Maurice Manning*

Maurice Manning is a Kentucky poet, who creates the persona of a backwoods bumpkin in his poetry. His voice is cunning, and precise in its playful images, using a disarming, unhurried conversational tone that combines humour with the simplicity and beauty of life in rural landscapes. Although, he is a professor of English and creative writing at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, and in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers in North Carolina, he still lives with his family on a small twenty-acre farm. He is vice chancellor of the Fellowship of Southern Writers.

The following poem comes from Snakedoctor (2023, Copper Canyon) which is his eighth poetry collection.

The Red Chair

Believing and being hopeful and praying
are sometimes not enough to do
whatever it is I think I need—
a sort of peace in the valley for me.
But it’s truer to say my course goes through
the darker valley of the shadow.
And the shadow is proverbial,
of course, hard to describe, but the psalm
addresses it well enough. My soul
has been restored a thousand times,
but then it languishes. I get it—
nothing is easy, the struggle is part
of the so-called journey. The journey
must be proverbial too—I mean,
its not like I’m going anywhere,
just sitting in my silent room.
I sit a lot in a red chair.
I stare into space and sometimes
I don’t feel anything at all.
There’s probably something underneath
I’m missing or not fully getting.
But that’s part of it all, to be
in the dark, unknowing. To be unknowing
is a biggie when it comes to faith.
I wouldn’t want to know it all,
to have a vision so complete
you don’t have any doubts or wonders.
Why I must suffer and impair
myself in order to feel the depth
of love is a total mystery
to me. I’d prefer to go outside
and simply be alive in the green
and weather. Oh, I can do that well
enough, and have the whole transcendent
thing, but then the darkness like
a specter comes to rest beside me,
twitching, and everything becomes
abstract, proverbial, and low.
And I think, ironically, it’s dark,
It’s utter dark, this thing I must
Pass through. And thus the red chair
I occupy, from which I see
the world and am involved in love.
I’m so involved with love it’s hard
to fathom, hard to tell how much.
From my perspective, my love for the world
does not have end and has no measure.
There is no poetry in that
or a man sitting in a red chair.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Maurice Manning: 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.