I go down to the river to pray
I go down to the river to pray. /
Its water tumbles to the Mississippi, /
a major artery, open to the open sea . . .
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Visual poetry about our fragile earth
The title of Madeleine Jubilee Saito’s book intrigued me. What, I wondered, are visual poems? And how would poetry be used to contribute to the climate discussion? As I paged through the book the first time, I could tell it wasn’t a usual book of wordy poems. In fact, there weren’t many words at all….
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Driving north on Highway 21 to a doctor’s appointment
A blindingly bright January morning. /
In the distance ahead, to the east, /
a wink, /
a glint of metallic shimmer. -
(2017, Virginia)
On the day that hate rode into town /
We visited our neighbor in her new home /
She is over 90 years old -
Thirteen ways of looking at the garden
After the city, the garden /
is quiet, the leaves green /
enough to absorb every cry. -
The politicians are giving us poetry
Concluding a course on seventeenth-century poetry last semester, my professor said that besides the sheer appreciation of the art, there is another reason to study poetry. “If you don’t know how to read poetry, poetry will read you.” I immediately thought of the Conservative Party’s campaign promises. Without bringing forward a proper policy platform, the…
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Of death and pascha
WHAT PERSISTS /
there is the void /
there is the heavy immovable stone . . . -
Scriptural longing in the songs of Leonard Cohen
In the preface to Rags of Light, Brian Walsh describes his new book as an attempt to “bring [Leonard] Cohen and Scripture together within the context of our present cultural realities and spiritual struggles and see what happens.” The book takes its shape from a series of lectures Walsh gave as part of an online…
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Resurrection among the ruins
Can there be resurrection /
among the ruins? /Dare we imagine new life /
rising from these streets of death? -
Vrijspraak, vertroosting en gebod
One of the poets-translators involved in the 1973 Dutch psalter-hymnal, Jan Wit, wrote the hymn “The Word That Called You Into Life.” It is no. 7 in the Liedboek voor de kerken and set to the melody of Psalm 113 in the Genevan psalter. Here is the final verse: “Rondom u klinkt de stem van…
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Blue Psalter Hymnal #379: Whiter than snow, yes, whiter than snow
Children crack palm nuts milked of fats, / stripped of orange. They smack / nuts on rocks, split out the kernel of ndika . . .
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The ruined career
I believe in the great discovery.I believe in the man who made the discovery.I believe in the fear of the manwho made the discovery . . . This is the beginning of the poem “Discovery” by the Nobel laureate, Polish poet Wisława Szymborska (pronounced ShimBORska). It was first published in a 1972 collection. Poland was…
