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), which is now out, 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.