In which I share some more poems published and muse a bit on the label "religious..."

I had some more poetry published in the Sacramento Poetry Center's publication, Poetry Now. This is a very small, local publication, but it's still a little charge to see my poems in print. You can download a copy by following this link:

http://www.sacramentopoetrycenter.org/pn_pdf/2009/PN200901.pdf

Both of the poems published here have a little bit of a Christian worldview expressed, which is to be expected (hopefully, though, sometimes-- usually between 5-9 p.m-- there's not much Christian worldview being expressed by me at all).

They wouldn't qualify as devotional reading or Bible study material, still, you can see if you read the poems that I mention the Bible in one and prayer in another. And like I said, it's somewhat to be expected. I honestly think about the Bible a lot and I think about prayer too. (Do I follow the Bible consistently? do I pray more than I talk about praying? These are different questions.)

The other night at poetry workshop I brought in a poem that talked about an experience at a Communion service in extremely Christian terms, and it also described the Resurrection of Christ.

No getting around it, the point of view in that poem was Christian. Which is admittedly a relief to me.

So, why did I rankle when one of my fellow poets labelled it a religious poem?

He was very honest in saying that some of the poem was more accessible to him than other parts, and the part that was less accessible was the stanza imagining the ressurrection. I think he very generously and fairly owned his own cultural bias against religion was making it harder for him to appreciate the poem.

Still the whole experience frustrated and annoyed me. I'm not sure all the reasons why, but I think most of them are not so good.


C.S. Lewis's fiction is religious fiction, so is Flannery O'Connor's. Hopkins and Herbert wrote religious poetry, didn't they? Michealangelo painted religious art. Handel's Messiah is a religious piece of music. I would be over the moon, ego-filled, out of touch with reality and dangerously giddy with pride if I ever thought my art deserved to be compared to these artists--still, they are evidence that religious content does not mean unartistic or less artistically excellent.

I'll probably explore this a lot more later. I have to go wash dishes now.

Right now where I'm at is that I am going to have to make peace with the fact that my poetry is going to be called "religious" poetry by almost everyone who reads it. At least, everyone who is not immersed in my worldview.

Latero and with much affection,

Jenny

A late Epiphany

Talking to Valerie reminded me that I had long intended to post this poem for Epiphany when it came and there it was gone so quickly. Epiphany really comes much faster than Christmas...

I very much love the idea of thinking of Epiphany as the revelation of Christ to the whole world. But I don't have much sense of how to think about it or enter into it...


Here's this wonderful T. S. Eliot poem.

With affection, Jenny


A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times when we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities dirty and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wineskins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

Blogging idea

I recently started reading the funny, lively blog of another mom and fellow Oakhillian --http://www.preteenstoddlersandnewbornsohmy.blogspot.com/

She's very gifted as writer and in many other capacities, and she has a wonderfully fun voice, and I enjoy getting to know her just a little bit in this way. She recently completed a year of blogging every single day--365 entries.

My thought, after the initial--no thank you, I resist obligations of all sorts-- was that this small discipline would help a person get the writing juices flowing. It would be like journalling, in a way, with the added ingredient of a possible audience.

Jennifer said as much--that her writing voice was strengthened and developed through the experience, which she also said she didn't intend to repeat.

I won't be writing here every day, but perhaps I will treat it a bit more like a writing journal or writing prompter spot-- I would also like to encourage other writers to find "tricks"--places, audiences, disciplines, classes, exercises, groups, etc. to get them writing.

Let me know if you are trying any this year.

Jenny

Happy New Year

Happy New Year.

For your present-- here's a poem by Richard Wilbur --Love Calls us to the Things of This World--http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=171793

This poem is (in part) about waking up-- that slow, wonderful and reluctant way we enter another morning--

The first line --

"The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul
Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple
As false dawn. "

Here we are waking into another year-- enjoy the poetry.

complicated feelings

Recently a beloved friend of mine read some of my poetry for the first time. She leads a beautiful life as a mother of three (with one more on the way). Her home is always open to neighbors and her collection of bedraggled friends--My son and I are often showing up at her house in part because I simply delight to be around such homeiness and goodness. But of course, all of that homeiness, hospitality and liveliness takes almost everything she has to give and much more than that, I'm sure.

When she read my poetry, she was so sweet and encouraging and positive, just as I could have expected of her. And then she said: "Jenny, I'm glad you don't have four children. If you did, you wouldn't be able to write poems like these."

I said I knew she was right. I know that's true. But it isn't a truth I make peace with very easily. All my feelings about writing and about time and about family life are so complicated. I can barely make any sense of them at all.

I have never been someone with a very clear life aim or plan. I never thought about getting married or having children until I wanted to marry one particular person (who I married ). But I always thought once I was married I would have many children and be busy and happy with them. It was so easy to imagine, (since in my fantasies I never had to factor in how selfish I actually am). It was so easy to imagine and it seemed so clearly (in my fantasies) to solve all my problems with trying to figure out what I should do with myself. I'd be busy. Busy would mean worthwhile. And then I'd be OK.

I know that was unhealthy and faulty reasoning and really amounts to using children to prop up my shaky ego. Not a lovely thing to do to anyone. So, I am glad that I didn't just simply get what I thought I wanted.

But here I am with these unexpected gifts... a beautiful family I adore and some extra time to think and to be creative and to even write.

And as much as I believe in God's soveriegnty and goodnesss and say that I trust him, I really I haven't made peace with these gifts, the gifts of my reality. I spend lots of time spinning my wheels feeling guilty. I spend a lot of time wondering how I can just make myself busy enough to know for sure inside myself that I'm OK. That my life is not just a long looping exercise of futile self-absorption.

I feel guilty I only have one son and am not as busy as other friends. I feel guilty because I have time for the luxury of writing and then I feel so afraid or reluctant to write that I start to spin around looking for other ways to make myself busy --because busy in my emotional life equals feeling OK, like my life has some value. But although service other activities are wonderful things--I find that if they are done to prove something to myself or to my perceived audience (God ? my friends? my family? ) those good acts of service become self-righteous and manic----I'm not giving of myself with generosity and grace--I'm simply desperate to prove I'm OK.

So here I am-- I have a certain things--time, money, freedom, health--in relative abundance. I'm not really a busy or important person, though I pretend (in my fantasy world) that I am. I have time. I have enough time to write poems, sometimes, and that's OK. It's nothing to be ashamed of.

Ha.

I write that and reread it with the full knowledge that I don't believe it. Oh well.

Here's to another year to continue on in the craziness, thankful always for grace ... and thankful always for my many beloved friends.

Favorite Christmas Carol

What's your favorite Christmas Carol?

Mine is Joy to the World--

He has COME--Sin and sorrow can no longer reign -- far as the curse is found (and sometimes I see it everywhere)

Let us receive our King--even my narrow, tight heart, crammed as it is with unwelcoming, crowded inns, even there I pray he can find a stable.


Verse 1
Joy to the world! the Lord is come;
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare him room,
And heaven and nature sing,
And heaven and nature sing,
And heaven, and heaven, and nature sing.

Verse 2
Joy to the world!
the Saviour reigns;
Let men their songs employ;
While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat, repeat the sounding joy.

Verse 3
No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found,
Far as, far as, the curse is found.

Verse 4
He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders, wonders, of His love.

It Came Upon the Midnight Clear

One of my favorite things about Advent Season is that we get to sing such rich, beautiful songs in church. I delight in the poetry of good lyrics--and I feast on them whenever I can. Today in church we sang "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear." I don't ever remember noticing these lyrics before today, but today they struck me as wonderful-- "THE WORLD IN SOLEMN STILLNESS..." Ahh, how sad and wonderful and perfect those words are.

I think I am at a time in my life to be aware of how desperate this world is to really know the gospel the angels sang about...

I loved the promise and hope that even now, above our weary world and all our Babel sounds (what better description could we find for our contemporary life?) the song of "He's come to us. He's come" would ring out. Let the day come quickly when the whole world owns its King.

Merry Christmas...May His Kingdom Come...




It Came Upon A Midnight Clear

It came upon the midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth,
To touch their harps of gold:
"Peace on the earth, goodwill to men
From heavens all gracious King!"
The world in solemn stillness lay
To hear the angels sing.

Still through the cloven skies they come,
With peaceful wings unfurled;
And still their heavenly music floats
O'er all the weary world:
Above its sad and lowly plains
They bend on hovering wing,
And ever o'er its Babel sounds
The blessed angels sing.

O ye beneath life's crushing load,
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow;
Look now, for glad and golden hours
Come swiftly on the wing;
Oh rest beside the weary road
And hear the angels sing.

For lo! the days are hastening on,
By prophets seen of old,
When with the ever-circling years
Shall come the time foretold,
When the new heaven and earth shall own
The Prince of Peace, their King,
And the whole world send back the song
Which now the angels sing.--

Peace on the Earth, Good will toward men,
From heavens all gracious King!
The world in solemn stillness lay
To hear the angels sing.