sunny friday poetry...

Determined to start today better than yesterday (read: inspired rather than insulted), I pulled one of my favorite poetry books off the shelf: Upholding Mystery.* Upholding the mystery of what, you ask? Of God, of course. What else do I think about? (Honestly, sometimes I exasperate even myself.)

Not only is this one of my favorite books for what it contains, but it also feels good, inviting me to savor it and flip its pages. Long ago I shucked its dust cover, favoring the deep blue matte finish underneath. Now the binding glue is coming loose and pages try to fall out like the inside of a dried up tangerine falls out of its shell. While I flip through the pages, the spine snaps, crackles and pops.

I am holding some of my history. Squashed inside the pages, I find:
-penciled marginalia of a young teacher
-a scrap paper lesson plan from 7/8 grade grammar with the question, “Why am I so afraid of writing?”
-a fairy bookmark I thought I had lost long ago
-a wooden bookmark from the Philippine friend
-another scrap piece of paper with a Bible verse about not being afraid
-Post-It flags highlighting key lines
-flat, yellowed petals from a rose left on my doorstep

You are now experiencing one of three things:
#1--you're not reading any more because I'm describing a book, for heaven's sake.
#2--you can't believe I would treat a book so poorly (all the stuff in the pages = decaying binding).
#3--book lust.

Me? I'm feeling inspired. When you realize Annie Dillard is just playing with words in her poems, it incites you to go do the same thing...

Here's a few excerpts from poems I might borrow for somewhere in my manuscript:

Today I’m thinking of St. Paul—St. Paul
who orders us, Be perfect. He could have said,
Touch your elbow to your ears, except
that if you broke your arm, then snapped your neck,
you might could manage it.
~Andrew Hudgins, from “What Light Destroys”


If just for once the swing of cause and effect,
cause and effect,
would come to rest; if casual events would halt,
and the machine that supplies meaningless laughter
ran down, and my bustling senses, taking a deep breath
fell silent
and left my attention free at last…

then my thought, single and multifold,
could think you into itself
until it filled with you to the very brim,
bounding the whole flood of your boundlessness:

and at that timeless moment of possession,
fleeting as a smile, surrender you
and let you flow back into all creation.
~Denise Levertov, from “Variation and Reflection on a Theme By Rilke”


If they ask you: ‘What
Is the sign of your Father in you?’
You say to them: ‘It is a movement
And a rest (anapausis).’
~Annie Dillard, from “The Sign of Your Father”


*Tangent: The collection is subtitled "An Anthology of Contemporary Christian Poetry," which leads one to think that perhaps it is as cheesy as CCMusic. To clarify: it's not. Louise Erdrich, Annie Dillard, Denise Levertov, Wendell Berry, and more are all included... there's a lot of doubt in this book. It's quite lovely.