Suzanne Underwood Rhodes

Suzanne Underwood Rhodes is the current Poet Laureate of Arkansas. Some of her recent poetry collections include, The Perfume of Pain (Kelsay Books, 2024), and Flying Yellow: New and Selected Poems (Paraclete Press, 2021).

She has taught creative writing at King University in Bristol, Tennessee, and at St. Leo University in St. Leo, Florida; she is also a former artist-in-residence at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

She lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where — in a residential program for formerly incarcerated women — she led poetry workshops, resulting in a book of their creative writing: Today There Have Been Lovely Things. She and other poets also share poetry with Alzheimer’s residents in a Fayetteville memory care center.

The following poem first appeared in The Christian Century. (The Swahili words Kibanda matope mean mud hut.)

Traveling light

I caught the gleam of her silver bracelet
as she stroked her son’s back in church
that Sunday the missionary came.
The gesture invited a burst of sunlight
that poured through the stained glass
and over our shoulders, down the aisles,
swam through our ribs to reach the world’s night side.
Imagine the miracle. Loving her son that instant
changes the plight of the ninth child
in the kibanda matope, the one the missionary
said was born blind and given the most meager
share of meal in preference to others
who needed more to live, but he comes to see
after all because someone was sent,
and the light is always looking.

This post was suggested by the poet James Owens.

Posted with permission of the poet.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), and three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is forthcoming from Paraclete Press.

Walter Chalmers Smith

Walter Chalmers Smith (1824—1908) is a Scottish poet, hymnist, and novelist who served as a minister in the Free Church of Scotland, pastoring congregations in London, Glasgow, and Edinburgh. Like George MacDonald (who was five days younger) he was born in Aberdeen; both men became ministers and authors, and both were hesitance to accept unquestioningly the status quo.

He was an evangelical who in 1866 published Discourses promoting less stringent Sunday observances than were common in Scotland. This led to him being "affectionately admonished" by the General Assembly of his Presbytery. Despite this, by 1893, he was chosen their new moderator.

The first of his many poetry collections The Bishop’s Walk (Macmillan) was published in 1861 under the pseudonym Orwell Smith — (Orwell being the name of the parish he served in from 1853 to1857). His gothic novel Olrig Grange appeared under the name Hermann Knott in 1872 — with a fourth edition published in 1888. His Poetical Works (Dent) appeared in 1902. However, he is best remembered today as the author of the following hymn.

Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise

Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
Most blessèd, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
Almighty, victorious, thy great Name we praise.

Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light,
Nor wanting, nor wasting, thou rulest in might;
Thy justice like mountains high soaring above
Thy clouds which are fountains of goodness and love.

To all life thou givest — to both great and small;
In all life thou livest, the true life of all;
We blossom and flourish as leaves on the tree,
And wither and perish—but nought changeth thee.

Great Father of glory, pure Father of light,
Thine angels adore thee, all veiling their sight;
All laud we would render: O help us to see
’Tis only the splendour of light hideth thee.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), and three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is forthcoming from Paraclete Press.

John Milton*

John Milton (1608—1674) is one of England’s greatest writers, and one who wrote during very tempestuous times. He was outspoken on political and ecclesiastical matters, when it was safer to keep such views to himself. His Areopagitica (1644) gained wide attention for his condemnation of censorship, and allied him publicly with the parliamentary cause.

As a Puritan he wrote tracts criticizing the High-church party within the Anglican establishment, while politically he criticized the government of Charles I. In 1649, after the parliamentary victory in the Civil War, Milton was appointed Secretary for Foreign Tongues by the Council of State. His role was to write in support of Cromwell’s government.

In 1660, at the Restoration of the monarchy, a warrant was issued for Milton’s arrest, his writings were burnt, and he went into hiding. He was briefly imprisoned, until influential friends, including Andrew Marvell, were able to have him released.

John Milton is revered as the author of Paradise Lost (1667) — his great epic about the Fall of mankind, and the hope of salvation through Christ. It became one of the most widely read works of English literature well into the Romantic period, influencing such poets as Blake, Shelley and Keats.

The Lord Will Come and Not be Slow

The Lord will come and not be slow,
his footsteps cannot err;
before him righteousness shall go,
his royal harbinger.
Truth from the earth, like to a flower,
shall bud and blossom then;
and justice, from her heavenly bower,
look down on mortal men.

Surely to such as do him fear
salvation is at hand!
And glory shall ere long appear
to dwell within our land.
Rise, God, judge thou the earth in might,
this wicked earth redress;
for thou art he who shalt by right
the nations all possess.

The nations all whom thou hast made
shall come, and all shall frame
to bow them low before thee, Lord,
and glorify thy Name.
For great thou art, and wonders great
by thy strong hand are done:
thou in thy everlasting seat
remainest God alone.

*This is the fourth Kingdom Poets post about John Milton: 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.

Cameron Brooks

Cameron Brooks is a South Dakota poet, who lives in Sioux Falls. He earned his MA in theological studies from Princeton Seminary, and more-recently an MFA in creative writing from Seattle Pacific University, where he had Scott Cairns, Jennifer Maier, and Mischa Willett as professors. He is representative of a new generation of Christian poets who captures the universal through the particularity of place and of his own experience.

His first poetry collection, Forbearance, has just appeared as part of the Poiema Poetry Series from Cascade Books. I am pleased to have been able to work with Cameron Brooks as his editor.

Bruce Beasley calls this new book: “a gorgeously written evocation and meditation on life lived among the prairies, orchards, flooded farms, ‘gaunt silo[s]’ of South Dakota’s High Plains.” And says that “Brooks loves words and their glorious mouthfeels as much as he loves the world itself…”

The following poem is from Forbearance.

The Mower and the Nun

The man who mows the ditch
between the strips of interstate
found it worthwhile to leave us
patches of wild sunflowers
every several miles.
Even at eighty-per-hour
you can't miss ‘em: sunny thumbprints
pressed against the paper
bag browns of late September.
I will never thank him.

And I will never thank the nun
I saw watering her brittle yard
with a hose—in full garb!
That strange religious habit
of the celibate salt of this dearth.
Doesn't she know October
is coming and November is coming
and December comes only to steal
and kill and destroy? She knows
life, life abundantly.

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.

Gilbert Luis R. Centina III

Gilbert Luis R. Centina III (1947—2020) is a Filipino writer and Augustinian friar whose output includes nine poetry collections. He was an international, multilingual writer who lived in the Philippines, Peru, the United States, and Spain — and who wrote in English, Spanish, and two Philippine languages: Hiligaynon and Tagalog.

His two novels are Wages of Sin, which was published in Honolulu in 1988, and Rubrics and Runes (2013) which addresses various scandals by priests within the Catholic church.

He died due to complication of the coronavirus in Spain. For his body of poetic work in Spanish, he was posthumously awarded the Premio José Rizal de las Letras Filipinas.

The following poem is from Centina’s 1974 collection Glass of Liquid Truths.

Genuflection

I hear the choir-conversion
Wake senses through my ears,
I see heavenly vision
In the vista of a hymn.
I watch the gleaming chandeliers
Exude their hidden grace
Above the vigil candles
Incensed with fragrant flames.

This is the Cathedral of Silence
Where he has led me in,
How strong his Passion echoes
Inside these cloistered walls.
All things here trodden by the calm
Of yet unfathomed peace,
The sight is awed to stillness,
The soul to holier aims.

O choir-conversion that I hear
I breathe the wisdom of your tale!

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.