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.