Wisdom from William Shakespeare--Carolyn R. Wilker

In his time, William Shakespeare, poet and playright, knew a thing or two about the stage, but his work covered many areas of life. Biography.com says “over the course of 20 years, Shakespeare wrote plays that capture the complete range of human emotion and conflict.”

Besides his plays, poems and sonnets, other official documentation of his life come from church and court records. Of his education, there is little information, leaving historians to surmise where he attended school, and others to doubt how he could write so prolifically and so well. There were other historians who supposed his works to be the product of other men. Yet the grammar schools at the time taught about the arts, so he may have had a good educational base. Sources that affirmed his work included the Queen’s court where Shakespeare and his fellows performed.

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts

His acts being seven ages.

By the late 1590s Shakespeare was selling his plays, though selling his plays and acting didn’t comprise the main part of his income. James Shapiro wrote in his book, The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606, that Shakespeare collaborated with others early in his career, and on five of his last ten plays.

Unlike plays now that are repeated night after night for a period of time, Shapiro said in his online video at the site, that Shakespeare’s patrons expected a new play every day. Shapiro calls the schedule an exhausting one. Shakespeare read and wrote late into the night, all without the benefit of caffeine or tea, neither of which had been introduced to England at the time. He and his men would rehearse the next morning, then they would present the new play later that day.

 The biography states further: “What seems to be true is that William Shakespeare was a respected man of the dramatic arts who wrote plays and acted in some in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. But his reputation as a dramatic genius wasn't recognized until the 19th century.”

Shakespeare would have known grief too, as everyone does at some time or other of life. One of his children, a son, died at age 11. The biography at this site only states the fact. Perhaps this was the time he wrote: “Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break.”

This particular biography doesn’t deal with his faith, but it shows that he was baptized, returned home from London during the 40 days of Lent when the theatre was closed, and that he was buried at the church and his death recorded there. Perhaps another biography would tell more.

What can writers today learn from Shakespeare? Probably about his persistence. He kept at it, working at other jobs, staying close to the theatre scene, learning and continuing to write until he’d written enough that people took him seriously.

If God puts it on your heart to write, then keep on writing. Though you have family and another job to pay bills, find a way to get your words written. Submit your work and follow through. And may your words bless others.

Life is a Poem - Rose McCormick Brandn

If you build your life on my words, said Jesus, you will be like a house built on a rock. When rains pour and rivers flood, your house won’t collapse. (My paraphrase of Matthew 7:24)

The Greek word Jesus used for the idea of building a life on His word is poieo. The English word poem comes from this word. Poets use words in creative ways to build something original.
“Be a poet,” Jesus is saying. “Take my words and build a life with them.” His words build solid foundations. His words can decorate our lives and turn them into something beautiful.
Recently, I met a pretty mother of two small children. She told how she’d been addicted to heroine, sold her body on the downtown streets and lived in constant rage. I looked into her clear eyes and soft face. I couldn’t picture her slashing her arms, screaming out for help. One rainy night, in the grizzly downtown core, she went berserk. She felt like she was in hell.
Foolishly, she’d built her life on a sand bar. A hurricane had rushed in from the sea and flattened her life. In the middle of her destruction, she remembered that God loved her.
That night this young woman began to build a meaningful life, a poem, because, as Corrie ten Boom often said, “No darkness is so deep that Jesus is not deeper still.”
As long as there’s breath, it’s never too late for God to take the meaningless jumble of our lives and turn them into a beautiful poem.
Build your life on the solid foundation of Christ’s words. 

“One well-chosen word at a time. One stanza of service at a time. And with our words and deeds, we can leave something beautiful behind in the lives of others.”  Eugene H. Peterson.

 

Rose McCormick Brandon writes personal experience, faith, life stories and the stories of Canada's child immigrants. She is married to Doug and lives in Caledonia, Ontario.

Visit her blogs: The Promise of Home (http:littleimmigrants.wordpress.com) and Listening to My Hair Grow (http:rosemccormickbrandon.wordpress.com). Contact address: rosembrandon@yahoo.ca. 

 

Her latest book, One Good Word Makes all the Difference is available here.

The Alchemy of Poetry - Nesdoly

The Alchemy of Poetry

Position the inert element
(any prompt will do)
into the beaker of an empty page
and bathe in the acid of a long stare.

Placing vessel over the flame of thought
heat until surface softens
and breaks into fault lines.

With any writing instrument
organize component parts
into webs and lists.
Use hurried scrawl to freewrite
dissections and reconstructions.

Expand and condense
reorganize and rearrange
the substance that has now
begun to take shape
until the final creation
aligns to your satisfaction.

At this point it will often
appear to be gold
(but don’t be fooled).
Leave it to cool.

Return in an hour
a day or a week to inspect.
Very occasionally
you will be satisfied
you have created
something genuine.

© 2011 by Violet Nesdoly

I wrote "The Alchemy of Poetry" during the April poem-a-day challenge in 2010,  prompts and encouragement supplied by Robert Brewer of the Poetic Asides blog.

Now it's almost November, another challenge month when novelists around the world participate in NaNoWriMo (writing a 50,000-word novel in one month).

For poets, Poetic Asides has its own book challenge (called November Poem-A-Day Chapbook Challenge). I'm not ready to tackle another novel, but am seriously considering joining the Poem-A-Day challenge again this year.

I find this type of writing jag helps me get over the feeling of writing as a 'precious' activity. I know from experience that when I write a lot of poems, not every one that seems great just after I've written it, is. I have to give the writing and myself the cooling and distance of time to see what I've made. That's what "The Alchemy of Poetry" is about.

************
By the way, the first draft of my novel Destiny's Hands, was written during NaNoWriMo 2009. So if you have a book inside you, why don't you dedicate this November to getting it out!

Website: violetnesdoly.com
Poetry blog: Violet Nesdoly Poems
Writerly blog: at violetnesdoly.com (New!)
Daily adult devotions: Other Food daily devos

Seasonal Junction - Nesdoly

 Seasonal Junction

The shouts of the kids from the pool
and the smell of chlorine alternate
with the smack of a kicked soccer ball
and the prairie-wheat fragrance of grass
on a breeze that blows summer-to-fall
like the warm-to-cool currents that pass
over swimmers in blue summer lakes

— © 2004 by Violet Nesdoly (published in Calendar)

We are rapidly approaching the season that doesn't know whether it is summer or fall. The Labor Day weekend, coming up, joins the two together. We got home from holidays yesterday so I'm still in summer mode, though the air feels distinctly like fall and the calendar reiterates its nearness.

Here's hoping the new season brings us all new ideas of how to navigate the uncharted writing and publishing seas, along with courage and success.

 ******************

Need a break from the 21st century rat-race? Travel to a different time and place via Destiny's Hands, a new novel recently released by Word Alive Press.

Experience Egyptian slavery, the exodus, crossing the Red Sea. Meet Moses, Aaron, Miriam, Hur, and Bezalel.  Eat quail and manna. Drink water from rocks. Live the temptations and questions of wilderness wandering.

Find out what readers are saying and where to purchase HERE. 

Website: www.violetnesdoly.com

Code Name: Peanut - Arends

There is a solemn new ritual in our house, one that takes place daily.  My 14-year-old son Ben and my 40-something self each remove our shoes, assume our best military posture and stand back-to-back, while my husband ceremoniously places his flattened hand across the crowns of our heads.  As of this morning, I am 1/4" taller than my boy, a height advantage I should be able to retain until approximately next Tuesday.

I'm not sure how this happened, and I'm not sure how I feel about it.  On the one hand, there is a certain thrill in seeing someone you've loved fiercely--ever since he was a zygote--flourish and grow.  Simultaneously, there is a certain loss in watching your baby take relentless, ever-lengthening strides towards independence.

I'm way too close to this adventure of discovery and loss to say much about it.  But I've been remembering something I wrote about this son of mine when he was much, much smaller.  It's called "Peanut," and it was penned almost 15 years ago ...

We've agreed not to tell 

Until the second trimester

But we can't stop

     thinking

     talking

     grinning

     about you.

The doctor told us

You're just about the size of a

     peanut.

So that has become your Secret

     Service Code Name.

(How's Peanut?

Your daddy whispers

At church, in a crowd

Till we are blushing and breathless

Drunk with the power

Of our little secret.)

Strange how the biggest thing

     that has ever happened to us

Is something so small

A tiny kernel of life

Not even showing

Yet.

Soon we will tell everyone we know

Anyone who will listen

But for now, we'll keep them

    guessing:

Smaller than a breadbox

Bigger than a mustard seed

Peanut. 

(excerpted from We've Been Waiting For You by Carolyn Arends (J. Countryman/Thomas Nelson)

- Carolyn Arends
www.carolynarends.com

 

I'll write the appies - Violet Nesdoly

I'LL WRITE THE APPIES

Though I have laboured long
over the hot stove of fiction
slow-roasted the plot
peeled and cooked the characters
tossed point-of-view and dialogue
whisked lumps out of theme and motivation
and at last presented my creation
garnished to be page-turning

I prefer to work
on the poetry course
try to make each hors d’oeuvres
a playful experiment
every bite-sized creation
so surprising and intriguing
the reader won't stop at one.
Then I get to leave the kitchen early
because I’m done.

© 2011 by Violet Nesdoly

*************

This is my little tip of the hat to April—National Poetry Month. I hope you're all enjoying lots of poems:  writing, reading, and reciting.

Some suggestions on where to go:

To write: 

• Poetic Asides has a new prompt for each day in April.

• So does NaPoWriMo.

• and The Music In It (Adele Kenny's blog).

To read and perhaps recite: 

• Your Daily Poem has just that—a daily poem. This is poetry that is accessible and fun. Subscribe to get the daily poem delivered by email every morning.

• NPR's The Writers Almanac also delivers daily poetic fare, along with writerly almanac facts.
• Kingdom Poets (a blog by D. S.Martin) - Christian poets brought to us by D. S. Martin.
• Rainforest Soul - poems by B.C. poet Charles Van Gorkom
• Another Porch - poems by Ontario poet Janet Martin.

If you enjoy children's poetry try:

• Gotta Book,  a blog by kids' poet Greg Pincus. Greg is posting a new poem by well-known children's poets  every day of April

• If you like your poetry with calories, Jama's Alphabet Soup features a new poem by well-known children's poets every weekday, along with a recipe from the poet. (My Easter feast benefitted from one of these recipes!).

Enjoy!

Website: www.violetnesdoly.com

• Personal blog promptings  
• Writerly blog Line upon line 
  
• Daily devotions for children Bible Drive-Thru
• Daily devotions for adults: Other Food: daily devos
• A poem portfolio

Easter - Meyer

As a child, I collected poems, typing them on 4X6 inch notepaper and putting them into a little binder, which has long since been lost. There are a few poems that have survived though, because every time I read them, I savor them once again, and determine to keep them. Yesterday, I looked for them through old photo boxes, in the “treasure chest” my son built for me years ago and in a file called “memorabilia.” It dawned on me this morning where they were, and I found them in my “Important Papers” file.

Please forgive me if this blog post gets too long. I do want to share a few of them with you.

Also, my sincere apologies to the authors of these poems – whoever you might be! Back when I typed them (40+ years ago), I did not realize the importance of the author’s name. If any readers recognize any of these poems and can attach an author to them, please let me know. Otherwise, for now, they are all designated, “Author Unknown.”

Two of the poems are about Easter but one is about Jesus’ return, which is also part of the Easter story. “For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.” I Thessalonians 4: 14-16 NIV

I hope you enjoy these poems as much as I have over the years. And may you have a joyous Easter!

An Easter Garland for the Risen Lord

Emptiness!
He wasn’t there. He wasn’t where
she meant to find him.
“Mary!”
Turn around
don’t weep.
He waits for you
He calls.
Turn away from emptiness
greet life!

Princely Jesus
Clothed in flesh
Walked as man
Breathed as God
Sacrificed as Savior
Died as sin
Arose as Christ
Jesus
God’s budded almond rod
Grafting heaven’s fragrance
into reclaimed men
hallelujah
glory.

Let’s crash the cymbals
At sunrise,
shouting, He is Risen!
Let the sound burst upon the sleeper
bring the running to see.
Then speak Lord,
wrap us in Thy presence
awaken an Easter celebration in
our hearts.


Calvary… my home

You could have
sent a letter
or another prophet
to tell us
of Your concern
and it would have been
just as true.
But instead
You spilled out Your message in
blood
on the rough bitter pages
of a cross –
love’s most
violent declarations.

And even that was
no hyperbole.


He’s Back!

Cruising down the freeway
Just like any other day
the sky was full of clouds
the road was full of cars
the radio telegraphed its slogans
its songs
its news
to my ignoring ears
then the blare of a trumpet
reverberated through the car
my fingers flew to volume control
the radio was dead
the trumpet was not
the car blurred away and was gone
and there came a swelling in my soul
a rapturous ecstasy –
he’s back!
Praise God
Jesus is back!


Poems collected by Dorene Meyer
Author of “The Group” series: Jasmine, Lewis, Joshua, Missy…
http://www.dorenemeyer.com/
http://www.goldrockpress.com/

Kingdom Poets Celebrates Richard Greene

Richard Greene has recently gained significant acclaim as the 2010 winner of the Governor General’s Award for Poetry, for his third collection, Boxing the Compass (Signal Editions). Greene is originally from Newfoundland — something often revealed in his verse. He currently teaches at the University of Toronto, and lives in Cobourg, Ontario.

In a recent interview in The Toronto Quarterly he spoke of "a despair in modern poetry". He said, "I think the valid emotions of poetry require severe testing. In that I am influenced by R.S. Thomas and Geoffrey Hill. Bear in mind that as a religious poet, I am automatically thought by some readers to be sentimental...” He continued to say, Poetry “should not just evoke or report feelings, it should also test them with certain ironies.”

He has written biographies of the novelist Graham Greene, and the poet Dame Edith Sitwell.

The following poem is from his 2004 collection, Crossing the Straits (St. Thomas Poetry Series).

Occupation: Pilate Speaks

Execution hangs in the air
like a figure of Roman rhetoric,
every obscure point personified
and made plain, an allegory played out
in simple sentences and understood.
We are an occupying power, one kingdom
in the midst of another, compelling
loyalty where the heart is beaten down
and all things lie under the exaction of fear.
My task is to quell their riots,
to keep the peace of our advantages.

In this man is the fiction of kingship:
he requires or enacts no policy,
and recruits to his cause no persons
unworthy of nails. I wish to parley
for his innocence, for the due process
of irony ends in freedom or death,
and I would not depose his heaven,
his kingship that is not of this world.
Yet his small elevation, this mound
at Gabbatha, occupied at Caesar’s
pleasure, permits no gentle discourse.
A voice may carry, and there is no King
but Caesar. You know to whom you speak.

I hand him over to bloody converse
of the whip, those lacerating words
inscribing an empire in his flesh,
such rituals of his coronation
as will befit an ambiguous reign.
Mu regret will have its other meanings,
possible worlds invading our sleep
with all unchosen things, holy jests
as may stay for an answer I cannot give.

I send him form the mind’s place into streets
loud iwth voices of the world’s no meaning;
I linger in this moment’s constant death
to barb in three tongues my tribute to his reign.

Posted with permission of the poet.

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

This is an upcoming post from: Kingdom Poets Follow this link to see dozens more, including some of the world's most celebrated poets, as well as some lesser known treasures.

Kingdom Poets Shares Marilyn Nelson - Martin

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)

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

This is this week's post from: Kingdom Poets Follow this link to see dozens more, including some of the world's most celebrated poets, as well as some lesser known treasures.

Kingdom Poets Presents Sydney Lea - Martin

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.

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

This post will appear Monday at: Kingdom Poets Follow this link to see dozens more, including some of the world's most celebrated poets, as well as some lesser known treasures.

Kingdom Poets Anticipates With Luci Shaw - Martin

Luci Shaw is one of the most significant Christian poets of our time. She takes on topics of significance to people of faith, yet refuses to undermine her art with preconceived, didactic ways of thinking, or sentimentality. One important topic for Shaw is the incarnation.

Since childhood, Luci Shaw has annually written Christmas poems; originally the practice was simply for inclusion with her Christmas correspondence. As her poetic skills grew, so did the quality and quantity of these poems. In 1996, she and her friend Madeleine L’Engle released the book Wintersong — a joint collection of Christmas readings. Ten years later Eerdmans published Accompanied By Angels, a book of Shaw’s incarnation poems, many of which had appeared in her earlier books.

Since then, this tradition continues to result in fine Christmas poetry. In 2004 Luci Shaw sent me an early version of the following poem — followed by a revised version in 2005. The poem was further revised (as reproduced below) for inclusion in her 2006 collection What The Light Was Like (Wordfarm). Knowing how she continually returns to fine-tune her work, I would not be surprised to find she has since revised it further.

Breath

When in the cavern darkness, the child
first opened his mouth (even before
his eyes widened to see the supple world
his lungs had breathed into being),
could he have known that breathing
trumps seeing? Did he love the way air sighs
as it brushes in and out through flesh
to sustain the tiny heart’s iambic beating,
tramping the crossroads of the brain
like donkey tracks, the blood dazzling and
invisible, the corpuscles skittering to the earlobes
and toenails? Did he have any idea it
would take all his breath to speak in stories
that would change the world?

Posted with permission of the poet. This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Luci Shaw.

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

This is this week's post from: Kingdom Poets Follow this link to see dozens more. I have just added a new index to help you access all of the Christmas poems I've posted; more will be posted throughout December.

Kingdom Poets Remembers Wilfred Owen - Martin

Wilfred Owen (1893—1918) is considered the leading poet of the First World War. When he was a student, serving as an assistant to the Vicar of Dunsden, he became disillusioned with the Chruch of England because of the lack of care for the poor. Although he entered the war optimistically, his experiences — including shell shock — soon changed him.

He was critical of the European tradition of propagandist poetry that glorified war, and its naive acceptance by his own generation. He upheld a poetry of truth, criticizing the artists and intellectuals who chose to serve partisanship. He was also critical of national churches for betraying the Christian message, and twisting the teachings of Christ to justify politics. He interpreted one of Christ’s instructions as: “Passivity at any price! Suffer dishonour and disgrace, but never resort to arms...”.

His poetry is often characterized by irony and sarcasm: In “The Parable of the Old Man and the Young” Owen has the angel tell “Abram” — “Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.” Owen then twists the Biblical story into a new parable, making the patriarch a parliamentarian:
-----But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
-----And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

Similarly those who claim to represent God are portrayed in the following poem:

Soldier’s Dream

I dreamed kind Jesus fouled the big-gun gears;
And caused a permanent stoppage in all bolts;
And buckled with a smile Mausers and Colts;
And rusted every bayonet with His tears.

And there were no more bombs, of ours or Theirs,
Not even an old flint-lock, not even a pikel.
But God was vexed, and gave all power to Michael;
And when I woke he'd seen to our repairs.

In 1917 he wrote, “Christ is literally in no man’s land. There men often hear his voice. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life — for a friend...” and that it wasn't only the allies who heard that voice.

Wilfred Owen was killed by an enemy bullet, on 4 November 1918, just one week before the end of the war. The following, one of his best known poems, may suggest that the church had no place at the front lines, because it had sent young men to their deaths.

Anthem For Doomed Youth

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries for them; no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

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

This is this week's post from: Kingdom Poets Follow this link to see dozens more, including some of the world's most celebrated poets, as well as some lesser known treasures.

Kingdom Poets Celebrates Jill Peláez Baumgaertner - Martin

Although Jill Peláez Baumgaertner was born in the United States, her family connection with Cuba is significant. This becomes clear in her poetry — particularly in her 2001 book Finding Cuba. Her most recent poetry release is a chapbook from Finishing Line Press — My Father’s Bones (2006).

Jill Peláez Baumgaertner has been on the faculty of Wheaton College since 1980, where she is an English Professor and Dean. She has served (previously) as Poetry Editor for First Things, and (presently) for The Christian Century. She has also written a textbook/anthology, Poetry (Harcourt Brace, 1990); and Flannery O'Connor: A Proper Scaring (Cornerstone Press, 1988). Forthcoming is the anthology Imago Dei: Poems From Christianity and Literature which she has edited, and includes my own poem: “The Sacrifice Of Isaac”.

When asked about her interest in Flannery O’Connor, Jill replied, she “has a lot in common with John Donne, the subject of my dissertation. They both understand that the cross is the center of our faith—that one cannot skip over Good Friday on the way to Easter morning...”

The following poem first appeared in Image.

Prodigal Ghazal

Weightless as a float into the drift of water, one whose sin is
-----forgiven.
The Far Country a memory of fists and sour apples.

Of that old, heavy plunge through snowfall, frozen, refrozen.
The tug of gravity, slow and silent.

Of no words forming on dry lips, of breath aching to a full
-----inhale and then a letting go.
Of not yet. Not yet. And the longing for release.

The hold of grimy pleasures like a small mouth forming very
-----small o’s,
Like spaces as vast as the tundra with no human voice or as
-----tight as a wound spool.

The wasting disease of sin, God’s serious hand of judgment.
Then his gentle push: the swing into the spring air, back
-----and forth.

And then the breathing, unboxed. And later the fingers spread
wide in the grass, each particular blade a tickle.

The Father runs into the road, his embrace a chunk of earth to
-----the unmoored.
The twisted eyebeams, the Father’s gaze into his son’s tentative
-----face.

Pupils black with light peering into the lens of revelation,
-----crystalline.
Now comes the filling in of hunger, the bread hunks spilling
-----crumbs.

The wine meant for throats dry with salt and dust.
Here is God, his strokes on our dead flesh

Filling capillaries, sparking nerves. We are fed with the crusts
And blood of forgiveness, with the thrill of its gentle float,
-----its ripe music.

(Posted with permission of the poet)

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

This is this week's post from: Kingdom Poets Follow this link to see dozens more, including some of the world's most celebrated poets, as well as some lesser known treasures.

Kingdom Poets Looks At Les Murray - Martin

Les Murray is Australia’s best known contemporary poet. He has published dozens of books, and won the T.S. Eliot Award (1996), the Queens Gold Medal For Poetry (1999), and other honours. He consistently dedicates the poems in his books to the glory of God. He has worked as an editor with Poetry Australia and Quadrant and edited The Anthology of Australian Religious Poetry. His most recent collection is Taller When Prone (2010).

Murray is critical of his Calvinist upbringing — particularly how the doctrine of predestination, as it was used, caused many to look down upon poor families, such as his own, as being disfavoured by God. He explained when interviewed for Image, he converted to Catholicism as a teen in 1962, “fascinated by the sacramental bridge between earth and heaven that Catholicism offered”.

Of other Australian Christian poets he has noted James McAuley and Andrew Lansdown as among the best.

The following poem may have been inspired by Thomas Gray’s 1751 poem “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” in that the poet wonders about how history may have unfolded differently given different circumstances. The AIF, mentioned below is the Australian Imperial Force — numbered to correspond to the two world wars.

The Chimes of Neverwhere

How many times did the Church prevent war?
Who knows? Those wars did not occur.
How many numbers don’t count before ten?
Treasures of the Devil in Neverwhere.

The neither state of Neverwhere
is hard to place as near or far
since all things that didn’t take place are there
and things that have lost the place they took:

Herr Hitler’s buildings, King James’ cigar
the happiness of Armenia
the Abelard children, the Manchu’s return
are there with the Pictish Grammar Book.

The girl who returned your dazzled look
and the mornings you might have woke to her
are your waterbed in Neverwhere.
There shine the dukes of Australia

and all the great poems that never were
quite written, and every balked invention.
There too are the Third AIF and its war
in which I and boys my age were killed

more pointlessly with each passing year.
There too half the works of sainthood are
enslavements, tortures, rapes despair
deflected by them from the actual

to beat on the human-sacrifice drum
that billions need not die to hear
since Christ's love of them struck it dumb
and his agony keeps it in Neverwhere.

How many times did the Church bring peace?
More times than it happened. Leave it back there:
the children we didn't let out of there need it,
for the Devil's at home in Neverwhere.

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

This is this week's post from: Kingdom Poets Follow this link to see dozens more, including some of the world's most celebrated poets, as well as some lesser known treasures.

Kids' poetry - Nesdoly

Coon Zoo Lullaby

Come men, if you dare
just jab a date
for a coon zoo tour
don’t be late.

We’ll see toad and tiger
in creature jail
and worms that are leaner
than slime of snail.

For additional fees
(don’t riot the price)
you can jut x-rays
—just be nice

when you query the gait
of the turtle hare.
Will you fill the pail
of his dinnerware?

Waste the lid of nips?
Ha, the day has fled.
Pin the cog of hex
and it’s off to bed.

Your sad looks — Why?
For they rang the bell.
You about to cry?
That’s the matin’s knell

and the painted orb
is the eve of moon
close your eyes, sweet babe
for the day is done.

© 2011 by Violet Nesdoly (All rights reserved)

************
If you live with young kids, or perhaps teach them, you'll recognize the above ditty as something in the genre of children's nonsense poems. I wrote it a few weeks ago, all Glynis's fault when she posted a list of words on our Inscribe forum with the challenge to write a story using each and every one. I challenged myself to write a poem.

If you read poems to children or write them, you'll know they are fun, lively, and as varied as the people who compose them.

Interested in finding out more? Why don't you check out Poetry Friday—a weekly meme that links kid-lit writers' blog posts of original poems and writing about poetry all in one place. I guarantee that Poetry Friday will teach you a lot about the state of children's poetry these days, while it introduces you to some of its movers and shakers.

Here is last week's Poetry Friday.
Here is a list of hosting sites for Poetry Fridays until the end of December 2011.

Happy poeming!

**************

Website: www.violetnesdoly.com

• Personal blog promptings  
• Writerly blog Line upon line 
  
• Daily devotions for children Bible Drive-Thru
• Daily devotions for adults: Other Food: daily devos
• A poem portfolio

Kingdom Poets Recommends Seamus Heaney - Martin

Nobel Prize winning, Irish poet Seamus Heaney has recently — once again — proved his worth with the publication of his latest book: Human Chain (2010). In this, his twelfth collection, readers might feel they are reading someone else’s mail, for Heaney doesn’t explain references. There are plenty of localisms (places, particulars of farm life, and specific neighbours), Latin words or Gaelic phrases, classical references — especially to Virgil — and allusions to saints and Irish history — from the spread of Christianity down to “The Troubles”. Even so, pieces begin to come together, as we dwell within his work.

In particular we often encounter the sixth century saint and scholar Columba of Iona (or Colmcille) — who founded a monastery at Derry, where Heaney is from. The poet relates to Columba’s bookish calling of pen and ink.

To Heaney, the everyday lives of people are sacred. His own schooldays appear, disguised within “Hermit Songs” as he writes both of medieval scribes, and of his teacher’s supplies of “nibs in packets by the gross, / Powdered ink, bunched cedar pencils, / Jotters, exercise books, rulers...” In “Chanson d’Aventure” he takes us along on a wild ambulance ride, under the control of “The charioteer at Delphi”.

Mostly, Seamus Heaney is a poet of memory. He preserves sounds and feelings — such as “the clunk of the baler / Ongoing, cardiac-dull” — or the wind “that rose and whirled until the roof / Pattered with quick leaves off the sycamore” — or the “chunk and clink of an alms-collecting mite-box” — or the particulars of his new “Guttery, snottery” pen in its “first deep snorkel / In a newly opened ink-bottle”.

The following poem is from Human Chain.

Miracle

Not the one who takes up his bed and walks
But the ones who have known him all along
And carry him in —

Their shoulders numb, the ache and stoop deeplocked
In their backs, the stretcher handles
Slippery with sweat. And no let-up

Until he’s strapped on tight, made tiltable
And raised to the tiled roof, then lowered for healing.
Be mindful of them as they stand and wait

For the burn of the paid-out ropes to cool,
Their slight lightheadedness and incredulity
To pass, those ones who had known him all along.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Seamus Heaney

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

Kingdom Poets Introduces John Robert Lee - Martin

John Robert Lee, of St. Lucia, is a well-established poet whose writing has been anthologized in such books as The Penguin Book of Caribbean Verse, and The Faber Book of Contemporary Caribbean Short Stories. His collected poems, Elemental, appeared in the UK from Peepal Tree Press in 2008.

He has been involved in theatre as both an actor and a director — has expressed his faith as a preacher, writer and broadcaster — has worked as a professional librarian, and in radio and television as a broadcaster and producer.

Fellow St. Lucian poet Derek Walcott (who won the Nobel Prize in 1992) called John Robert Lee “a scrupulous poet"; he continued, “it’s not a common virtue in poets, to be scrupulous and modest in the best sense, not to over-extend the range of the truth of his emotions, not to go for the grandiose. He is a Christian poet obviously. You don’t get in the poetry anything that is, in a sense, preachy or self-advertising in terms of its morality. He is a fine poet.”

The following comes from his chapbook Canticles (2007):

Canticle XXXI

---------It is clear she was beguiled by the Serpent’s sinuous
-----flatteries.
-----------But he, was he — seduced by her full-curving softnesses,
------------------------------allured by those flittering
---------lashes — tripped into the parting chasms of her sweet
-----flirtatious
----------------mouth? (So says the old poet.) Or, eavesdropping,
Curious Man, did he wonder about the Crystal Gate, the proffered
-----dominion,
-------------the deadly enticements of wisdom? Whichever, flouting
-------------the order he chose.
-----------------------------Just one more query — those tunics of
-----covering skin,
--------were those the first-born lambs they had loved above all
-----others?

(Posted with permission of the poet)

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

This is this week's post from: Kingdom Poets Follow this link to see dozens more, including some of the world's most celebrated poets, as well as some lesser known treasures.

Kingdom Poets Recommends Christian Wiman - Martin

Christian Wiman is on his way to becoming a major American poet. His first significant step, after the publication of his first poetry book The Long Home (1998) was being appointed as the editor of the magazine, Poetry in 2003.

Wiman was raised in west Texas, in a family of faith. He however turned to his own way. He has recently arisen from an extended season of creative drought and an even longer period of spiritual drought to produce his latest collection, Every Riven Thing (2010). Readers of this work will see a new God-consciousness. For example, in the poem “And I Said To My Soul, Be Loud” he says,
-----------“For I am come a whirlwind of wasted things
-----------“and I will ride this tantrum back to God...”
This is something he has done — recently returning to both God and the church. The following poem is from Every Riven Thing.

Small Prayer In A Hard Wind

As through a long-abandoned half-standing house
only someone lost could find,

which, with its paneless windows and sagging crossbeams,
its hundred crevices in which a hundred creatures hoard and nest,

seems both ghost of the life that happened there
and living spirit of this wasted place,

wind seeks and sings every wound in the wood
that is open enough to received it,

shatter me God into my thousand sounds...

My review of Christian Wiman’s third poetry book, Every Riven Thing, is soon to appear from Ruminate.

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

This is this week's post from: Kingdom Poets Follow this link to see dozens more, including some of the world's most celebrated poets, as well as some lesser known treasures.

Kingdom Poets introduces Andrew Lansdown - Martin

Andrew Lansdown is a Baptist writer living in Perth, Australia, who has authored ten collections of poetry. He writes both adult and children’s poetry, has more than fifty published short stories and a trilogy of popular fantasy novels. Les Murray has called him Australia’s greatest Christian poet. The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-century Poetry in English, suggests that because of the Christian stance in Andrew Lansdown’s poetry, perhaps “his work has been neglected and undervalued.” Even so, he is the recipient of many awards, fellowships, and honours.

He is an imagist poet — preferring to share the brief glimpses of his perceptive eye, rather than longer, rambling verse. It has been suggested that the effect of his poetry is cumulative, and can be best appreciated when reading many poems, one after another. His most recent collection of adult poetry is Far From Home (2010).

Rose

The day after I cut it
I notice the white rose
in the pottery vase
on my desk start to wilt.

All day it has been
drooping lower and lower,
until now its small head
is hanging upside down,

lolling loose-haired
against the shoulder
of the vase, as if given
entirely to sorrow.

Parable

for Leroy Randall

Plant a seed, reap a song:
such are the ways of God.

Jesus said his kingdom
is like a mustard seed

which when buried rises
to a tree, and the birds

alight in its branches.
So, from a grain, a surge

of sap and shade, a haunt
of gladness and surprise.

Oh, beyond all desire,
the tree of God abounds

with nests—and a choir!

The Raven

The raven is a black and craven bird,
a bird by the Law unclean.
Its carrion cry on the wind is heard -
the raven, that black and craven bird.
Yet it is the one the Lord by His word
has sent for my keep and keen.
Oh, the raven’s a black and craven bird,
a bird by the Law unclean!

Posted with permission of the poet

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

This is this a recent post from: Kingdom Poets Follow this link to see dozens more, including some of the world's most celebrated poets, as well as some lesser known treasures. Also visit www.andrewlansdown.com

Rosing From The Dead - Martin

Paul Willis is an English professor at Westmount College in Santa Barbara, California. Besides writing poetry, he has published essays such as those in his book Bright Shoots of Everlastingness (WordFarm); he also has a novel forthcoming.

A dominant influence on his life and writing has been being a mountaineer. He grew up in Oregon, close to the Cascade Mountains, where he was wholly “summit bound”. He and his brother recklessly sought to climb every peek in their state, and were “very nearly obliterated” doing it. In one attempt to climb Alaska’s Mount McKinley, Paul’s brother lost his hands and feet to frostbite, while Paul was hallucinating — still 800 feet from the top.

Mountaineering has also drawn him towards the work of pioneer naturalist John Muir, and inspired him to pursue ecological issues. The following is the title poem from his most-recent poetry collection.

Rosing from the Dead

We are on our way home
from Good Friday service.
It is dark. It is silent.
“Sunday,” says Hanna,
“Jesus will be rosing
from the dead.”

It must have been like that.
A white blossom, or maybe
a red one, pulsing
from the floor of the tomb, reaching
round the Easter stone
and levering it aside
with pliant thorns.

The soldiers overcome
with the fragrance,
and Mary at sunrise
mistaking the dawn-dewed
Rose of Sharon
for the untameable Gardener.

(Posted with permission of the poet)

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

This is this week's post from: Kingdom Poets Follow this link to see dozens more, including some of the world's most celebrated poets, as well as some lesser known treasures.