Martha Serpas*

Martha Serpas is a poet from Southeast Louisiana, and is the author of four poetry collections, most recently, Double Effect (2020, Louisiana State University Press). She is a Professor of English at University of Houston, and has taught at Yale Divinity School and the University of Tampa. In addition to this, since 2006 she has worked as a trauma chaplain at Tampa General Hospital. All of this means she divides her time between Texas, Florida, and Louisiana.

She said in a 2022 interview with Nadia Colburn, “I don't think I would have become a poet without the emphasis on the sensory aspects of reaching the Divine” which she found growing up in the Catholic church.

LSU Press says that, “Martha Serpas’s Double Effect reimagines a principle first outlined by St. Thomas Aquinas in Summa Theologica, which considers whether an action is morally permissible if it causes harm while bringing about a good result.”

The following poem, which relates to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, is from Yale University’s Reflections.

Poem Found

New Orleans, September 2005

…And God said, “Let there be a dome
in the midst of the waters” and into the dome God put
the poor, the addicts, the blind, and the
oppressed. God put the unsightly sick and the
crying young
into the dome and the dry land did not appear.
And God allowed those who favored
themselves
born in God’s image to take dominion over
the dome and everything that creeped within it
and made them to walk to and fro above it
in their jumbo planes and in their copy rooms
and in their conference halls. And then
God brooded over the dome and its multitudes
and God saw God’s own likeness in the shattered
tiles and the sweltering heat and the polluted
rain.
God saw everything and chose to make it very
good. God held the dome up to the light
like an open locket and in every manner
called the others to look inside and those who
saw
rested on that day and those who didn’t
went to and fro and walked up and down
the marsh until the loosened silt gave way
to a void, and darkness covered the faces with deep sleep.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Martha Serpas: 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.

Amy Nemecek

Amy Nemecek is a poet living in Michigan who in 2021 won the Paraclete Poetry Prize for her book The Language of the Birds (2022). By day, she works as a nonfiction editor for the Baker Publishing Group.

Luci Shaw has said about this collection, “In this brilliant transcription of responsive poems we are reminded of the generous beauty offered us by our Creator, if we would only look and listen, if we would join in offering praise.”

“Listen more than you talk. Stop and listen, stop and watch,” Nemecek said in an interview with Grand Rapids Magazine. She then echoed Mary Oliver’s poem “When I Am Among the Trees” to say “… never hurry through the world but walk slowly, and bow often.” This is advice she not only shares, but applies to the writing of her own poems.

The following is the title poem from her book.

The Language of the Birds

On the fifth day, your calloused fingers
stretched out and plucked a single reed
from the river that flowed out of Eden,
trimmed its hollow shaft to length and
whittled one end to a precise vee
that you dipped in the inkwell of ocean.
Touching pulpy nib to papyrus sky,
you brushed a single hieroglyph―
feathered the vertical downstroke
flourished with serif of pinions,
a perpendicular crossbar lifting
weightless bones from left to right.
Tucking the stylus behind your ear,
you blew across the wet silhouette,
dried a raven’s wings against the static,
and spoke aloud the symbol’s sounds:
“Fly!”

Posted with permission of the poet.

This post was suggested by Nellie deVries.

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.

Dragan Dragojlović*

Dragan Dragojlović is a Serbian poet who lives in Belgrade. He has served the government of Serbia in various positions, including as Minister of Religions, and as Ambassador to Australia. He has also served as director of the Ivo Andrić Foundation, which grants scholarships to foreign students of Serbian studies.

He is the author of sixteen books of poetry (by last count) including The Book of Love (1992), Death’s Homeland (2008), and Patriarch’s Ladders (2017).

I have just finished reading Death’s Homeland, which I had not yet purchased when I posted (one year ago) about Dragan Dragojlović. What distinguishes this collection from any of his other poetry you might access, is that these are short lyrics (the poem below is the longest in the collection) dealing with the heartbreaking experience of the Yugoslav Civil War ― both the hopelessness of daily facing death, and the hope that comes through faith in God.

He has translated the work of several poets into Serbian, including that of Irish poet John F. Deane. The following poem, along with the rest of Death’s Homeland, was translated by Stanislava Lazarevic.

Glory Eternal

May glory eternal be with you
who fell
for Serbia,
may your wounds be blessed,
my brother in hope.

May all your delusions
be forgiven.
May your pain be eased
in heaven.
Forgive your murderer.
Pray for those
upon whom you have inflicted
suffering and death.

My brother in sin and misfortune,
do not criticize
my attempt to glorify
what transcends all words:
your sacrifice.

Choking with pain
to the point of screaming,
dare I wonder
whether it could have been different,
and whether history and hope
outlive our death.

I remain silent
repeating to myself:
you did what you could,
let God complete the rest.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Dragan Dragojlović: 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.

Stephen Cushman

Stephen Cushman is a poet from Connecticut who moved south in 1982 to be a Professor of English at the University of Virginia, where he specializes in American literature.

He is the author of seven poetry books ― all published by Louisiana State University Press ― including his latest: Keep the Feast (2022). His other publications include two books of literary criticism, and three books about the American Civil War.

His publisher’s website says that Keep the Feast “sings in the tradition of the psalmists and devotional poets…” and that the title poem is structured after Psalm 119. Maurice Manning praised the book, saying, “Schooled equally in Thoreau and folklore, the poems in this book are nourishing in their humor, edifying in their precision, and enlivening all around.”

Atheism’s Easier

Abstain from staring too long at the sky.
Stick to screens, little keyboards;
block out birds with private earbuds;
never hear the wind breathe harder.
Watch TV. Always drive.
Try to avoid a night outside
in ladled moonlight, glowing broth.
Eschew solitude; cut back on silence;
call up someone just to gossip;
send lots of messages; read them, too.
Make sure not to spend a winter in the woods,
a month on a summit, a week in a desert,
time by the sea if it promotes thinking
how it’s acceptance without conditions
that makes me acceptable, and pretty soon,
though tough at first, atheism’s easier.

Posted with permission of the poet.

This post was suggested by Lisa Russ Spaar.

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.

W.R. Rodgers

W.R. Rodgers (1909―1969) is a Belfast poet, who served as a Presbyterian minister, before becoming a broadcaster with the BBC in London, at the invitation of Louis MacNeice. His first collection, Awake! and Other Poems was published in 1941, with its first edition being almost completely wiped out during the London Blitz. His early poetry was greatly influenced by W.H. Auden.

At the BBC he broadcast a number of significant programs on Irish writers. In 1966 he moved to California to become Writer-in-Residence at Pitzer College. It was in California that he died in 1969.

A booklet, put together by the BBC concludes with the following: “Rodgers’ ashes were returned to Belfast and after a memorial service in First Ballymacarret Presbyterian Church ― which he had attended as a boy ― he was buried in Loughgall. The Minister-poet’s life had come full circle. Seamus Heaney read a short selection of Rodgers’ poetry at the memorial service ― reflecting his importance for a new generation of northern writers.”

The following poem, demonstrates Rodgers’ war-era modernism. It first appeared in Horizon in 1943, and later (I believe) in his 1952 collection Europa and the Bull.

Christ Walking on the Water

Slowly, O so slowly, longing rose up
In the forenoon of his face, till only
A ringlet of fog lingered round his loins;
And fast he went down beaches all weeping
With weed, and waded out. Twelve tall waves
Sequent and equated, hollowed and followed.
O what a cockeyed sea he walked on,
What poke-ends of foam, what elbowings
And lugubrious looks, what ebullient
And contumacious musics. Always there were
Hills and holes, pills and poles, a wavy wall
And bucking ribbon caterpillaring past
With glossy ease. And often, as he walked,
The slow curtains of swell swung open and showed,
Miles and smiles away, the bottle-boat
Flung on one wavering frond of froth that fell
Knee-deep and heaved thigh-high. In his forward face
No cave of afterthought opened; to his ear
No bottom clamour climbed up; nothing blinked.
For he was the horizon, he the hub,
Both bone and flesh, finger and ring of all
This clangorous sea. Docile, at his toe's touch,
Each tottering dot stood roundaboutly calm
And jammed the following others fast as stone.
The ironical wave smoothed itself out
To meet him, and the mocking hollow
Hooped its back for his feet. A spine of light
Sniggered on the knobbly water, ahead.
But he like a lover, caught up,
Pushed past all wrigglings and remonstrances
And entered the rolling belly of the boat
That shuddered and lay still. And he lay there
Emptied of his errand, oozing still. Slowly
The misted mirror of his eyes grew dear
And cold, the bell of blood tolled lower,
And bright before his sight the ocean bared
And rolled its horrible bold eyeballs endlessly
In round rebuke. Looking over the edge
He shivered. Was this the way he had come?
Was that the one who came? The backward bowl
And all the bubble-pit that he had walked on
Burst like a plate into purposelessness.
All, all was gone, the fervour and the froth
Of confidence, and flat as water was
The sad and glassy round. Somewhere, then,
A tiny flute sounded, O so lonely.
A ring of birds rose up and wound away
Into nothingness. Beyond himself he saw
The settled steeples, and breathing beaches
Running with people. But he,
He was custodian to nothing now,
And boneless as an empty sleeve hung down.
Down from crowned noon to cambered evening
He fell, fell, from white to amber, till night
Slid over him like an eyelid. And he,
His knees drawn up, his head dropped deep,
Curled like a question-mark, asleep.

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.

Zach Czaia

Zach Czaia is a Minneapolis poet with two collections available: Saint Paul Lives Here (in Minnesota) (2015, Wipf & Stock) and his recent Knucklehead: poems (2021, Nodin Press). He has been teaching high school English for several years.

In Knucklehead, Czaia speaks honestly of his life ― at one point looking back to his first year of teaching high school down in Belize, where the boys called him Dante since he was leading the group of seventeen-year-olds through Inferno ― at another time reflecting self-deprecatingly on himself as a husband ― at yet another being overwhelmed by the murder of George Floyd, in part, because it happened in his own backyard.

He hosts a new poetry podcast called “Open Your Hands” where he reads a contemporary poem, and interacts with it. One recent episode features Mark Jarman’s poem “Questions For Ecclesiastes.”

The following Zach Czaia poem first appeared in Ekstasis and is from Knucklehead.

Saint Paul Talks Strategy

So I went down to a potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. Whenever the vessel he was making went wrong, as clay is apt to do in a potter’s hand, he would remake it in a different shape, such as he thought suitable. — Jeremiah 18:3-4

It’s a go-to, I’ll admit it,
the potter at his wheel. I say,
“I’m the stuff in his hands, the clay—
a pot gone wrong, he remade it,
remade me, my life.” The prophet
knows more than I do. Hearts don’t change
that much from age to age, the range
of feelings the same now as then.
We’re all still waiting for the moment when
these hearts we carry don’t feel so strange.

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.

Bruce Beasley

Bruce Beasley is the author of ten poetry collections, and has won several awards, including from University of Georgia Press, and Ohio State University Press. His books include The Corpse Flower: New and Selected Poems (2007, University of Washington Press), and his new collection Prayershreds (2023, Orison Books). In 1996 Charles Wright selected his book Summer Mystagogia to receive the Colorado Prize for Poetry.

Prayersheds is a fascinating collection, woven both from Beasley’s obsession with words, and our attempts at communication through words that we call prayer. His brain seems to continually be in a musical whirl of homonyms, homophones, etymologies, and nonce words combining familiar syllables for greater precision of meaning. Kathleen Norris insightfully compares his playfulness to that of E.E. Cummings. His word-wrestling doesn’t seem to be intended to distance himself from the reader, since many of the poems are quite accessible, however the poems sometimes take a path that require us to make our paradigm of what a poem should be more flexible. Rather than a book of prayer poems, this is more a book of poems about prayer.

The following poem first appeared as “The Responsive Amens” in the journal Subtropics, and it is from Prayershreds.

Verily

------------I

Shut your eyes―we were taught
in the Children’s Sermon
on how to pray―
shut your eyes tight until
you hear the pastor say Amen

but sometimes when I forgot to listen

for that end-signal word, sleep and prayer
would indistinguish themselves

------------II

Mandatory postrequisite
of creed
prerequisite for exit Amen

Vocally italicized Yes

that compelled and terminal
assent

It means Verily, so be it, decidedly it’s true,
means Here is where we go
back to normal-talk
We make it
mean

Please Lord let it end make it
mean Oh God
would would would
that it were so

------------III

To my body I will be as the
amen
is to the flesh’s
Let us pray Let us pray Let us pray

------------IV

Every amen
scissors the traced
outline of the prayer, ripping
the cut-out space of what we say to God

from the scrapped
silver silk of all we’d never say

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.