequence of Moonlight (2018, Paraclete) and Fully into Ashes (2011, Wings Press) and is a former Poet Laureate of Virginia. I know her best from her role as Poetry Editor at Anglican Theological Review, where she served from 2007 to 2020.

She was born and raised in The Philippines, speaking Spanish at home, and English at school. While in her teens, her family left for Spain, to escape the Marcos dictatorship. She took a degree in English Philology while in Spain, eventually married an American, and moved to New York.

Sofia Starnes recently told Fare Forward about the collection she is currently working on; all of the poems follow a 16th century form called the dizain, consisting of ten lines with ten beats per line. The following poem, which first appeared in Plough, is from this new manuscript.

Zeal

Oh, to imagine I’m shielding You, when You’re
secure as a chant in a red hymnal,
hope of our eyes. You step away on sure
voices, in a child’s throat made for canticle.

Oh, to dream I’m some ardent sentinel
bearing the moon on my watch, between a church
and a fire, when it’s You who lifts the torch,
clears the tares, so that we might see the stones

pointing home. You pick Your way through the scorch,
calling stragglers— Oh, those dallying bones.

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.

Robert Herrick*

Robert Herrick (1591―1674) is now considered one of the most important English poets of the 17th century, although this is a recent perspective. He was not well-known in his own lifetime, was almost forgotten in the 18th century, and has only risen in the esteem of scholars in the late 20th century. He produced just one extensive poetry collection: Hesperides: Or, The Works Both Humane & Divine (1648).

He was a member of the Sons of Ben, a group of poets and playwrights influenced by the writing of Ben Jonson; other poets associated with this group include, Richard Lovelace, Sir John Suckling, and Thomas Carew. Jonson and his followers regularly met in various London taverns.

Herrick took holy orders and was ordained into the Church of England in 1623, and in 1629 he became the vicar of Dean Prior in Devonshire.

His Wish to God

I would to God, that mine old age might have
Before my last, but here a living grave;
Some one poor almshouse, there to lie, or stir,
Ghost-like, as in my meaner sepulchre;
A little piggin, and a pipkin by,
To hold things fitting my necessity,
Which, rightly us'd, both in their time and place,
Might me excite to fore, and after, grace.
Thy cross, my Christ, fix'd 'fore mine eyes should be,
Not to adore that, but to worship Thee.
So here the remnant of my days I'd spend,
Reading Thy bible, and my book; so end.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about Robert Herrick: 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 Wipf & Stock.

A.F. Moritz

A.F. Moritz has authored more than twenty poetry collections, including Rest on the Flight into Egypt (1999, Brick Books), The Sparrow: Selected Poems (2018, Ananasi) and As Far As You Know (2020, Anansi). From March 2019 until May of 2023 he served as Poet Laureate of Toronto. He teaches Creative Writing at the University of Toronto, and in 2009 he received the Griffin Poetry Prize.

When CBC Radio asked him why he writes poetry, and why it is significant, he spoke of his childhood journey with poetry, and continued,
-----"As I got a little older, I realized and prized that I’d been
-----fascinated by poetry from much earlier, from well before I could
-----read. I connected Poe and the other poetry I soon was reading to
-----the poetry I had heard, from nursery rhymes adults read me out of
-----books, to children’s traditional street and play rhymes, to the
-----Catholic liturgy which, of course, contains some of the world’s
-----great poetry. For instance, I can remember clearly that the
-----suffering servant song of Isaiah was both searing and dear to me
-----from before my ability to read, probably from a couple of years
-----before, although times are impossible to recall precisely in that
-----period of life just emerging from the childhood amnesia. Anyway,
-----this poem has always remained as a chief basis of my work, as
-----something that I remember constantly, and probably don’t have to
-----'remember': by now it simply is me. So too with the psalms, passages
-----of Paul, and the like."

The following poem is from his collection The New Measures (2012, Anansi).

The Grand Narrative

The waters of the pool were troubled
each day, but only at the certain hour,
evening, when the angel entered―
when light, newly reaching
the beginning of its fading,
was most powerful, least dazzling, wholly
absorbed in colors. The water
cured every sickness in the first who touched it
and the blind man stretched out close by
and no one ever told him
the turbulence had come and the city
was darkened, the end had passed
but not yet fallen. No one
so much as kicked him so he tipped
into the boiling, into the seeming
the flat dusty pond was about to be
a fountain. Teacher, he shouted once,
when he heard the teacher had come,
there’s no one to carry me to the pool,
and the man answered him: Here
Here is an inexhaustible
troubling. It’s yours now. You can
see and walk. Remember me
next time you’re lame, blind, gnarled,
stuck in anemia or filth. Enter
the memory and see
the world shine
hating you, filling you
with beasts and birds, trees and flowers,
the growing distant
gabble of many friends, and walk
to unjust death in this city, this
happiness of living and moving again.

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.

Micheal O'Siadhail*

Micheal O'Siadhail is Poet-in-Residence at Union Theological Seminary. He is an Irish poet whose poetry is characterized by formalist structures. After having already published more than a dozen previous collections, he set for himself ambitious tasks with his recent books.

His Testament (Baylor University Press, 2022) is O'Siadhail collection of 150 psalms, plus 50 more poems that connect with the stories of the gospels ― a book which numbers 230 pages of poetry.

Even more ambitious is The Five Quintets (Baylor, 2018) ― which is described by Jeremy Begbie as, “…the culmination of an extraordinary life’s work…vast in scope. O’Siadhail attempts nothing less than an exploration of the predicaments of Western modernity as they appear in five fields of human endeavor: science, arts, economics, politics, and philosophy and theology.” This 350-page poem dialogues with such poets as Dante, Donne, Milton, Baudelaire, and T.S. Eliot, but also with dozens of significant historical figures such as Bach, Chagall, Karl Marx, and Margaret Thatcher.

I want to highlight this significant poet at this time, as Micheal O'Siadhail will be the guest of Imago for a reading at Timothy Eaton Memorial Church in Toronto on September 20th, 2023 accompanied by jazz pianist Mike Jansen: (learn more!)

The following submerged sonnet is from the larger work.

From The Five Quintets

John Milton, I admire your self-belief
That you’re another Dante London-born
To set the ways of God in high relief―
I know the cost of what delights you scorn.
Although fame-spurred you live laborious days
With Providence still in the common grain;
To want to prove God’s ways itself betrays
Enlightenment that thinks it must explain.
Rebirth all earned, for you no grace comes free,
Afraid you’ll hide your talent in the earth
While your taskmaster watches from above;
Your judging carpenter from Galilee
Keeps measuring in virtue and self-worth.
How could we justify a God of love?

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Micheal O'Siadhail: 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.

Edward Shillito

Edward Shillito (1872―1948) is an English poet and writer who was born in Hull, and was educated in Manchester and Oxford late in the 19th century. He served as a Congregational minister in many places across England, including in London coming up to and during the First World War. He served as a chaplain in the trenches, but was dismissed from service due to injuries he received on the battlefield.

Some of his poetry collections include: The Omega and other poems (Blackwell, 1916) Jesus of the Scars and other poems (1919, Hodder and Stoughton), and Poetry and Prayer (SCM, 1931).

I discovered this poem in an anthology called A Treasury of Christian Verse (SCM Press) which a friend of mine Anne Laidlaw found in a UK bookshop.

The following poem might be better understood by considering what Shillito must have witnessed during WWI, and the pain that that war and its aftermath caused.

Jesus of the Scars

If we have never sought, we seek Thee now;
Thine eyes burn through the dark, our only stars;
We must have sight of thorn-pricks on Thy brow,
We must have Thee, O Jesus of the Scars.
The heavens frighten us; they are too calm;
In all the universe we have no place.
Our wounds are hurting us; where is the balm?
Lord Jesus, by Thy Scars, we claim Thy grace.
If, when the doors are shut, Thou drawest near,
Only reveal those hands, that side of Thine;
We know today what wounds are, have no fear,
Show us Thy Scars, we know the countersign.
The other gods were strong; but Thou wast weak;
They rode, but Thou didst stumble to a throne;
But to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak,
And not a god has wounds, but Thou alone.

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.

Jean Janzen*

Jean Janzen is a Canadian-born Mennonite poet, who has lived her adult life in the United States, primarily in Fresno, California. She is the author of such poetry collections as The Upside-Down Tree (Windflower Communications, 1992) and Tasting the Dust (Good Books, 2000).

She has taught at Fresno Pacific and at Eastern Mennonite University, and has served as a minister of worship at the College Community Mennonite Brethren Church in Clovis, California. She has written hymn texts, which have been set to music and are included in several hymn books, including “Mothering God, You Gave Me Birth.”

The following poem is from her collection What the Body Knows (DreamSeeker Books/Cascadia Publishing House, 2015).

What the Body Knows

Maybe it’s the ocean’s rhythmic tug
that helps me sleep, my body’s own
surge remembering its deepest pulse.

Think of those Celtic monks who
scaled the slippery rocks carrying
vellum and inks while the sea broke

and battered beneath them. High
in a crevice, a hidden stone hut
with cot and candle. The scribe

dips and swirls his quill to preserve
the story—Luke’s genealogy,
name after name, letters shaped

like birds in every color, a flight
of messengers released into history.
Each word unfurls the promise,

like Gabriel kneeling. The body
knows that wings, like waves,
can break through walls and enter,

that the secret of the story
is love, that even as we sleep,
its tides carry us in a wild safety.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Jean Janzen: 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.

Jason Myers

Jason Myers is a Texas poet and Episcopal priest who, this year, is a participant as a writer in the Artist-in-Residence program at Acadia National Park on the coast of Maine. His debut poetry collection Maker of Heaven & has just appeared from Belle Point Press. His A Place for the Genuine: Reflections on Nature, Poetry, and Vocation will be published by Eerdmans in 2024. He is Editor-in-Chief of EcoTheo Review.

Jericho Brown has written "Maker of Heaven & is a book of wonder, and in it Jason Myers suggests that what we wonder can indeed be made into art as God must have felt wonder when making the cosmos…”

The following poem first appeared in Diode.

Women Praying

In the oak-dark darkness becoming
light under the phosphorous exclamations of a magnolia tree
three men work.
They solder steel, sparks amber & orange shoot & spit
& hang, for the briefest moment, little bits
of fire on the now-blue, now-gray air.
It’s cold out there, on the other side
of the windows, & I have no idea
what those men are really doing,
or how dangerous it is.
In here, in the hospital cafeteria,
I’m eating spinach & eggs when
two women at the table next to mine
begin to pray.
Who or what their concerns are escapes
earshot, but I hear that sweet name, Jesus, sail
the lake of their lips,
& every few seconds
one or the other
raises an affirmation
Yesss
Yehhhssss
here three measures,
here more,
like they are reassuring God
as well as themselves,
like they are rocking
a baby to sleep
the words slip
out & over the room & sing,
Mary’s arms wrapped
around her boy,
first an infant
delicate & unfathomable as those on the NICU,
then a man
covered in blood
like the woman
on the gurney
in the trauma bay
who’d been bludgeoned
about the face
by her boyfriend’s
baseball bat.
I don’t know
who these women are
praying for
but I will take
their Yehhhhhss
word become chant become river
of sound
sound most close to silence
near to music
nearer my God to thee
I will take it, Lord,
spread it across
my day
my life
like balm
like globes of fire
soldering us together.

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.

Thomas Chatterton

Thomas Chatterton (1752―1770) is a poet from Bristol who was a forerunner and inspiration to such Romantic poets as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelly, and Keats ― all of whom commemorated him and his tragic death in their work.

Obsessed with the fifteenth century, Thomas Chatterton wrote inventive forgeries he claimed had been written by a fifteenth-century monk he called Thomas Rowley. He even produced complete manuscripts using techniques to distress the pages to make them appear old ― far more convincing than when children soak paper in tea for school assignments to make them look like old documents.

After he moved to London, he made little money. He wrote satires of well-known writers under a pseudonym, and often went without eating, although neighbours tried to have him join them for a meal. All of this led to his untimely death, and his mystique.

In many ways the myth of Chatterton mattered more to the Romantics than whatever might or might not be true. As a little-known poet, long-dead, who allegedly committed suicide shortly before his eighteenth birthday, he was held up as the Romantic ideal: literally a young, starving artist, who was misunderstood and ignored; some now suggest his death may have been from an accidental overdose of medication. Unfortunately, it seems he did not live up to the determination he expressed in the following poem.

The Resignation

O God, whose thunder shakes the sky,
Whose eye this atom globe surveys,
To thee, my only rock, I fly,
Thy mercy in thy justice praise.

The mystic mazes of thy will,
The shadows of celestial light,
Are past the pow'r of human skill,—
But what th' Eternal acts is right.

O teach me in the trying hour,
When anguish swells the dewy tear,
To still my sorrows, own thy pow'r,
Thy goodness love, thy justice fear.

If in this bosom aught but Thee
Encroaching sought a boundless sway,
Omniscience could the danger see,
And Mercy look the cause away.

Then why, my soul, dost thou complain?
Why drooping seek the dark recess?
Shake off the melancholy chain.
For God created all to bless.

But ah! my breast is human still;
The rising sigh, the falling tear,
My languid vitals' feeble rill,
The sickness of my soul declare.

But yet, with fortitude resigned,
I'll thank th' inflicter of the blow;
Forbid the sigh, compose my mind,
Nor let the gush of mis'ry flow.

The gloomy mantle of the night,
Which on my sinking spirit steals,
Will vanish at the morning light,
Which God, my East, my sun reveals.

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.

Christian Wiman*

Christian Wiman is Professor of the Practice of Religion and Literature at Yale Divinity School. He has published more than a dozen books ― as either author, editor, or translator ― including his most recent poetry collection Survival Is a Style (2020, FSG), and his Hammer is the Prayer: Selected Poems (2016, FSG).

His memoirs include: My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer (2013, FSG) and He Held Radical Light: The Art of Faith, the Faith of Art (2018, FSG). From 2003 until 2013 he was editor of Poetry magazine.

The following poem first appeared in The New Yorker back in July, and will be included in his forthcoming book Zero at the Bone, which will include both poetry and prose in conversation with each other. It will be available in December.

After the Ballet

I in my whistling instants
sauntering the drab concourses
or thoughtless under the plebeian stars
make of myself a kind of company
that to its origin owes
only obedience to the one
injunction against despair.
O my lost dappers and sleeks,
my paragons of gunge
and scuttled luck,
all my fellow credibles,
all my little filths,
come back. Come back
from the sallowing past,
from the herd immunity
to miracles, for I have seen
a room of depilated marble
moving, a choreography of souls
that would have restored
my own even without
the demoiselle who,
in a moment so tensely silent
it seemed the soul’s nerve,
swanned her arms, torqued
her immaculate back, and executed
an improvised, exquisite, and irrefutable
toot.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Chrstian Wiman: 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.

Philip James Bailey

Philip James Bailey (1816―1902) is a Victorian poet primarily known for his extensive 1839 poem Festus, a version of the Faust legend, which he later revised for a second edition in 1845. Festus was very popular ― gaining admiration from such poets as Tennyson, Longfellow, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning ― but his subsequent books did not sell well. When these further books failed to gain popularity, Bailey tried to incorporate extracts from several of these poems into Festus, wherever he could make the lines fit, which extended the poem with every new edition.

Mischa Willet has edited a new critical edition of Festus (2021, Edinburgh University Press) based on the first American edition of 1845. He explains, “The poem explores themes of love, faith, and redemption, as well as the relationship between God and humanity. It also reflects the tensions between traditional religious values and the emerging scientific and secular worldviews of the time, as well as the social and economic upheavals that accompanied the Industrial Revolution.” This is the first new edition of the work in over a century.

Philip James Bailey travelled extensively in his later years ― living in London and Devon before returning to his birthplace in Nottingham. He was buried in Nottingham Rock Cemetery.

The following poem is from his collection The Angel World and Other Poems (1850).

A Ruin

In a cot-studded, fruity, green deep dale,
There grows the ruin of an abbey old;
And on the hill side, cut in rock, behold
A sainted hermit's cell; so goes the tale.
What of that ruin? There is nothing left
Save one sky-framing window arch, which climbs
Up to its top point, single stoned, bereft
Of prop or load. And this strange thing sublimes
The scene. For the fair great house, vowed to God,
Is hurled down and unhallowed; and we tread
O'er buried graves which have devoured their dead;
While over all springs up the green-lifed sod,
And arch, so light and lofty in its span―
So frail, and yet so lasting―tis like man.

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.

Anne Bradstreet*

Anne Bradstreet (1612—1672) is the first writer in England's North American colonies to have had a book published, and the most prominent poet in that early period. Her book, The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America was published in London in 1650. It was a delicate balance for a woman, and a Puritan at that, to put herself forward as a poet. It was necessary that her husband, her father, and her brother-in-law (who carried her manuscript to England to have it published) were seen as the instigators of the project.

Born in England, and raised on an estate filled with comfort and a great library, Anne Bradstreet at eighteen emigrated, with her husband and parents, to avoid the persecution Puritans faced from the Church of England.

She was notably well-read, and influenced by the most influential writers of her time and of antiquity. The first edition of The Tenth Muse ... contains an elegy to Sir Philip Sidney and a poem honouring the French poet Guillaume de Salluste du Bartas. Her 232-line poem “Contemplations” is considered by many to be her finest work. Through its 33 stanzas she reflects on the beauty of our world and contemplates heaven:
-----If so much excellence abide below,
-----How excellent is he that dwells on high?
Her poem’s lines are composed with Christ’s instructions from Matthew 6 in mind: to “Behold the fowls of the air…And…Consider the lilies of the field…” The following are the final two stanzas of the poem.

from Contemplations

So he that faileth in this world of pleasure,
Feeding on sweets that never bit of th' sour,
That's full of friends, of honour, and of treasure,
Fond fool, he takes this earth ev'n for heav'ns bower,
But sad affliction comes and makes him see
Here's neither honour, wealth, or safety.
Only above is found all with security.

O Time the fatal wrack of mortal things
That draws oblivion's curtains over kings,
Their sumptuous monuments, men know them not;
Their names with a Record are forgot,
Their parts, their ports, their pomp's all laid in th' dust.
Nor wit, nor gold, nor buildings scape time's rust,
But he whose name is grav'd in the white stone
Shall last and shine when all of these are gone.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Anne Bradstreet: 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.

Claude Wilkinson

Claude Wilkinson is a poet, painter, and writer, who has just published his fifth poetry collection: Soon Done with the Crosses (2023). It is the latest volume from Cascade’s Poiema Poetry Series. I am honoured to have worked with Claude as his editor for this new book.

His previous poetry collections include Reading the Earth (1998, Michigan State), winner of the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award ― Joy in the Morning (2004, LSU Press), for which he was nominated for an American Book Award, the Griffin Poetry Prize, and a Pulitzer Prize ― Marvelous Light (2018, Stephen F. Austin State University Press) ― and World Without End (2020, Slant). He is also the winner of the Whiting Award for Poetry.

He grew up in rural Mississippi, but has been influenced by many other regions and landscapes. In a recent interview with Fare Forward he said, “[M]y way of looking through our world is, without doubt, shaped by my early, enjoyable experiences in a rural, welcoming landscape. I believe it’s one of the ways that my spirit became attuned to God and what little I know of the universe.” Later, when asked about challenges for writing about nature today, he said, “To properly appreciate nature, we must have reverence for it and foremost for its Creator.”

Wilkinson identifies his favourite poets as Derek Walcott and Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Robert Cording has said that Claude Wilkinson’s poetry “brings art and nature together—the artfulness here not in its faithful copying of nature, but in its evocation of reality in all its fullness.”

The following is the opening poem in Soon Done with the Crosses.

Birds That Alight on Faith

Help me also to believe in
the leanest saplings and twigs,
in something as flimsy
as a honeysuckle bloom,
as Theseus did, in my imagining, when
he tackled the Minotaur, or Icarus
when he flew momentarily
into the face of the sun.

Help in the way I’ve seen
pelicans and swans skim
mutely onto a lake,
thinking it solid as stone,
the way Saint Peter did
when he took his first steps
on stormy Gennesaret
before hearing the strife
cursing around his feet.

With only that thimbleful
of aerial surety, help me
to grasp those things
which never collapse
under the heft of this life.

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.

Martha Serpas*

Martha Serpas is a poet from Southeast Louisiana, and is the author of four poetry collections, most recently, Double Effect (2020, Louisiana State University Press). She is a Professor of English at University of Houston, and has taught at Yale Divinity School and the University of Tampa. In addition to this, since 2006 she has worked as a trauma chaplain at Tampa General Hospital. All of this means she divides her time between Texas, Florida, and Louisiana.

She said in a 2022 interview with Nadia Colburn, “I don't think I would have become a poet without the emphasis on the sensory aspects of reaching the Divine” which she found growing up in the Catholic church.

LSU Press says that, “Martha Serpas’s Double Effect reimagines a principle first outlined by St. Thomas Aquinas in Summa Theologica, which considers whether an action is morally permissible if it causes harm while bringing about a good result.”

The following poem, which relates to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, is from Yale University’s Reflections.

Poem Found

New Orleans, September 2005

…And God said, “Let there be a dome
in the midst of the waters” and into the dome God put
the poor, the addicts, the blind, and the
oppressed. God put the unsightly sick and the
crying young
into the dome and the dry land did not appear.
And God allowed those who favored
themselves
born in God’s image to take dominion over
the dome and everything that creeped within it
and made them to walk to and fro above it
in their jumbo planes and in their copy rooms
and in their conference halls. And then
God brooded over the dome and its multitudes
and God saw God’s own likeness in the shattered
tiles and the sweltering heat and the polluted
rain.
God saw everything and chose to make it very
good. God held the dome up to the light
like an open locket and in every manner
called the others to look inside and those who
saw
rested on that day and those who didn’t
went to and fro and walked up and down
the marsh until the loosened silt gave way
to a void, and darkness covered the faces with deep sleep.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Martha Serpas: 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.

Amy Nemecek

Amy Nemecek is a poet living in Michigan who in 2021 won the Paraclete Poetry Prize for her book The Language of the Birds (2022). By day, she works as a nonfiction editor for the Baker Publishing Group.

Luci Shaw has said about this collection, “In this brilliant transcription of responsive poems we are reminded of the generous beauty offered us by our Creator, if we would only look and listen, if we would join in offering praise.”

“Listen more than you talk. Stop and listen, stop and watch,” Nemecek said in an interview with Grand Rapids Magazine. She then echoed Mary Oliver’s poem “When I Am Among the Trees” to say “… never hurry through the world but walk slowly, and bow often.” This is advice she not only shares, but applies to the writing of her own poems.

The following is the title poem from her book.

The Language of the Birds

On the fifth day, your calloused fingers
stretched out and plucked a single reed
from the river that flowed out of Eden,
trimmed its hollow shaft to length and
whittled one end to a precise vee
that you dipped in the inkwell of ocean.
Touching pulpy nib to papyrus sky,
you brushed a single hieroglyph―
feathered the vertical downstroke
flourished with serif of pinions,
a perpendicular crossbar lifting
weightless bones from left to right.
Tucking the stylus behind your ear,
you blew across the wet silhouette,
dried a raven’s wings against the static,
and spoke aloud the symbol’s sounds:
“Fly!”

Posted with permission of the poet.

This post was suggested by Nellie deVries.

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.

Dragan Dragojlović*

Dragan Dragojlović is a Serbian poet who lives in Belgrade. He has served the government of Serbia in various positions, including as Minister of Religions, and as Ambassador to Australia. He has also served as director of the Ivo Andrić Foundation, which grants scholarships to foreign students of Serbian studies.

He is the author of sixteen books of poetry (by last count) including The Book of Love (1992), Death’s Homeland (2008), and Patriarch’s Ladders (2017).

I have just finished reading Death’s Homeland, which I had not yet purchased when I posted (one year ago) about Dragan Dragojlović. What distinguishes this collection from any of his other poetry you might access, is that these are short lyrics (the poem below is the longest in the collection) dealing with the heartbreaking experience of the Yugoslav Civil War ― both the hopelessness of daily facing death, and the hope that comes through faith in God.

He has translated the work of several poets into Serbian, including that of Irish poet John F. Deane. The following poem, along with the rest of Death’s Homeland, was translated by Stanislava Lazarevic.

Glory Eternal

May glory eternal be with you
who fell
for Serbia,
may your wounds be blessed,
my brother in hope.

May all your delusions
be forgiven.
May your pain be eased
in heaven.
Forgive your murderer.
Pray for those
upon whom you have inflicted
suffering and death.

My brother in sin and misfortune,
do not criticize
my attempt to glorify
what transcends all words:
your sacrifice.

Choking with pain
to the point of screaming,
dare I wonder
whether it could have been different,
and whether history and hope
outlive our death.

I remain silent
repeating to myself:
you did what you could,
let God complete the rest.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Dragan Dragojlović: 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.

Stephen Cushman

Stephen Cushman is a poet from Connecticut who moved south in 1982 to be a Professor of English at the University of Virginia, where he specializes in American literature.

He is the author of seven poetry books ― all published by Louisiana State University Press ― including his latest: Keep the Feast (2022). His other publications include two books of literary criticism, and three books about the American Civil War.

His publisher’s website says that Keep the Feast “sings in the tradition of the psalmists and devotional poets…” and that the title poem is structured after Psalm 119. Maurice Manning praised the book, saying, “Schooled equally in Thoreau and folklore, the poems in this book are nourishing in their humor, edifying in their precision, and enlivening all around.”

Atheism’s Easier

Abstain from staring too long at the sky.
Stick to screens, little keyboards;
block out birds with private earbuds;
never hear the wind breathe harder.
Watch TV. Always drive.
Try to avoid a night outside
in ladled moonlight, glowing broth.
Eschew solitude; cut back on silence;
call up someone just to gossip;
send lots of messages; read them, too.
Make sure not to spend a winter in the woods,
a month on a summit, a week in a desert,
time by the sea if it promotes thinking
how it’s acceptance without conditions
that makes me acceptable, and pretty soon,
though tough at first, atheism’s easier.

Posted with permission of the poet.

This post was suggested by Lisa Russ Spaar.

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.

W.R. Rodgers

W.R. Rodgers (1909―1969) is a Belfast poet, who served as a Presbyterian minister, before becoming a broadcaster with the BBC in London, at the invitation of Louis MacNeice. His first collection, Awake! and Other Poems was published in 1941, with its first edition being almost completely wiped out during the London Blitz. His early poetry was greatly influenced by W.H. Auden.

At the BBC he broadcast a number of significant programs on Irish writers. In 1966 he moved to California to become Writer-in-Residence at Pitzer College. It was in California that he died in 1969.

A booklet, put together by the BBC concludes with the following: “Rodgers’ ashes were returned to Belfast and after a memorial service in First Ballymacarret Presbyterian Church ― which he had attended as a boy ― he was buried in Loughgall. The Minister-poet’s life had come full circle. Seamus Heaney read a short selection of Rodgers’ poetry at the memorial service ― reflecting his importance for a new generation of northern writers.”

The following poem, demonstrates Rodgers’ war-era modernism. It first appeared in Horizon in 1943, and later (I believe) in his 1952 collection Europa and the Bull.

Christ Walking on the Water

Slowly, O so slowly, longing rose up
In the forenoon of his face, till only
A ringlet of fog lingered round his loins;
And fast he went down beaches all weeping
With weed, and waded out. Twelve tall waves
Sequent and equated, hollowed and followed.
O what a cockeyed sea he walked on,
What poke-ends of foam, what elbowings
And lugubrious looks, what ebullient
And contumacious musics. Always there were
Hills and holes, pills and poles, a wavy wall
And bucking ribbon caterpillaring past
With glossy ease. And often, as he walked,
The slow curtains of swell swung open and showed,
Miles and smiles away, the bottle-boat
Flung on one wavering frond of froth that fell
Knee-deep and heaved thigh-high. In his forward face
No cave of afterthought opened; to his ear
No bottom clamour climbed up; nothing blinked.
For he was the horizon, he the hub,
Both bone and flesh, finger and ring of all
This clangorous sea. Docile, at his toe's touch,
Each tottering dot stood roundaboutly calm
And jammed the following others fast as stone.
The ironical wave smoothed itself out
To meet him, and the mocking hollow
Hooped its back for his feet. A spine of light
Sniggered on the knobbly water, ahead.
But he like a lover, caught up,
Pushed past all wrigglings and remonstrances
And entered the rolling belly of the boat
That shuddered and lay still. And he lay there
Emptied of his errand, oozing still. Slowly
The misted mirror of his eyes grew dear
And cold, the bell of blood tolled lower,
And bright before his sight the ocean bared
And rolled its horrible bold eyeballs endlessly
In round rebuke. Looking over the edge
He shivered. Was this the way he had come?
Was that the one who came? The backward bowl
And all the bubble-pit that he had walked on
Burst like a plate into purposelessness.
All, all was gone, the fervour and the froth
Of confidence, and flat as water was
The sad and glassy round. Somewhere, then,
A tiny flute sounded, O so lonely.
A ring of birds rose up and wound away
Into nothingness. Beyond himself he saw
The settled steeples, and breathing beaches
Running with people. But he,
He was custodian to nothing now,
And boneless as an empty sleeve hung down.
Down from crowned noon to cambered evening
He fell, fell, from white to amber, till night
Slid over him like an eyelid. And he,
His knees drawn up, his head dropped deep,
Curled like a question-mark, asleep.

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.

Zach Czaia

Zach Czaia is a Minneapolis poet with two collections available: Saint Paul Lives Here (in Minnesota) (2015, Wipf & Stock) and his recent Knucklehead: poems (2021, Nodin Press). He has been teaching high school English for several years.

In Knucklehead, Czaia speaks honestly of his life ― at one point looking back to his first year of teaching high school down in Belize, where the boys called him Dante since he was leading the group of seventeen-year-olds through Inferno ― at another time reflecting self-deprecatingly on himself as a husband ― at yet another being overwhelmed by the murder of George Floyd, in part, because it happened in his own backyard.

He hosts a new poetry podcast called “Open Your Hands” where he reads a contemporary poem, and interacts with it. One recent episode features Mark Jarman’s poem “Questions For Ecclesiastes.”

The following Zach Czaia poem first appeared in Ekstasis and is from Knucklehead.

Saint Paul Talks Strategy

So I went down to a potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. Whenever the vessel he was making went wrong, as clay is apt to do in a potter’s hand, he would remake it in a different shape, such as he thought suitable. — Jeremiah 18:3-4

It’s a go-to, I’ll admit it,
the potter at his wheel. I say,
“I’m the stuff in his hands, the clay—
a pot gone wrong, he remade it,
remade me, my life.” The prophet
knows more than I do. Hearts don’t change
that much from age to age, the range
of feelings the same now as then.
We’re all still waiting for the moment when
these hearts we carry don’t feel so strange.

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.

Bruce Beasley

Bruce Beasley is the author of ten poetry collections, and has won several awards, including from University of Georgia Press, and Ohio State University Press. His books include The Corpse Flower: New and Selected Poems (2007, University of Washington Press), and his new collection Prayershreds (2023, Orison Books). In 1996 Charles Wright selected his book Summer Mystagogia to receive the Colorado Prize for Poetry.

Prayersheds is a fascinating collection, woven both from Beasley’s obsession with words, and our attempts at communication through words that we call prayer. His brain seems to continually be in a musical whirl of homonyms, homophones, etymologies, and nonce words combining familiar syllables for greater precision of meaning. Kathleen Norris insightfully compares his playfulness to that of E.E. Cummings. His word-wrestling doesn’t seem to be intended to distance himself from the reader, since many of the poems are quite accessible, however the poems sometimes take a path that require us to make our paradigm of what a poem should be more flexible. Rather than a book of prayer poems, this is more a book of poems about prayer.

The following poem first appeared as “The Responsive Amens” in the journal Subtropics, and it is from Prayershreds.

Verily

------------I

Shut your eyes―we were taught
in the Children’s Sermon
on how to pray―
shut your eyes tight until
you hear the pastor say Amen

but sometimes when I forgot to listen

for that end-signal word, sleep and prayer
would indistinguish themselves

------------II

Mandatory postrequisite
of creed
prerequisite for exit Amen

Vocally italicized Yes

that compelled and terminal
assent

It means Verily, so be it, decidedly it’s true,
means Here is where we go
back to normal-talk
We make it
mean

Please Lord let it end make it
mean Oh God
would would would
that it were so

------------III

To my body I will be as the
amen
is to the flesh’s
Let us pray Let us pray Let us pray

------------IV

Every amen
scissors the traced
outline of the prayer, ripping
the cut-out space of what we say to God

from the scrapped
silver silk of all we’d never say

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.