Walter Wangerin Jr.*

Walter Wangerin Jr. (1944―2021) is the author of more than 40 books, and served as a Lutheran pastor, and as a professor at Evansville University and later at Valparaiso University ― both in Indiana. His novel Book of the Dun Cow (1978) rocketed him into the spotlight, enabling him to write a wide variety of books across his career.

He has participated as a member of the Chrysostom Society, which includes (or included at various points) such fine writers as Madeleine L’Engle, Luci Shaw, Robert Siegel, John Leax, Doris Betts, Paul Willis, Jeanne Murray Walker, Eugene Peterson and Philip Yancey.

Yancey said in an August 9th memorial piece for Christianity Today, “As both a sermonizer and an artist, with graduate degrees in theology and English, Walt lived with the constant tension of how best to express themes of grace and the Cross. As a pastor, he found that story conveys truth most effectively and profoundly.”

Walter Wangerin Jr. lived with cancer for more than fifteen years, before dying on August 5th 2021. The following poem is from his collection On an Age-Old Anvil (Cascade Books, 2018).

Sacred

The wild geese lace the sky
flying north,
flying to the arctic
to lay and brood
the egg of creation.

The ancient Irishman
laying windrows with his scythe
looks up with a blue, rheumy eye.
He drops the cutting blade
and raises reverential hands.

Once it was a Dove,
the Holy Ghost descending.
Now it is the wild goose
flying.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Walter Wangerin Jr.: 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 Amazon, and Wipf & Stock.

Walter Wangerin Jr.

Walter Wangerin Jr. won the National Book Award for his first novel The Book of the Dun Cow (1978). He has since published more than thirty books, including the poetry collection A Miniature Cathedral and Other Poems (Harper & Row, 1987). His most-recent book is a memoir — Everlasting Is The Past (Rabbit Room Press).

The Book of the Dun Cow was inspired by a fable in Geoffery Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. It has been adapted into a musical, which was produced as an Off-Broadway show in 2006. Wangerin has written two sequels The Book of Sorrows (1985) and Peace At Last (2013).

He is a Senior Research Professor at Valparaiso University in Indiana, where he has taught since 1991. Prior to this he served for 16 years as a Lutheran pastor in Evansville, Indiana.

The following poem first appeared in Ruminate.

The Bent World Broods

i.

Among the branches of the wild cherry
tent worms weave white stomachs
of fog and the hungry air

pouches
of visible digestion
consuming green life and the evening leaf

each worm unspindling
the filament which in the night
will draw it peristaltic back to its tent

ii.

Among the branches a white ganglion
writhes in
primitive thought

suspecting soon
a wrack of
metamorphosis

and this
a dysphagic
dying

iii.

Moths flying on an adipose of digested leaf
know nothing
of worms

nor worms
of
resurrection

Posted with permission of the poet.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Walter Wangerin Jr.: second post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest poetry collection, Conspiracy of Light: Poems Inspired by the Legacy of C.S. Lewis, is available from Wipf & Stock as is his earlier award-winning collection, Poiema.