Jill Peláez Baumgaertner*

Jill Peláez Baumgaertner is a Chicago poet, whose newest book What Cannot Be Fixed (2014) has just been published by Cascade Books as part of the Poiema Poetry Series. She has previously published three poetry chapbooks, and one full-length collection. In collaboration with composer Carl Schalk, she is librettist for two pieces (each a series of six motets) with sheet music published by Augsburg Fortress; Schalk has also recently composed an accompaniment to Baumgaertner's Advent meditation, "The Great O Antiphons", the text for which appears as part of What Cannot Be Fixed. A new revised edition of her study Flannery O'Connor: A Proper Scaring has appeared in 2013 through Wipf & Stock.

She is Professor of English and Dean of Humanities and Theological Studies at Wheaton College. The following poem is from her new collection, which I'm pleased to have edited for publication.

Faith

It can be too careful,
a ledge-balancing
tiny slide of the foot
over slick surfaces.

When it finally happens,
---------------------it should be more like a hurdle
----------------------------------------------------into sudden air

off a cliff

faced with
-----------ragged signs
of the earth’s upheaval,

or the rushed snatch of a demon
ferris wheel
that refuses to secure you
-----------with belt or rail
---------------------and seizes you
up in its mechanical hands
to whisk
you
-----------higher,
-------------------------------higher.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Jill Peláez Baumgaertner: first post, third post, fourth post.

Posted with permission of the poet.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His new 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.

Javier Sicilia

Javier Sicilia is a Mexican poet, novelist, journalist and activist. He has published six novels, and ten poetry collections, including Trinity (1992), Resurrection (1995,) and Desert Triptych (2009)—which won the Premio de Poesía Aguascalientes, one of Mexico's most prestigious literary prizes. At the time of the award, according to the New York Times, he said his focus as a writer is "the mystery of God in a broken world." His most significant literary influences include the mystic poets Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross. He is a professor at Universidad La Salle.

On March 28, 2011, his 24-year-old son was murdered, along with six friends, by members of a drug gang. Since then, Sicilia has become renowned for his protests against the drug war, and against the Mexican government's inability to stop it. "I've given up poetry after Juan Francisco's murder because language no longer consoles me, and in lieu of poetry I now depend on that depth of faith that can't be uttered or verbalized." He now pours his energy into the new movement against violence.

“Mi último poema” is the Spanish title of the following poem, which is dedicated to Sicilia’s son, Juan Francisco.

My Last Poem

The world is not worthy of words
they have been suffocated from the inside
as they suffocated you, as they tore apart your lungs…
the pain does not leave me
all that remains is a world
through the silence of the righteous,
only through your silence and my silence, Juanelo.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His new 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.

János Pilinszky

János Pilinszky (1921—1981) is a Hungarian poet who lived in Budapest. He served with the Hungarian army during WWII; as a prisoner of war he witnessed the horrors of prison camps, including Ravensbrűck. These experiences are reflected upon in many of his poems. He received the Baumgaerten Prize in 1947 for his first poetry collection Trapeze and Bars. His next book, On The Third Day, was delayed from publication until 1959 by communist censors who considered it to be both too Christian and too pessimistic. This collection includes Pilinszky's celebrated poem "Apocrypha".

Pilinszky has been very influential for post-war Hungarian poetry. In English he is known because of the translation by Ted Hughes and János Csokits, from which the following comes.

Complaint

Buried alive under the stars
in the mud of nights
do you hear my dumbness?
as if a skyful of birds were approaching.

I keep up this wordless appeal.
Will you ever unearth me
from the perpetual silence
under your foreign skies?

Does my complaint reach you?
Is my siege futile?
All around me glitter
reefs of fear.

Only let me count on you. God.
I want your nearness so much,
shivering
makes the love of loves even fierier.

Bury me in your embrace.
Do not leave me to the frost.
Even if my air is used up
my calling will not tire.

Be the bliss of my trembling
like a tree’s leaves:
give a name, give a beautiful name
a pillow to this disintegration.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His new 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.

Anne Locke

Anne Locke (c.1530—1590) is an English poet, and translator of sermons. In 1553, John Knox stayed with the Locke family, and in 1557 she travelled with him to Geneva. She is known today for having written the first sonnet sequence to have appeared in the English language. A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner, upon the 51st Psalm, consists of 21 sonnets inspired by King David's Psalm 51, plus a five-sonnet preface. Her son, Henry Locke, later became known as a poet as well.

Her sonnet sequence was first published, in 1560, by being slipped into the back of a book of John Calvin's sermons, which Anne Locke had translated from French. The following is the first of the 21 sonnets.

from A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner, upon the 51st Psalm

Have mercy, God, for thy great mercy's sake.
O God: my God, unto my shame I say,
Being fled from thee, so as I dread to take
Thy name in wretched mouth, and fear to pray
Or ask the mercy that I have abused.
But, God of mercy, let me come to thee:
Not for justice, that justly am accused:
Which self word Justice so amazeth me,
That scarce I dare thy mercy sound again.
But mercy, Lord, yet suffer me to crave.
Mercy is thine: Let me not cry in vain,
Thy great mercy for my great fault to have.
Have mercy, God, pity my penitence
With greater mercy than my great offense.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His new 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.

Charles Causley

Charles Causley (1917—2003) is a Cornish poet who, even after gaining international attention, would rarely leave his hometown of Launceston. Although he previously had had slim poetry volumes, such as Farewell Aggie Weston (1951), published, his reputation became established in 1957 with the appearance of Union Street — which included an enthusiastic introduction by Edith Sitwell. In 1967 he received the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, and in 1986 he was presented a CBE (Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire). In the 1970s, he also began publishing collections of poetry for children.

He was a very private man, and yet had friendships with such poets as Jack Clemo and Ted Hughes. Hughes once said, " Among the English poetry of the last half century, Charles Causley's could well turn out to be the best loved and most needed."

Dana Gioia has called, Charles Causley "a Christian poet in an agnostic age", and notes that the following poem, in which Christ is speaking from the cross, was "inspired by a seventeenth-century Norman crucifix".

I Am the Great Sun

I am the great sun, but you do not see me,
I am your husband, but you turn away.
I am the captive, but you do not free me,
I am the captain but you will not obey.

I am the truth, but you will not believe me,
I am the city where you will not stay.
I am your wife, your child, but you will leave me,
I am that God to whom you will not pray.

I am your counsel, but you will not hear me,
I am your lover whom you will betray.
I am the victor, but you do not cheer me,
I am the holy dove whom you will slay.

I am your life, but if you will not name me,
Seal up your soul with tears, and never blame me.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Charles Causley: second post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His new 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.

Emily Brontë

Emily Brontë (1818—1848) is known for her poetry and for her one novel Wuthering Heights (1847). She is part of the famous trio of sisters, along with Anne and Charlotte. Her mother died of cancer when she was just three years old. Her father was an evangelical ordained minister in the Church of England. In 1846 the three sisters published a book of poems under their pseudonyms; it was called Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. Twenty one of the poems were Emily's. The book, unfortunately, only sold two copies.

According to Charlotte, the following poem contains, "...the last lines my sister Emily ever wrote." The poem was one of Emily Dickinson's favourites, and was chosen by her to be read at her funeral.

No Coward Soul is Mine

No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere:
I see Heaven's glories shine,
And Faith shines equal, arming me from Fear.

0 God within my breast,
Almighty ever-present Deity!
Life—that in me hast rest,
As I—Undying Life—have power in Thee!

Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men's hearts, unutterably vain;
Worthless as withered weeds
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,

To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by thy infinity;
So surely anchored on
The steadfast rock of Immortality.

With wide-embracing love
Thy Spirit animates eternal years,
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears

Though Earth and moon were gone,
And suns and universes ceased to be,
And thou wert left alone,
Every Existence would exist in thee.

There is not room for Death,
Nor atom that his might could render void:
Thou—Thou art Being and Breath,
And what thou art may never be destroyed.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Emily Brontë: second post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His new 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.

Nicholas Samaras*

Nicholas Samaras may have been expected to deliver a quick follow-up to his book Hands of the Saddlemaker, which won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award back in 1991. He didn't. That follow-up will be delivered by The Ashland Poetry Press in March of 2014. One reason for the delay, is that his new manuscript—American Psalm, World Psalm—consists of 150 new poems: a large undertaking.

Yes, these are psalms—150 of them to emulate the Psalms of scripture. As Samaras has written in his preface: "I began this writing because I always perceived the Biblical Psalms to be pure songs, as the most powerful of rhythms and choruses." His psalms are reminiscent in tone to those written by King David, Asaph and the Sons of Korah. They also remind me of Leonard Cohen's Book of Mercy, although more consistently demonstrating a spirit of submission.

I am honoured that Nicholas Samaras contacted me concerning American Psalm, World Psalm. The following is the 26th psalm in the collection. This is the first time it has appeared anywhere.

Psalm of Belief and Unbelief

Lord, although I know you are there,
let me know you are there.

Lord, I know you are with me
but be with me.

I know you hear my every breath
but hear me, Lord.

I am the draft at the insulated window,
the lingering child in the adult.

I am the light overcome by night,
the persistent wavering that calls out,

Lord, although I know you are there,
let me know you are there.

As I know you are with me, be with me
while I overcome myself, Lord—and hear

my every breath.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Nicholas Samaras: first post

Posted with permission of the poet.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His new 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.