Henry Constable

Henry Constable (1562—1613) is a poet and diplomat who is particularly known for one of the earliest sonnet sequences in English — Diana (1592). After graduating from Cambridge in 1580, he moved to Paris to begin his diplomatic career. From there he transferred to Heidelberg, and perhaps after that to Poland.

He spoke up in support of Protestant causes while at Queen Elizabeth’s court, where he became a favourite. In 1589 he was sent to Edinburgh to attend the marriage of King James VI of Scotland. Though at first outwardly appearing to be a Protestant, Constable eventually made public his conversion to Catholicism.

In 1595, Constable fled to the continent to avoid prosecution for his Catholic views. He wrote many letters to England, seeking assistance, visited Scotland, and around 1602 returned to England in secret. He was soon captured and held in the Tower of London. Even after his friend James I came to the English throne in 1603, he was not released — not until late in 1604. Several years later he left England for good, and died in Belgium.

O Gracious Shepherd

O gracious Shepherd! for Thy simple flock
By guileful goats to ravening wolves misled,
Who Thine own dear heart's precious blood didst shed,
And lamb-like offered to the butcher's block:
O gracious Shepherd! unremoving Rock
Of succour to all such as thither fled,
Respect one of Thy flock which followèd
These cursèd goats, and doth repentant knock,
To be with mercy taken to Thy fold.
I know Thy grace doth still for wanderers look;
I was a lost sheep once: dear Lord! behold,
And in compassion take me with Thy hook.
In one lost sheep new found, Thou dost rejoice;
Then know Thy sheep, which knows his Shepherd's voice.

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.

Julian of Norwich

Julian of Norwich (1342―1416) is a mystic and theologian known almost exclusively through her writings, which are the earliest-surviving works in English by a woman. It is not even certain that her name was Julian, for that may have come from St. Julian’s Church in Norwich, where she lived most of her life as an anchoress.

Her story is that on the eighth of May, 1373, while she was believed to be on her deathbed, a curate, holding a crucifix above the foot of her bed was administering to her the last rites. Staring at the crucifix she began to lose her sight, and saw Jesus beginning to bleed. From this beginning she received sixteen visions of Christ.

The following excerpt, although not originally set out as poetry, has been placed in stanzas on the page to emphasize the poetic quality of Julian’s writings.

from Showings or Revelations of Divine Love

And in this he showed me a little thing
the quantity of a hazelnut,
lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed.
And it was as round as any ball.

I looked upon it with the eye of my understanding,
and thought, ‘What may this be?’
And it was answered generally thus,
“It is all that is made.”

I marvelled how it might last,
for I thought it might
suddenly have fallen to nothing
for littleness.

And I was answered in my understanding:
It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it.
And so have all things their beginning
by the love of God.

In this little thing I saw three properties.
The first is that God made it.
The second that God loves it.
And the third, that God keeps it.

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.

Pat Schneider

Pat Schneider (1934—2020) is a poet and workshop leader who founded Amherst Writers & Artists in Massachusetts in 1981. She served for thirty years as the director of AWA. She describes the writing method she developed to help others discover their deepest stories in her book Writing Alone and With Others (2003, Oxford University Press).

When she was ten, growing up in St. Louis, she was sent to an orphanage because of the difficulties her single mother faced with poverty. This experience influenced her, and her husband Peter (a Methodist minister) to devote themselves for years to social justice ministry.

She wrote five poetry collections, including Another River: New and Selected Poems (2005). She taught at the University of Massachusetts, the University of Connecticut, Smith College and was an adjunct faculty member at the Graduate Theological Union and Pacific School of Religion. She is also known for her libretti and plays, which have been widely performed, including at Carnegie Hall.

Welcoming Angels

Between the last war
and the next one,
waiting for the northbound train
that travels by the river,
I sit alone in the middle of the night
and welcome angels.
Welcome back old hymns, old songs,
all the music, the rhyme and rhythm,
welcome angels, archangels,
welcome early guesses,
at the names of things,
welcome wings.
I have grown tired of disbelief.
What once was brave is boring.
Welcome back to my embrace stranger,
visitor beside the Jabbok.
Welcome wrestling until dawn,
until it is my hip thrown out of joint,
my pillow stone, my ladder
of antique assumptions.
Welcome what is not my own:
glory on top rung, coming down.

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.

George Mackay Brown*

George Mackay Brown (1921—1996) is a poet of Scotland’s north coast Orkney Islands. He studied with Edwin Muir at Newbattle Abbey College, near Edinburgh, and earned his MA from the University of Edinburgh, where he did post-graduate research on Gerard Manley Hopkins.

While in Edinburgh he became part of the Milne’s Bar crowd, which included Hugh MacDiarmid and Norman MacCaig. He was briefly engaged to Stella Cartwright — “the muse of Milne’s Bar” — but returned to his hometown of Stromness, where he lived unmarried for the rest of his life.

George Mackay Brown once wrote that his themes were "mainly religious (birth, love, death, resurrection, ceremonies of fishing and agriculture)…"

The following poem is from his collection Carve the Runes and appears in Selected Poems 1952—1992.

Daffodils

Heads skewered with grief
Three Marys at the cross
(Christ was wire and wax
festooned on a dead tree)

Guardians of the rock,
their emerald tapers touch
the pale wick of the sun
and perish before the rose
bleeds on the solstice stone
and the cornstalk unloads
peace from hills of thorn

Spindrifting blossoms
from the gray comber of March
thundering on the world,
splash our rooms coldly with
first grace of light, until
the corn-tides throb, and fields
drown in honey and fleeces

Shawled in radiance
tissue of sun and snow
three bowl-bound daffodils
in the euclidian season
when darkness equals light
and the world’s circle shudders
down to one bleeding point
Mary Mary and Mary
triangle of grief.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about George Mackay Brown: 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.

Luci Shaw*

Luci Shaw is 95 years old, and a trail-blazer for generations of Christian poets who value her accomplishments as a model for how to walk the precarious path of faith and art. Her seventeenth poetry collection Reversing Entropy appeared from Paraclete Press this spring. She says in the Prologue,

-----“Our universe, and the systems within it, constantly shift from
-----their created states of order towards disorder, or chaos. The
-----second law of thermodynamics asserts that entropy, or disorder,
-----always increases with time. Creative human activities such as art,
-----architecture, music, story, or film are human efforts to halt and
-----reverse this loss of meaning…. [Poems] reverse entropy because
-----they are moving from a state of disorder (all the random ideas,
-----words,and phrases available to the writer) into an orderly form
-----designed by the writer to create meaningful images and concepts
-----in the reader’s mind….This transfer of images, concepts, and ideas
-----into the mind of a reader is the task of poetry and the calling of
-----the poet. Just as a composer of music gathers rhythms, notes,
-----melodies, or harmony, organizing them into fugues or sonatas
-----or concertos, so poets work and write to discover ways of
-----arranging their responses to the world in words that introduce
-----meaning and beauty in the mind of the reader. Which is what I’ve
-----been trying to do for most of my life."

The following poem is from Reversing Entropy (2024, Iron Pen/Paraclete).

Older

Aging haunts, will hunt us all, a predator,
rapacious, ravenous, toothed with sharp anxieties.
The scars of old and unhealed wounds hide
in the folds of soul skin. Blood stains the ground.
Failures, regrets have left torn tissues,
ragged blemishes and a crimson trail
across the room. You feel it wet, sticky, seeping
between your bare toes. In the thick night,
You wrestle with dreams, contend with confusion.

How good it would be if the anxiety of aging,
bulky and useless, were a piece of furniture.
You might remove it from the living room and
store it somewhere dark, out of sight—
in the basement, perhaps, locked behind
the cellar door. Then you could climb back up to
the clean kitchen, a room predictable enough
to allay suspicion. You’d open a window,
maybe prepare a simple meal. Pray.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the fourth Kingdom Poets post about Luci Shaw: first post, second post, third 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.

Yared

Yared (505—571) is an Ethiopian composer, hymn writer, and priest, who was a leader in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church which venerates him as a saint.

He is renowned for having established his own system of musical notation, which predates the familiar European system, and is still in use today.

One of the important festivals within the Ethiopian Church is Meskel, where they celebrate the reputed discovery of the true cross by Queen Helena, the mother of Constantine. The story goes that while she was seeking for the Holy Sepulchre, she prayed for assistance, and was directed to where the cross was buried by the smoke from a fire. What interests me most here, is not the artifact’s authenticity, but the extent to which Yared and his contemporaries valued it, because they celebrated the work Christ did on the cross.

The following selection from Yared’s “The Finding of the True Cross” was translated from the Ge’ez by Burl Horniachek with Ralph Lee, and appears in Burl Horniachek’s anthology, To Heaven’s Rim: The Kingdom Poets Book of World Christian Poetry (2023, Poiema/Cascade).

From The Finding of the True Cross

Look and proclaim, how good
it is that men have obtained
this exalted wood.
Brief gold was not the currency
----to purchase back man’s soul,
--------but with his precious blood
------------he chose to pay that toll.
The cross shines out.
The cross shines out and is so bright
that earthly kings do trail its light;
the thing that seemed so dark and damp
is now the world’s great guiding lamp.
The cross’s feast takes place
----both high in heaven’s face
and low upon the earth.
----We know its worth,
prize and praise it, with no dearth
----of trust. It is man’s rebirth
and help in need.

Posted with permission of 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.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge*

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772—1834) is a significant figure in the Romantic Movement in English poetry — which he and William Wordsworth established. Besides the poetry he is known for, he wrote literary criticism, philosophy and theology.

Malcolm Guite writes in his biography Mariner: A Voyage with Samuel Taylor Coleridge (2017, Hodder & Stoughton) that “Prayer is not only the turning point, but the very subject of The Ancient Mariner, and any reader of Coleridge’s letters and notebooks will be struck by the frequency, range and depth of the prayers that weave through his writing.”

The following poem was sent in a letter to his friend and brother-in-law Robert Southey, in September of 1803, as Coleridge had just walked an incredible 263 miles in eight days in his efforts to defeat his addiction to opium. The poem was first published in Christabel (1816). Malcolm Guite emphasizes, “Once again, like so much of The Mariner, [this] poem is focused on prayer.” Listen to Guite reading The Pains of Sleep, here, where you'll also find his commentary.

The Pains of Sleep

Ere on my bed my limbs I lay,
It hath not been my use to pray
With moving lips or bended knees;
But silently, by slow degrees,
My spirit I to Love compose,
In humble trust mine eye-lids close,
With reverential resignation
No wish conceived, no thought exprest,
Only a sense of supplication;
A sense o’er all my soul imprest
That I am weak, yet not unblest,
Since in me, round me, every where
Eternal strength and Wisdom are.

But yester-night I prayed aloud
In anguish and in agony,
Up-starting from the fiendish crowd
Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me:
A lurid light, a trampling throng,
Sense of intolerable wrong,
And whom I scorned, those only strong!
Thirst of revenge, the powerless will
Still baffled, and yet burning still!
Desire with loathing strangely mixed
On wild or hateful objects fixed.
Fantastic passions! maddening brawl!
And shame and terror over all!
Deeds to be hid which were not hid,
Which all confused I could not know
Whether I suffered, or I did:
For all seemed guilt, remorse or woe,
My own or others still the same
Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame.

So two nights passed: the night’s dismay
Saddened and stunned the coming day.
Sleep, the wide blessing, seemed to me
Distemper’s worst calamity.
The third night, when my own loud scream
Had waked me from the fiendish dream,
O’ercome with sufferings strange and wild,
I wept as I had been a child;
And having thus by tears subdued
My anguish to a milder mood,
Such punishments, I said, were due
To natures deepliest stained with sin,
For aye entempesting anew
The unfathomable hell within,
The horror of their deeds to view,
To know and loathe, yet wish and do!
Such griefs with such men well agree,
But wherefore, wherefore fall on me?
To be loved is all I need,
And whom I love, I love indeed.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about Samuel Taylor Coleridge: 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.

Irina Ratushinskaya

Irina Ratushinskaya (1954—2017) is a Russian poet who in 1983 was accused of “Anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda in poetic form.” Her poetry has far more to do with her observations of the natural world than with politics, but its repression ironically brought international attention to human rights violations by the Soviet regime.

It is uncertain why she was singled out, being merely a primary school teacher who abhorred the government-sanctioned atheism, and sought to influence her students towards her Christian faith.

She spent three years in a forced-labour camp “where she worked to make gloves for Soviet workmen and was fed little more than bread and rotten fish broth”. Her poems were written on cigarette papers and smuggled out of the camp to her husband, who arranged for publication in the West. She was freed in 1986 on eve of the Reykjavik summit between the US president Ronald Reagan and the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Her collection Beyond the Limit appeared in 1987, and her memoir, Grey Is the Colour of Hope in 1988.

Joseph Brodsky said — “a crown of thorns on the head of a bard has a way of turning into a laurel,” and he wrote of her as “a remarkably genuine poet.” She and her husband returned to Russia in 1998, to raise their sons as Russians. She died of cancer in 2017.

Somewhere a pendulum moves

Somewhere a pendulum moves, and softly a cuckoo is weeping,
Why should she count the hours, and not the long years for us.
And in the abandoned house, the old woman opens the shutters,
At the appropriate time, and with the same care as before.

Somewhere in the gloom a lamp is burning, the knitting continues.
And the rare letters are kept, and news is awaited.
And she, as is her custom, grieves only with her eyes.
And needlessly straightens the portraits of the children who have grown.

And what is all this for, And who before her is not sinful?
And over whom, departing, did she not make the sign of the cross?
But the one that she loves, may be comforted, saved.
And the one whom she awaits, may he find her on his return.

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.

Barbara Crooker*

Barbara Crooker is a Pennsylvania poet whose poems have been well-received by many who know the artform well. They’ve been featured many times on The Writer’s Almanac as read by Garrison Keillor — and for The Slowdown podcast, read by then U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith.

I was pleased to see Barbara, along with other friends from our tight-knit poetry community, at the Festival of Faith and Writing in April. She gave me a copy of her tenth book, Slow Wreckage which had just appeared from Grayson Books. Her other recent books include: Some Glad Morning (University of Pittsburgh Press) and The Book of Kells (Poiema/Cascade) which was honoured as the Best Poetry Book of 2018 from Poetry by the Sea.

She has won numerous other awards including the Paterson Award for Literary Excellence, the WB Yeats Society of New York Award, the Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, and she is a sixty-one time nominee for the Pushcart Prize.

The following poem first appeared in my web-journal Poems For Ephesians — and is from Slow Wreckage.

Sonnet From The Ephesians

----- — Ephesians 1:16

I do not cease to give thanks, especially in November
even as we lose an hour of light, drawing
the curtains at 4:30 to keep out the cold. To remember
you are dust seems appropriate now. Crows are cawing
black elegies in the bare trees. Just past the Day of the Dead,
and I’m thankful for every friend who has blessed
my life, gold coins in a wooden chest. Who said
no man is an island? We’re all peninsulas, I guess,
joined to the mainland, part of the shore. We’re the sticks
in the bundle that can’t be broken. Even if
it doesn’t seem that way, the bickering of politics,
the blather on the nightly news. Maybe we speak in hieroglyphs,
unclear, always missing the mark? So let me be plain.
I’m grateful for the days of sun. I’m grateful for the rain.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the fourth Kingdom Poets post about Barbara Crooker: first post, second post, third 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.

John Bunyan*

John Bunyan (1628—1688) is an English writer and Puritan preacher who is the renowned author of The Pilgrim’s Progress.

At age sixteen he joined the Parliamentary Army during the early stages of the English Civil War, serving for three years. Years later he became involved with a nonconformist sect who met in Bedford, and he became a preacher. After the restoration of the monarchy he was arrested and spent twelve years in prison for refusing to abstain from preaching. During this time he wrote his spiritual autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, or a Brief Relation of the Exceeding Mercy of God in Christ to his Poor Servant John Bunyan, which was published in 1666. This was also when he began work on The Pilgrim’s Progress.

In the second part of The Pilgrim’s Progress, Christian is led by Mr. Greatheart through the Valley of Humilation, where he hears the following song being sung by a shepherd boy.

The Shepherd Boy

He that is down needs fear no fall,
He that is low, no pride;
He that is humble ever shall
Have God to be his guide.
I am content with what I have,
Little be it or much:
And, Lord, contentment still I crave,
Because Thou savest such.
Fullness to such a burden is
That go on pilgrimage:
Here little, and hereafter bliss,
Is best from age to age.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about John Bunyan: first post.

The most recent post at Poems For Ephesians is also a poem by John Bunyan.

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.

Scott Cairns*

Scott Cairns is Curators’ Distinguished Professor Emeritus at University of Missouri, and is presently facilitating the transition of the Seattle Pacific University low-residency MFA program in Creative Writing to Whitworth University.

He is the author of ten poetry collections, the most recent of which is Lacunae (2023, Iron Pen/Paraclete Press). The word “lacuna” means a blank space, missing part, or empty hollow — and Cairns uses the word in various contexts, such as in the introductory poem, “Recuperating Lacunae”:

-----No, not so much---------------an emptiness, never yet
-----an emptiness.------------------Think, rather, a discrete

-----cove proving still---------------to offer—and ever
-----to offer—what one-------------cannot, can never,

-----comprehend…

He has long been a poet striving to describe the indescribable, and slow to accept common theological interpretations as the whole truth.

Robert Cording recently wrote, “For Cairns, language is a form of faith, faith that reaches out towards what is inexhaustible and uncontainable, and faith that trusts words can be a means of coming nearer to what necessarily remains out of reach… Lacunae is the work of a faithful and faith-filled man unafraid of letting his ego be seared, of living in time that continues ‘ticking in perplexity.’”

The following poem is from Cairn’s new poetry collection, Lacunae.

Implicative Lacunae
-----…It was like
-----A new knowledge of reality.
-------------------------— Stevens

Entering the clearing, he knew
That he had heard it, the single
note expanding beyond the reach
of any single note, as if,
finally, his dim ideas
about things showed themselves to be
stick figures failing to evince
the fullness of the body. She
said to him so, at long last you
have heard it, yes? He stood just there
at the clearing’s edge, daring not
to speak. He closed his eyes that he
might better listen, and the note
became a space like the clearing
into which all that could be sung
found dwelling, and he became
like a man without a doctrine,
became a man intent on praise,
a man whose freedom would ever
expand, would ever reach toward.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the fourth Kingdom Poets post about Scott Cairns: first post, second post, third 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.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville (1819—1891) is a writer best known for writing one of the greatest American novels — his ambitious 1851 masterpiece Moby-Dick. He wrote many novels during his early career, often based on his own experience at sea and other travels. It was not until well into the twentieth century that the reputation of Moby-Dick began to grow.

One fascinating resource for Melville scholars online, is Melville’s Marginalia. It is an archive of books owned or borrowed by Melville which influenced his work. The most referenced book there is his well-annotated copy of The New Testament and The Book of Psalms — a volume he clearly often had at his side while writing. The following paragraph comes from the introduction, to this resource by Brian Yothers (University of Texas at El Paso).
-----In reading Romans 14.22, Melville paused to underline this
-----sentence: "Hast thou faith? Have it to thyself before God."
-----And in the top margin, he inscribed an elliptical response:
-----"The only kind of Faith—one's own" (274.2:4-5). This and
-----other marginalia in the New Testament and Psalms constitute
-----a compelling chapter in Melville's spiritual autobiography
-----and contribute greatly to our understanding of his own kind
-----of faith and how it related to his personal life.

In 1863 Herman Melville moved to New York City, where he had been born, and from then on he focussed on writing poetry. In 1866 his collection Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War, which reflected on the American Civil War appeared. This was followed by Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land (1876). His novella Billy Budd was published posthumously in 1924.

The Martyr

Good Friday was the day
-----Of the prodigy and crime,
When they killed him in his pity,
-----When they killed him in his prime
Of clemency and calm—
----------When with yearning he was filled
----------To redeem the evil-willed,
And, though conqueror, be kind;
-----But they killed him in his kindness,
-----In their madness and their blindness,
And they killed him from behind.

--------------------There is sobbing of the strong,
-------------------------And a pall upon the land;
--------------------But the People in their weeping
-----------------------------------Bare the iron hand:
--------------------Beware the People weeping
-------------------------When they bare the iron hand.

He lieth in his blood—
-----The father in his face;
They have killed him, the Forgiver—
-----The Avenger takes his place,
The Avenger wisely stern,
----------Who in righteousness shall do
----------What heavens call him to,
And the parricides remand;
-----For they killed him in his kindness,
-----In their madness and their blindness.
And his blood is on their hand.

--------------------There is sobbing of the strong,
-------------------------And a pall upon the land;
--------------------But the People in their weeping
-----------------------------------Bare the iron hand:
--------------------Beware the People weeping
-------------------------When they bare the iron hand.

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.

Brad Davis*

Brad Davis is a Connecticut poet and the author of four full-length collections. His new book On the Way to Putnam: new, selected, & early poems (Grayson Books), appearing May 8th, is a summation of his career to this point.

His previous books from which this new volume draws poems include: Opening King David (2011, Emerald City), and Still Working It Out (2014) and Trespassing on the Mount of Olives (2021) which are both from Cascade Books and the Poiema Poetry Series.

Sydney Lea, Poet Laureate of Vermont (2011—2015), said of Brad Davis’s poetry in the forward:
-----“What happens for me is a strong measure of spiritual refreshment.
-----Davis never professes simple faith, but wrestles with
-----countervailing impulses, ‘the darkness and sorrow in our hearts.’
-----Over the span of his sustained and sustaining vocation, no matter
-----all the world’s deep defects—posturing and deceptions of late
-----capitalist powers, widespread war, starvation, bigotry, hypocrisy,
-----and plain callousness—for him a cautious optimism and an incautious
-----joie de vivre and delight in the natural world prevail.”

The following poem, clearly set during our experience of Covid, is from On the Way to Putnam: new, selected, & early poems (Grayson Books). This is it’s first appearance.

Sunday News

-----Psalm 24:1

After two days of heavy rain
along the Natchaug, Diana’s Pool
(named, some say, for a suicide)
was all aboil. We arrived at noon
hoping for the whitewater kayakers
we’d heard wait for such water.
But either it was too early

in the season, or the first arrivals
deemed it too dangerous and
pushed out a note to the network
of other crazies we went out to see.
So we settled for a leisurely negative
ion fix, witnessing the happiest
water south and west of Putnam.

Happiest, that is, until we returned
to town where our Quinebaug
over Cargill Falls was roiling
like a Pentecostal congregation
in the grip of a Holy Ghost anointing.
Even the Little River was feeling it,
a little. And so today, though oil

prices climb and stocks tumble
and the virus claims another few
thousand, the joyful spring waters
amped by heavy rain preach
our homily, giving voice to an old
story that’s a rollicking antidote
for all the recent woes of the world.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the fourth Kingdom Poets post about Brad Davis: first post, second post, third 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 Strode

William Strode (c. 1602—1645) was born to a Devonshire family who recognized talent in him, and sent him to London’s Westminster School, and later to Oxford. In 1628 he became a priest. When Richard Corbet became Bishop of Oxford, William Strode became his chaplain. In 1629 he was made a public orator at the university and remained in that role for the rest of his life.

In and around the 1630s, Strode’s verse was hugely popular. One of the most popular poems of the seventeenth century — perhaps only second to Robert Herrick’s “Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May.” — was William Strode’s “On Chloris Walking in the Snow” from the collection Madrigales and Ayres (1632).

Strangely, Strode’s poems slipped into complete oblivion; some were for years thought to have been written by other writers. In 1907 an edited collection, The Poetical Works of William Strode, appeared.

Of Death and Resurrection

Like to the rowling of an eye,
Or like a starre shott from the skye,
Or like a hand upon a clock,
Or like a wave upon a rock,

Or like a winde, or like a flame,
Or like false newes which people frame,
Even such is man, of equall stay,
Whose very growth leades to decay.

The eye is turn'd, the starre down bendeth
The hand doth steale, the wave descendeth,
The winde is spent, the flame unfir'd,
The newes disprov'd, man's life expir'd.

Like to an eye which sleepe doth chayne,
Or like a starre whose fall we fayne,
Or like the shade on Ahaz watch,
Or like a wave which gulfes doe snatch

Or like a winde or flame that's past,
Or smother'd newes confirm'd at last;
Even so man's life, pawn'd in the grave,
Wayts for a riseing it must have.

The eye still sees, the starre still blazeth,
The shade goes back, the wave escapeth,
The winde is turn'd, the flame reviv'd,
The newes renew'd, and man new liv'd.

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 Askew

Anne Askew (c.1521―1546) is an English freedom fighter who was one of those made famous through John Foxe’s popular book, known as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (1563). She was also one of the first female writers known to have composed in the English language. She was able to read, in a day when many could not ― and was a dedicated reader of the Bible, at a time when reading the Bible in English was suppressed. Believing in scripture, rather than the teaching of the authorities around her, she freely shared her evangelical views.

Although Henry VIII in 1531 had established himself as the head of the Anglican Church, many churchmen still used their influence to maintain the practices of the Roman Church. One of these was the insistence that the elements in the Mass were transformed into the very body and blood of Christ through consecration. Through her reading of scripture, she decided that this wasn’t so.

The powerful religious conservatives tried to use the prosecution of Anne Askew to uncover her connections to Queen Catherine (Parr) and to incriminate the queen and her evangelical household. Askew’s knowledge of scripture enabled her to resist the pressures exerted upon her. She was shut up in the notorious Newgate Prison, and even secretly taken to the Tower of London where she was illegally racked.

The entire story is admirably told by American Book Award winner Rilla Askew, in her most-recent novel Prize for the Fire (2022).

The Ballad which Anne Askew made and sang when she was in Newgate

Like as the armed knight
Appointed to the field,
With this world will I fight
And Faith shall be my shield.

Faith is that weapon strong
Which will not fail at need.
My foes, therefore, among
Therewith will I proceed.

As it is had in strength
And force of Christes way
It will prevail at length
Though all the devils say nay.

Faith in the fathers old
Obtained rightwisness
Which make me very bold
To fear no world's distress.

I now rejoice in heart
And Hope bid me do so
For Christ will take my part
And ease me of my woe.

Thou saist, lord, who so knock,
To them wilt thou attend.
Undo, therefore, the lock
And thy strong power send.

More enmyes now I have
Than hairs upon my head.
Let them not me deprave
But fight thou in my stead.

On thee my care I cast.
For all their cruel spight
I set not by their haste
For thou art my delight.

I am not she that list
My anchor to let fall
For every drizzling mist
My ship substancial.

Not oft use I to wright
In prose nor yet in rime,
Yet will I shew one sight
That I saw in my time.

I saw a rial throne
Where Justice should have sit
But in her stead was one
Of moody cruel wit.

Absorpt was rightwisness
As of the raging flood
Sathan in his excess
Suct up the guiltless blood.

Then thought I, Jesus lord,
When thou shalt judge us all
Hard is it to record
On these men what will fall.

Yet lord, I thee desire
For that they do to me
Let them not taste the hire
Of their iniquity.

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.

J.C. Scharl

Jane Clark Scharl is a poet, essayist, and playwright, who lives with her husband and children in the Detroit suburb of Royal Oak, Michigan. Her new poetry collection, Ponds (2024, Cascade Books) has just appeared as part of the Poiema Poetry Series.

Ponds is her first book which would be considered a collection of poems. She has also published a verse-play Sonnez Les Matines (2023, Wiseblood Books) which imagines three significant figures ― John Calvin, Ignatius of Loyola, and François Rabelais ― as students together in Paris in the 1520s. They discover a dead body, and as they investigate the murder, each must probe deep questions on his own.

J.C. Scharl and Brian Brown, in conjunction with the Anselm Society, have also recently edited the essay collection Why We Create (2023, Square Halo). This book is an examination by numerous thinkers of how we have been created to create.

I am honoured to have worked with Jane Scharl as the editor of Ponds. For those of you attending the Festival of Faith & Writing, in Grand Rapids, Michigan this April (and those who live nearby) I invite you to attend the Poiema Poetry Series reception on Thursday, April 11th at 7:30. Jane Clark Scharl will be one of our many readers.

In her Plough article “Poetry at Home” from last October, she points to the very first recorded words from Adam when God presented him with his wife, and points out that they are written as poetry (Genesis 2:23). Scharl says, “Poetry should be nourished beside the hearth, not in the lecture hall. When we invite poetry into our homes, we make our family life more abundant, but we also help poetry itself grow richer and more beautiful.” Perhaps the best argument to support her premise is the following poem, which is from Ponds.

To My Unborn Child

There is a story of how God,
before anything else existed, was everything.
And one day he looked out and saw
that everything was him, and he knew
that if he wanted to make some other thing,
first he’d have to vacate
some of what is, to make room, you see.
And so (the story goes) he breathed
in a mighty breath and with it
he pulled in a little of himself,
leaving just the smallest hollow
surrounded by the everything
that is him. Then, into
the hollow, he breathed, but kept himself
held back, just a little, and in
that empty space he made all Creation.

I wish I knew, dear little one,
if the story is true, and if
now he sits like this, hands cupped
around the hollow at his center
that is filling up with something
that is not entirely him;
if he too feels it shift and kick,
and what it is he wonders then.

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.

Charles Wesley*

Charles Wesley (1707―1788) along with his brother John were central figures in the Methodist Revival in eighteenth century Britain. Charles was the most significant hymn writer of his day, and is the most prolific hymnist of all time, having written ten times the number of hymns that Isaac Watts did, who comes a distant second.

In 1729, while a student at Oxford, Charles founded the “Holy Club,” which was later joined by John, and by George Whitefield. Beginning in 1738 the Wesley brothers held meetings throughout Britain, which consisted of hymn-singing and preaching.

The following hymn is one of those most identified with Easter Sunday. Most hymnals today only include four to six of Wesley’s eleven verses. In the 19th century an "Alleluia" was added at the end of each line, perhaps to make it fit the tune “Easter Hymn.”

Christ the Lord is Risen Today

“Christ the Lord is risen today”
Sons of men and angels say
Raise your joys and triumphs high
Sing ye heavens, and earth reply

Love’s redeeming work is done
Fought the fight, the battle won
Lo! Our sun’s eclipse is o’er
Lo! He sets in blood no more.

Vain the stone, the watch, the seal
Christ has burst the gates of hell!
Death in vain forbids his rise:
Christ hath opened paradise!

Lives again our glorious King
Where, O death, is now thy sting?
Dying once he all doth save
Where thy victory, O grave?

Soar we now, where Christ has led?
Following our exalted head
Made like him, like him we rise
Ours the cross—the grave—the skies!

What though once we perished all
Partners in our parent’s fall?
Second life we all receive
In our heavenly Adam live.

Risen with him, we upward move
Still we seek the things above
Still pursue, and kiss the Son
Seated on his Father’s throne.

Scarce on earth a thought bestow
Dead to all we leave below
Heaven our aim, and loved abode
Hid our life with Christ in God!

Hid, till Christ our life appear
Glorious in his members here
Joined to him, we then shall shine
All immortal, all divine!

Hail the Lord of earth and heaven!
Praise to thee by both be given
Thee we greet triumphant now
Hail the resurrection thou!

King of glory, soul of bliss
Everlasting life is this:
Thee to know, thy power to prove,
Thus to sing and thus to love!

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Charles Wesley: 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.

George Herbert*

George Herbert (1593–1633) is an English poet, priest, and orator, who was a member of Parliament briefly during 1624 and 1625.

The two most influential of the seventeenth century English metaphysical poets are George Herbert and John Donne. These poets are significant to the legacy of Christian poetry in the English language, and their influences stretches into other languages as well. Some of the other metaphysical poets include Henry Vaughan, Andrew Marvell, Thomas Traherne, Richard Crashaw, and Joseph Beaumont.

The work of these poets has influenced my own poetry, and the work of so many of the other poets I admire. The very first post here at Kingdom Poets, from back in 2010, is one about George Herbert.

One of the poems in my forthcoming collection Pride Be Not Death (& Other Poems) is a response to Herbert’s poem “Love (3),” another comes from his “Perirrhanterium,” another is after “Denials,” and a fourth arises from a line in the following Herbert poem.

The Cross

---------What is this strange and uncouth thing?
To make me sigh, and seek, and faint, and die,
Until I had some place, where I might sing,
---------And serve thee; and not only I,
But all my wealth and family might combine
To set thy honour up, as our design.
---------And then when after much delay,
Much wrestling, many a combat, this dear end,
So much desired, is giv’n, to take away
---------My power to serve thee; to unbend
All my abilities, my designs confound,
And lay my threat’nings bleeding on the ground.
---------One ague dwelleth in my bones,
Another in my soul (the memory
What I would do for thee, if once my groans
---------Could be allowed for harmony):
I am in all a weak disabled thing,
Save in the sight thereof, where strength doth sting.
---------Besides, things sort not to my will,
Ev’n when my will doth study thy renown:
Thou turnest th’ edge of all things on me still,
---------Taking me up to throw me down:
So that, ev’n when my hopes seem to be sped,
I am to grief alive, to them as dead.
---------To have my aim, and yet to be
Further from it then when I bent my bow;
To make my hopes my torture, and the fee
---------Of all my woes another woe,
Is in the midst of delicates to need,
And ev’n in Paradise to be a weed.
---------Ah my dear Father, ease my smart!
These contrarieties crush me: these crosse actions
Do wind a rope about, and cut my heart:
---------And yet since these thy contradictions
Are properly a crosse felt by the Sonne,
With but four words, my words, Thy will be done.

*This is the fourth Kingdom Poets post about George Herbert: first post, second post, third 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.

Susan Cowger*

Susan Cowger is a poet and artist living in Cheney, Washington, and is the author of two poetry collections: Slender Warble (2020, Poiema/Cascade) and her new book Hawk & Songbird.

What makes this publication particularly sweet, is what the poet has gone through to get here. While the rest of us were anxious about how the pandemic might change our lives, Susan Cowger received her diagnosis — blood cancer: multiple myeloma — an incurable disease. She says,
-----“Like a fledgling careening from the nest, my mind shrilled a frenzy
-----of questions: whywhywhy? No answer. From vertebral collapse to
-----cancer to brain tumor to brain abscess to stem cell transplant,
-----one after the other, I did not find the answer to why. I found
-----Presence… [an] awareness of God I could almost touch: strength
-----embodied standing over me; an ever-watchful eye keeping vigil
-----whose single glance could dash away fear; silent invisible
-----protection, care, love … certainty. God’s Presence alone makes
-----the horrific journey worth every minute.”

Although twenty-five-hundred miles away, I walked with Susan, as one of her many companions in prayer, and am grateful she now has the reasonable hope “that maintenance medicine might keep [her] well enough to eventually die of something else.” I have also been able to partner with her as the editor for both of her full-length poetry books.

Susan Cowger will be one of our readers at the Poiema Poetry Series reception at the Festival of Faith & Writing (on Thursday, April 11th at 7:30) in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The following poem is from Hawk & Songbird (2024, Poiema/Cascade).

She Says You Get What You Get

It’s windy on the porch
She props a gimpy leg on a wooden chair
exposes it to sun----She says you get what you get

Ever mumbling to God for attention----something like
look at me look at me and oh wow there it is
another bruise blooming just below the knee

She turns her face to the sky----and draws
a patient breath----In prayer-like motion
she smears salve over the parch of skin
a pauper’s salvation

where pity for a sick thing takes on something akin to
gladness for some attention----Despite the defect
now it’s hard to hate
what she loves----The broken parts
she hands back to God

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Susan Cowger: 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.

Jesse Keith Butler

Jesse Keith Butler is an Orthodox Christian poet who has recently published his first collection, The Living Law, with Darkly Bright Press. He lives in Ottawa with his wife and two children.

By day, Jesse is a program evaluator for the Government of Canada, assessing the effectiveness of government programs in relation to their objectives. He previously did a PhD in education, during which time he published widely in academic journals on the topics of citizenship education, educational policy, and Indigenous education. Jesse and his wife also have a long history of working with Indigenous communities, including two summers spent working with a Christian organization on a First Nations reserve in northern Ontario.

A.M. Juster has written, "With this debut collection, Jesse Butler is joining the growing group of Canadian poets who are taking poetry away from the academy and returning it to a broader audience of poetry lovers. Butler's poems are thoughtful, well-crafted, and a pleasure to read."

The following poem has previously appeared in Solum Journal, and is from The Living Law (2024, Darkly Bright Press).

Villanelle of the Elect

So Jacob was loved, and Esau was hated.
It seems like a bit of an uneven deal.
You won’t stop creating this world you’ve created.

If Esau had hope it was quickly deflated.
The subtle supplanter had him by the heel.
But Jacob was loved, and Esau was hated.

Outside of the city, with heaven ungated
and rungs reaching down, Jacob glimpsed what was real—
you still were creating this world you’d created.

Poor Esau found Jacob’s thin soup overrated
when robbed of his birthright for one meatless meal.
Yet Jacob was loved, and Esau was hated.

You grappled with Jacob. He grunted and grated
while you danced, delighted to meet with such zeal
as you kept creating this world you’d created.

There’s purpose in life but the path isn’t fated.
You unspool these urgings we don’t even feel.
And Jacob was loved. And Esau was hated.
You keep on creating this world you’ve created.

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.

Laurie Klein*

Laurie Klein is a poet of the Pacific Northwest, the author of Where the Sky Opens (2015) and of the brand new book, House of 49 Doors ― both from The Poiema Poetry Series.

Her name comes up frequently as the writer of the praise chorus “I Love You, Lord” which has been ubiquitous in church circles for years. Its familiarity led guitarist Phil Keaggy to record it as the only cover-tune on his beautiful instrumental album The Wind and the Wheat (1987, Maranatha Music).

When she was featured at Abbey of the Arts, Laurie Klein said, “For me, entering the presence of the sacred means embracing mystery. And I adore mystery. Poems I love evoke — and expose — irresistible gaps: within my understanding, between the lines themselves, betwixt soul and Truth’s unerring glance.”

As Klein’s editor, for both of her full-length collections, I am delighted to see the arrival of this ambitious new book. It is a memoir of the unspeakable, that takes on a family’s disturbing sorrow with remarkable innocence, beauty, and hope.

Jill Peláez Baumgaertner, of The Christian Century, says of House of 49 Doors, “The voice in these remarkable poems belongs to a girl, a spy, a recorder of daydreams and memories of a home and a war-torn, beloved uncle, whose grisly suicide was a family secret. These poems are handprints left in cement. Once you pick up this book, you will be unable to put it down.”

The following poem is from House of 49 Doors.

Words which are not

enough — despite our regrets
and longings — mound,
musty and swept together
like fallen leaves, crackling
with sorrow nearly

unspeakable. Where is solace
meant to settle cleanly as dew?
A life shatters, its hunger
for wholeness hopefully
drifting toward Mystery,

luring us all nearer
the pure, original spark —
a vitality deeper than

we dare believe. Prayers may
falter, but know this:

though language flails
and has too often failed us,
our questions spiral,
eventually intersect
the beguiling Love

that summoned this universe,
which, from our first
shuddering breath,
clear through forever, rekindles
the sacred flint, blazons our way.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Laurie Klein: 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.

Tadhg Gaelach Ó Súilleabháin

Tadhg Gaelach Ó Súilleabháin (1715―1795), known in English as Timothy O'Sullivan, is an Irish poet probably born in County Limerick. There are few records concerning his early life, although it is thought that he was a teacher.

His early verse is typical of Munster poetry of the time, including romantic verse, laments, drinking songs, and eulogies for members of the Catholic gentry. He was publicly a Jacobite supporter, and was once imprisoned in Cork for drinking the health of Bonnie Prince Charlie.

In the 1760s he moved to County Waterford and underwent a spiritual conversion, forsaking the writing of secular verse. In the nineteenth century Ó Súilleabháin’s poems were often sung as hymns in Munster churches. The plaque pictured above, was erected in 2001 in the grounds of the Cathedral in Waterford. Ó Súilleabháin died, in 1795, while at prayer in their recently-built Cathedral.

I am indebted to the poet Pádraig J. Daly for sending me a copy of Furnace of Love (Dedalus, 2002) the book of his translations of Tadhg Gaelach Ó Súilleabháin’s religious poetry. The following is from that collection.

from Poem of Jesus

I

Great Son of the resplendent city of enchanting light,
Mercy of Paradise, Person of the Holy Three,
Heart’s Love, pardon my twisted thinking
And steer my soul without turbulence into your kingdom, Jesus.
Amen, O Jesus,
Who bought me dearly
On the cross on Friday,
Your enemies harassing You,
Far from your people,
Your mother beside You,
Pitifully keening;
And I, maliciously,
Since life began in me,
Flaying You fiercely.
Five hundred thousand times
One hundred regrets are mine
That that is how I repaid You.

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.

Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer is a 14th century poet best known as the author of Canterbury Tales ― a collection of twenty-four stories, voiced by characters on pilgrimage from London to visit the shrine of Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. They were written mostly in verse, in a London dialect of late Middle English.

Some of Chaucer’s pilgrims (such as the Second Nun) are devout, some (the Pardoner) use religion for personal gain, and some (the Prioress) simply lack spiritual depth. He uses humour and irony, as his characters quote scripture in ways that often demonstrate their own failings. The author sometimes lets his readers decide, through subtle details like showy jewellery, about each pilgrim’s sincerity. The intent, I believe, is to encourage people to be authentic in their faith, and to caution them against the flaws in religious practice in Chaucer’s England.

Chaucer’s Retraction, here in translation, shows how he would like Canterbury Tales to be seen:
--------Now I pray to all who hear or read this little treatise,
--------that if there is anything in it that they like, they thank
--------our Lord Jesus Christ for it, from whom proceeds all wisdom
--------and goodness. And if there is anything that displeases them,
--------I pray also that they ascribe it to the fault of my ignorance
--------and not to my will, which would readily have spoken better
--------if I had the knowledge. For our book says, "All that is
--------written is written for our doctrine," and that is my intention.
--------Therefore I beseech you, for the mercy of God, that you pray
--------for me that Christ have mercy on me and forgive my sins,
--------especially my translations and compositions of worldly
--------vanities, which I revoke in my retractions…

The following translation by A.S. Kline is from The Knight’s Tale (Section 2/Lines 807-816) ― the first of the stories told ― and though the story itself comes from a pre-Christian world view, it is written so that it speaks of the sovereignty of God.

from The Knight’s Tale

Destiny, that Minister-General,
Who executes on earth, over all,
The Providence that God saw long before,
Has such power that though all men swore
The contrary of a thing by yea or nay,
Yet there will come to pass upon a day
What will not happen in a thousand years.
For certainly our appetites down here,
Be they for war, or peace, hate or love,
All are ruled by the vision that’s above.

Here is another section, from The Second Nun's Tale, (scroll down to the open tab) that I posted at Poems For Ephesians.

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.

Kristina Erny

Kristina Erny is an American poet and visual artist who was raised as a third-culture teacher’s kid in Seoul, South Korea. She has lived in various parts of the United States ― including in Arizona, where she earned her MFA in Creative Writing, and in Kentucky, where she was the Director of the Creative Writing Program at Asbury University ― but has spent much of her teaching career abroad. She and her husband are raising their three children in Shanghai, where she is currently teaching literature and creative writing to international secondary students.

Among the honours her poems have received are the Ruskin Art Club Poetry Award, and the Tupelo Quarterly Inaugural Poetry Award, as chosen by Ilya Kaminsky. Her debut poetry collection, Elijah Fed by Ravens, was published this past December by Solum Literary Press. The following poem first appeared in Blackbird and is from her new book.

Elijah and the Widow

Even ravens need crust,------something.
Left behind, everyone left.
It begs the question:
jar bottom,
a flag of surrender?
Hostile, hand-held, the haze.

Always the tone;
never the ringing.
Driven you

to the pot where the flour is
hoped for, hidden—& then, his face in the doorway—have,
eat—Yes, we are eaten—still a future, grim, O,

won’t you come in.
I would have baked the cake &
died. Instead, you perform, participate in
onerous miracle, & tomorrow
wake up, blinking, hoary film under your nails.

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 Bishop

Elizabeth Bishop (1911―1979) is an American modernist poet characterized by agnosticism, yet often wrestling with Christian faith. She was raised first by her maternal grandparents in Nova Scotia and later by her paternal grandparents in Massachusetts.

She published only 101 poems in total, and yet was honoured with the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1956, and the National Book Award in 1970.

Critic Tom Travisano says: “Although Bishop was no churchgoer, Christian motifs appear throughout her poetry. She had a religious nature and education, and the foundations of her work are recognizably Christian.” In 1955 she wrote to Robert Lowell, “I believe now that complete agnosticism and straddling the fence on everything is my natural posture —although I wish I weren’t.”

Similarly, Cheryl Walker, of Scripps College in California, notes that two of Bishop’s favourite poets were Gerard Manley Hopkins and George Herbert. Bishop wrote about, “how really concerned Herbert was with all these insoluble problems of man’s relationship to God... It is real. —It was real and it has kept on being and it always will be, and Herbert just happened to be a person who managed to put a great deal of it into magnificent poetry”

You can hear her reading the following poem which is from The Complete Poems (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1983) at The Poetry Foundation.

At the Fishhouses

Although it is a cold evening,
down by one of the fishhouses
an old man sits netting,
his net, in the gloaming almost invisible,
a dark purple-brown,
and his shuttle worn and polished.
The air smells so strong of codfish
it makes one’s nose run and one’s eyes water.
The five fishhouses have steeply peaked roofs
and narrow, cleated gangplanks slant up
to storerooms in the gables
for the wheelbarrows to be pushed up and down on.
All is silver: the heavy surface of the sea,
swelling slowly as if considering spilling over,
is opaque, but the silver of the benches,
the lobster pots, and masts, scattered
among the wild jagged rocks,
is of an apparent translucence
like the small old buildings with an emerald moss
growing on their shoreward walls.
The big fish tubs are completely lined
with layers of beautiful herring scales
and the wheelbarrows are similarly plastered
with creamy iridescent coats of mail,
with small iridescent flies crawling on them.
Up on the little slope behind the houses,
set in the sparse bright sprinkle of grass,
is an ancient wooden capstan,
cracked, with two long bleached handles
and some melancholy stains, like dried blood,
where the ironwork has rusted.
The old man accepts a Lucky Strike.
He was a friend of my grandfather.
We talk of the decline in the population
and of codfish and herring
while he waits for a herring boat to come in.
There are sequins on his vest and on his thumb.
He has scraped the scales, the principal beauty,
from unnumbered fish with that black old knife,
the blade of which is almost worn away.

Down at the water’s edge, at the place
where they haul up the boats, up the long ramp
descending into the water, thin silver
tree trunks are laid horizontally
across the gray stones, down and down
at intervals of four or five feet.

Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
element bearable to no mortal,
to fish and to seals . . . One seal particularly
I have seen here evening after evening.
He was curious about me. He was interested in music;
like me a believer in total immersion,
so I used to sing him Baptist hymns.
I also sang “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”
He stood up in the water and regarded me
steadily, moving his head a little.
Then he would disappear, then suddenly emerge
almost in the same spot, with a sort of shrug
as if it were against his better judgment.
Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
the clear gray icy water . . . Back, behind us,
the dignified tall firs begin.
Bluish, associating with their shadows,
a million Christmas trees stand
waiting for Christmas. The water seems suspended
above the rounded gray and blue-gray stones.
I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same,
slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones,
icily free above the stones,
above the stones and then the world.
If you should dip your hand in,
your wrist would ache immediately,
your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn
as if the water were a transmutation of fire
that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame.
If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,
then briny, then surely burn your tongue.
It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:
dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,
drawn from the cold hard mouth
of the world, derived from the rocky breasts
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.

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.

Petrarch*

Petrarch (Fransesco Petrarca) (1304―1374) is an important Italian poet whose influence ― particularly as the originator and populariser of the sonnet ― is still felt today. Although best known for his poetry, he was also a significant scholar. His influence can be seen in the spread of humanism, which Petrarch saw as being no contradiction with his stand as a dedicated Christian.

Sometime between 1342 and 1353 Petrarch wrote Secretum ― a personal reflection on his life and the significance of his faith to him, in the form of an imaginary dialogue with Augustine. It begins with Augustine criticizing Petrarch for not having dedicated himself completely to God, through his love for the things of this world and his desire for literary fame. Secretum ― though not published within his lifetime, and possibly written only for his private reflection and self-criticism ― also became an important work.

One of the things of this world he was obsessed with was a beautiful, unobtainable woman named Laura, who was married to someone else. The Canzoniere is his book of sonnets and other poems concerning his love for her, and his sorrow at her premature death. The following poem is from The Canzoniere, and was translated by A.M. Juster. This translation appeared in The Christian Century in 2022.

363

Death dimmed the sun that dazzled brilliantly;
my eyes, intact and healthy, are in shade.
She is now dust who made me flame and fade;
like elms or oaks my laurels wilt for me,
so that I see my goal, though agony
remains. No one else made my thoughts afraid
and bold, nor chilled and scorched them, nor conveyed
full hope, nor flooded them with misery.
Released by one who jabs and mollifies,
who tortured me for many years before,
my freedom’s bittersweet, I realize,
and to the Lord I thank and I adore,
whose eyes sustain and oversee the skies,
I turn—world-weary, not desiring more.

Posted with permission of the translator.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Petrarch: 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.