Francis Quarles

Francis Quarles (1592–1644) was a popular poet with the common people of his time, even though he was not one of them. In 1613 Quarles was appointed cupbearer to Princess Elizabeth — the daughter of James I — and was part of the contingent that travelled to Heidelburg for her marriage. Despite these connections and the various appointments he was given, he and his wife were often poor; they had eighteen children.

He is best-known for his Emblems (1635) which consist of meditative verse, matched with scripture, and elaborate illustrations. It is the didactic, moralizing of this book, and of much of his other religious poetry, that appealed to the puritans. This same quality marginalised his work in the following centuries.

He was a supporter of the royalist side during the Civil War. After 1637 he turned his attention to writing political pamphlets. In 1644 parliamentarians had his house searched for “subversive” materials, and his manuscripts were burned. His popularity with the puritans protected him from personal attack.

The American poet Langston Hughes is one of his descendants.

A Good Night

Close now thine eyes and rest secure;
Thy soul is safe enough, thy body sure;
He that loves thee, He that keeps
And guards thee, never slumbers, never sleeps.
The smiling conscience in a sleeping breast
Has only peace, has only rest;
The music and the mirth of kings
Are all but very discords, when she sings;
Then close thine eyes and rest secure;
No sleep so sweet as thine, no rest so sure.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the award-winning author of the poetry collections Poiema (Wipf & Stock) and So The Moon Would Not Be Swallowed (Rubicon Press). They are both available at: www.dsmartin.ca

Marilyn Nelson

Marilyn Nelson is a Lutheran poet whose collections have, three times, been finalists for the National Book Award — including The Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poems (1997). She served as poet laureate of Connecticut from 2001 to 2006. In a recent interview with Jeanne Murray Walker for Image, she said that some of those who most influenced her early writing were the Harlem Renaissance poets, such as Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes, and other African American poets.

She is also known as a children's book author; at first, some of her adult poetry was published as books for younger readers — including Carver: A Life in Poems, a spiritual biography of George Washington Carver (2001), and Fortune's Bones (2004). She has now also intentionally written books for children.

The following poems are from her collection, Magnificat (1994).

Incomplete Renunciation

Please let me have
a 10-room house adjacent to campus;
6 bdrooms, 2½ baths, formal
dining room, frplace, family room,
screened porch, 2-car garage.
Well maintained.
And let it pass
through the eye of a needle.

Psalm

So many cars have driven past me
without a head-on collision.
I started counting them today:
there were a hundred and nine
on the way to the grocery,
a hundred and two on the way back home.
I got my license
when I was seventeen.
I’ve driven across country
at least twelve times;
I even drive
late Saturday nights.
I shall not want.

(Posted with permission of the poet)

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Marilyn Nelson: second post, third post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the award-winning author of the poetry collections Poiema (Wipf & Stock) and So The Moon Would Not Be Swallowed (Rubicon Press). They are both available at: www.dsmartin.ca

John Milton*

John Milton (1608—1674) in his great epic Paradise Lost presents the story of creation and the fall, using his sanctified imagination, yet carefully seeks to keep his tale true to scripture. His expansions on the biblical narrative help us to imagine what it might have been like, especially since the human reactions in Milton’s version ring so true.

When I read Paradise Lost last summer, I just had to read the following section aloud to my wife. It is a wonderfully romantic passage describing Adam’s experience of seeing Eve for the first time. Milton describes the scene as though the man is conscious of what God is doing when removing his rib, healing the wound, and fashioning something nearby with his hands. The account continues:

from Paradise Lost (VIII, 470-489)

Under his forming hands a creature grew,
Man-like, but different sex; so lovely fair,
That what seemed fair in all the world, seemed now
Mean, or in her summed up, in her contained
And in her looks; which from that time infused
Sweetness into my heart, unfelt before,
And into all things from her air inspired
The spirit of love and amorous delight.
She disappeared, and left me dark; I waked
To find her, or for ever to deplore
Her loss, and other pleasures all abjure:
When out of hope, behold her, not far off,
Such as I saw her in my dream, adorned
With what all Earth or Heaven could bestow
To make her amiable: On she came,
Led by her heavenly Maker, though unseen,
And guided by his voice; nor uninformed
Of nuptial sanctity, and marriage rites:
Grace was in all her steps, Heaven in her eye,
In every gesture dignity and love.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about John Milton: first post, second post, fourth post

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the award-winning author of the poetry collections Poiema (Wipf & Stock) and So The Moon Would Not Be Swallowed (Rubicon Press). They are both available at: www.dsmartin.ca

Cliff Ashby

Cliff Ashby is a British poet born in 1919. He is not well-known, yet is able to attract the enthusiastic admiration of critics. His first collection In the Vulgar Tongue appeared in 1968. Martin Seymour-Smith said in 1975 that Cliff Ashby is "Probably the most powerful, spare poet of his generation..."

His recent chapbook Few Late Flowers (2008) was praised by Robert Nye in The Scotsman: "Ashby is hardly yet a household name, but he ought to be, at least among those who care for poetry. He has just published what must be the most remarkable swansong offered by a writer in their 89th year..." In 2009 the same publisher, HappenStance Press, released Sampler. Hopefully this blog will familiarize a few more avid readers of poetry with the work of this fine writer. Donald Davie shared the work of Ashby in The New Oxford Book of Christian Verse, including the following poem.

A Stranger in this Land

Lord, I am lonely
And the sun is shining
Listless, while the wind
Shakes the aging leaves.
The harvest has been gathered
All is bagged and barned,
Silos burst with grain.
Why, Lord, must I still stand
Dropping blind seeds
On to a barren soil?

Come, sweet Jesus, cut me down
With the sickle of your mercy,
For I am lonely
And a stranger in this land.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the award-winning author of the poetry collections Poiema (Wipf & Stock) and So The Moon Would Not Be Swallowed (Rubicon Press). They are both available at: www.dsmartin.ca

John Bunyan

John Bunyan (1628—1688) is best known as the author of the allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress. (The first part was published in 1678, and the second in 1684.) It is probably the best known allegory ever written in any language. Bunyan was a tinker by trade — a mender of pots — which did not provide well for his family. During the English Civil War he served in the Parliamentary army.

He began writing The Pilgrim’s Progress when he was imprisoned for preaching without a licence. During the restoration of the monarchy nonconformist meetings had been prohibited, and people were required to attend their local Anglican congregation. He admitted at one trial, “If you release me today, I will preach tomorrow.”

Many idioms in English come from the book, such as “the Slough of Despond” and “Vanity Fair”. Rudyard Kipling called Bunyan “the father of the novel”, and C.S. Lewis followed in Bunyan’s footsteps by writing his own allegory The Pilgrim’s Regress.

The following is a poetic passage from the second part of The Pilgrim’s Progress.

Oh, World Of Wonders

Oh, world of wonders! (I can say no less)
That I should be preserved in that distress
That I have met with here! Oh, blessed be
That hand that from it hath delivered me!
Dangers in darkness, devils, hell, and sin
Did compass me, while I this vale was in;
Yea, snares, and pits, and traps, and nets did lie
My path about, that worthless, silly I
Might have been catched, entangled, and cast down;
But, since I live, let Jesus wear the crown.

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

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the award-winning author of the poetry collections Poiema (Wipf & Stock) and So The Moon Would Not Be Swallowed (Rubicon Press). They are both available at: www.dsmartin.ca

Sydney Lea

Sydney Lea is the author of ten collections of poetry including Pursuit Of A Wound (2001) which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He has also published a novel, A Place In Mind (1989), and two collections of essays. Lea is the founding editor of New England Review, where he served from 1977 until 1989. He has taught at several colleges, in Europe and the United States, including Yale, Wesleyan, and Dartmouth. He is the new poet laureate of Vermont.

Jeanne Murray Walker wrote of his new collection, Six Sundays Toward a Seventh, “In this book Sydney Lea invites us to take a spiritual journey . . . By the end of Six Sundays, the narrator and the reader step together into radiant light. What is so moving about Six Sundays is not only its wrestling with spiritual questions, but also Lea's affirmation that life is a spiritual journey and that this journey is of paramount importance.”

I was given the privilege of assisting him as editor for his new poetry collection Six Sundays Toward a Seventh - which is the first book in Wipf & Stock's new Poiema Poetry Series - released the first of January 2012. It is available from Wipf & Stock. The following poem is included in this new book.

Barnet Hill Brook

Here's what to read in mud by the brook after last night's storm,
Which inscribed itself on sky as light, now here, now gone-

And matchless. I kneel in the mud, by scrimshaw of rodents, by
-----twinned
Neat stabs of weasel. I won't speak of those flashes. Here by my
-----hand,

The lissome trail of a worm that lies nearby under brush,
Carnal pink tail showing out. Gnats have thronged my face.

I choose not to fend them off. Except for my chest in its slight
Lifting and sinking, the place's stillness feels complete.

Its fullness too: in the pool above the dead grass dam,
The water striders are water striders up and down:

They stand on themselves, feet balanced on feet in mirroring water.
How many grains of sand in the world? So one of my daughters

Wanted to know in her little girlhood. “Trillions,” I said.
“I love you,” she answered back. “I love you more than that.”

Lord knows I'm not a man who deserves to be so blessed.
I choose to believe that there's grace, that the splendid universe

Lies not in my sight but subsumes my seeing, my small drab witness.
Tonight my eye may look on cavalcades of brightness,

Of star and planet. Or cloud again. And when I consider,
O, what is man, That thou art mindful of him, it's proper

For me to have knelt, if only by habit. Pine needles let go,
And drop, and sink to this rillet's bright white bottomstones.

To tally them up would take me a lifetime. And more would keep
-----coming.
A lifetime at least. And more would keep coming, please God, keep
-----coming.

Posted with permission of the poet.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Sydney Lea: second post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the award-winning author of the poetry collections Poiema (Wipf & Stock) and So The Moon Would Not Be Swallowed (Rubicon Press). They are both available at: www.dsmartin.ca

T.S. Eliot*

T.S. Eliot is the only poet to be both featured in my copy of The Norton Anthology of English Literature, and its American counterpart. He was born in St. Louis in 1888, but moved to London — becoming a British citizen in 1927. He is such a significant figure that both nations claim him as their own.

Perhaps Eliot’s greatest accomplishment is Four Quartets — four related, but separate poems published over a six-year period. They deal with the connection of time and eternity — of Chronos (linear time) and Kairos (“the timeless moment”). Like in Eliot’s early works, the poem connects to numerous earlier writings — such as, in this case, to the early Greek philosopher Heraclitus, the scriptural account of Pentecost, a Hindu text, and the Christian mystics John of The Cross and Julian of Norwich. He also makes allusions to both Milton and Dante.

The fourth section of Four Quartets, “Little Gidding” was published in 1942.

from Four Quartets (Little Gidding IV)

The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
---Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre—
---To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
---We only live, only suspire
---Consumed by either fire or fire.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about T.S. Eliot: first post, third post, fourth post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the award-winning author of the poetry collections Poiema (Wipf & Stock) and So The Moon Would Not Be Swallowed (Rubicon Press). They are both available at: www.dsmartin.ca