Philip C. Kolin

Philip C. Kolin is the author of five books of poetry. His most recent collection is Reading God's Handwriting (Kaufmann Publishing, 2012). He has taught in the English Department of the University of Southern Mississippi since 1974, and was recently made the Distinguished Professor in the College of Arts and Letters. Kolin is a Shakespeare scholar, is a significant authority on Tennessee Williams, and has written extensively about modern American playwrights. He has published more than forty books.

In a recent interview he said, "In many ways, my poetry marks my own spiritual autobiography, my encounters with God on the peaks, the plateaus, and the deep valleys." He is the founding editor of the Christian poetry journal Vineyards.

Read my review for Ruminate of Reading God's Handwriting here.

Faith

It's the love affair
between your soul and God's will,

the unflickering oil in your lamp
waiting for the bridegroom

to arrive after so many dark midnights,
listening for his footsteps.

It's looking for pearls,
a missing drachma,

that stray sheep who's wandered off
beyond the pasture.

It's planting a mustard seed in the deep
valley that grows trees towering

over montains to provide
a sanctuary for doves.

It's the joyous breaking of
bread and finding a star inside

and the martyr's kiss
imprinted on the chalice.

It's sprinkling blood on your doorposts
with holy writing embedded in the frame.

It's God's spirit healing your withered flesh.
It's finding your name in His blazing
Book of Life.

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

Narayan Vaman Tilak

Narayan Vaman Tilak (1861—1919) is a Brahman poet of the Marathi language in India. While travelling by train in 1893 he met a Christian missionary who gave him a Bible. Tilak, who had felt dissatisfied with Hinduism’s ritualism and its caste system, felt very attracted to Christianity. He was particularly drawn to the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount.

Because of the distance of father-figures and the closeness of mothers, in Indian culture, Tilak chose to describe Jesus from a more Indian perspective:

------"Tenderest Mother-Guru mine,

------Saviour, where is love like Thine?..."

Professor Richard Fox Young of Princeton Theological Seminary wrote that “to discover his real voice and to put a recognizably Indian face on Christianity, Tilak felt compelled to reject the worship forms in the American mission churches...In a famously subversive poem of protest, he complained that in those churches ‘we dance as puppets, while [missionaries] hold the strings.’ In Tilak’s heart, only Christ could strike the right chords.”

I Have Called You Friends

One who is all unfit to count

----As scholar in Thy school,

Thou of Thy love hast named a friend —

----O kindness wonderful!

So weak am I, O gracious Lord,

----So all unworthy Thee,

That e’en the dust upon Thy feet

----Outweighs me utterly.

Thou dwellest in unshadowed light,

----All sin and shame above —

That Thou shouldst bear our sin and shame

----How can I tell such love?

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

Robert Bridges

Robert Bridges (1844—1930) wanted to be a poet when he was young, but instead became a doctor. At age 37 he retired, due to illness, and dedicated himself to writing. He was a formalist in style, with great skill in his use of meter. Despite not being well known, he became Britain’s poet laureate in 1913.

In 1899 he published the Yattendon Hymnal, for the purpose of preserving early hymn tunes; this led him to translate many of the hymns himself from Latin, Greek and German.

Perhaps his greatest contribution to poetry, was presenting the work of his friend Gerard Manley Hopkins. He arranged for a posthumous collection of Hopkins’ work in 1918. Ironically, as Hopkins’ biographer Paul Mariani makes plain, Bridges didn’t really understand his friend’s poetics, and stumbled on his Catholicism.

Robert Bridges’ own masterpiece is Testament of Beauty (1929). Just prior to his death, it led to great popularity for a poet who had spent much of his life in quiet seclusion.

I Love all Beauteous Things

I love all beauteous things,
---I seek and adore them;
God hath no better praise,
And man in his hasty days
---Is honoured for them.

I too will something make
---And joy in the making;
Altho’ to-morrow it seem
Like the empty words of a dream
---Remembered on waking.

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

Madeline DeFrees

Madeline DeFrees was born in Ontario, Oregon in 1919. She is the author of eight full-length poetry collections, including Blue Dusk, which received the 2002 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, and Spectral Waves (2006) both from Copper Canyon Press. Both of these books were awarded Washington State Book Awards.

She spent 38 years as a Catholic Nun, until 1973 when she requested a release to enable her to focus more on her poetry. She has taught at many colleges including: Univerisity of Montana and University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Psalm for a New Nun

My life was rescued like a bird from the fowler's snare.
It comes back singing tonight in my loosened hair

as I bend to the mirror in this contracted room
lit by the electric music of the comb.

With hair cropped close as a boy's, contained in a coif,
I let years make me forget what I had cut off.

Now the glass cannot compass my dark halo
and the frame censors the dense life it cannot follow.

Like strength restored in the temple this sweetness wells
quietly into tissues of abandoned cells;

better by as much as it is better
to be a woman, I feel this gradual urgency

till the comb snaps, the mirror widens, and the walls recede.
With head uncovered I am no longer afraid.

Broken is the snare and I am freed.
My help is in the Lord who made
heaven and earth. Yes, earth.

This poem is from Madeline DeFrees' collection Blue Dusk: New & Selected Poems, 1951-2001, which is available here.

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

Hildegard of Bingen

Hildegard of Bingen (1098—1179) is a German mystic, known today for her writings and musical compositions. She founded monasteries in Rupertsberg in 1150 and Eibingen in 1165. Her writings include poems, liturgical plays, songs, and books on medicine, theology and botany. She also wrote three books of visions, including Scivias, which she dedicated ten years of her life to write.

She told her story, once, as follows: "Listen: there was once a king sitting on his throne. Around him stood great and wonderfully beautiful columns with ivory, bearing the banners of the king with great honour. Then it pleased the king to raise a small feather from the ground and he commanded it to fly. The feather flew, not because of anything in itself but because the air bore it along. Thus am I 'A feather on the breath of God.'"

Interest today in medieval women of the church has led to extensive reading of Hildegard’s writings, and interest in her life. Her music has been extensively recorded. The ensemble Sequentia has made Hildegard a particular focus, having now recorded her complete works on seven CDs. The following poem was translated by Barbara Newman.

Song to the Creator

You, all-accomplishing
Word of the Father
are the light of primordial
daybreak over the spheres.
You, the foreknowing
mind of divinity,
foresaw all your works
as you willed them,
your prescience hidden
in the heart of your power,
your power like a wheel around the world,
whose circling never began
and never slides to an end.

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