Poets and Poems: L.L. Barkat and “Beyond the Glass”

She may be identified with poetry, but the very first work by L.L. Barkat that I read was Stone Crossings: Finding Grace in Hard and Hidden Places (2008). I know exactly where I was and what I was doing when I read it. In July 2009, I’d crashed during a weekend biking trip with a group. I felt banged up but thought I was okay.  

Until three days later, when I discovered (at work) that I was having trouble breathing. My wife whisked me off to the hospital emergency room. Anticipating a long wait until they checked me out and sent me home, I grabbed Stone Crossings to keep me occupied. I ended up staying overnight; I had four broken ribs and a partially collapsed lung. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Thursday Readings

 

A Review of The Great Game by Amit Majmuder – Maryann Corbett at New Verse Review.

 

It Wasn’t Her Gall Bladder – poem by Jared Wilson at Frivolous Quill.

 

“Bread and Wine,” poem by Countee Cullen – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Anything is Possible – Kelly Belmonte at Kelly’s Scribbles.

 

“A New Arrival,” poem by George Washington Cable – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

The little wooden bridge

A power ride, it was

165 miles, graveled and

pounded flat, with rutted

stretches appearing

unexpectedly, like

the occasional snake

and critter darting

across my path, uneventful

until the little bridge,

the little wooden bridge

across the little creek,

the bridge with its construction

sign, narrowing the way,

slowing the ride, dutifully

I slowed the ride, the handlebar

hooked the board, hooked it

hard, the bike slammed down,

slammed down hard, I’m

thinking I’m seriously hurt,

I see the blood on my leg,

broken mirror, I stand up

on the little wooden bridge

and walk for a time, then

climb back on the bike

to finish the final 15 miles,

not much else I could do,

not bad for someone (as

it turned out) with four

broken ribs and a partially

collapsed lung. It did

hurt, though, once I got

off the bike.

Over at Tweetspeak Poetry, we’re discussing Spin: Taking Your Creativity to the Nth Degree by Claire Burge. One of the exercises asks the question, when have brake figuratively failed you with surprising consequences? In the true story recorded above, the brakes didn’t literally fail, but the resulting bike crash (2009) led eventually to an overnight stay in the hospital and reading Stone Crossings: Finding Grace in Hard and Hidden Places by L.L. Barkat straight through to 4 a.m. the next morning. And that led to being part of something called Tweetspeak Poetry, and that led to a book called Poetry at Work being published next month.

Who would have thought a bike crash on a little wooden bridge would lead to that result?

So check out the discussion on Claire’s book at Tweetspeak Poetry. However, I don’t advise bike crashes as the easiest way to creativity.

Photograph via Pryor Area Cycling Enthusiasts.

God in the Yard

My wife will tell you that I read a lot of books. (She’ll also tell you I spend too much time online, but that’s another story.) Some I get from the bookstore; some I order from Amazon; and some come in from small booksellers, publishing services and various other sources. I’ve even been known to download ebooks, but I’m still not ready for an electronic reader, at least not yet. So for now, the post office loves me.

Yesterday, I got home after a very long day at work, and there in the pile of mail was what was obviously a book package, small and rather slender, a single book. I knew of a couple of orders coming but not for a while yet and there had been no emailed shipping notice. But there a package was. And it turned out that one order had shipped early.

It was God in the Yard: Spiritual Practice for the Rest of Us by L.L. Barkat.

I had ordered the print version (a Kindle version is also available) but didn’t expect it until sometime in June. But there it was.

I’ve made no secret of how much I enjoyed L.L.’s Stone Crossings, or her InsideOut: Poems. I even have a badge widget for InsideOut on the lower right of this blog. So when I saw that God in the Yard was available, I ordered it.

It’s described (by the author) as a “12-week course in discovery and playing towards God.” It’s readings, meditation and thinking, and writing. Laura Boggess over at The Wellspring started it this week (I suspect she has the Kindle version). L.L. has a post about it at her signature blog, Seedlings in Stone. (The cool cover photo is by Kelly Sauer.)

I’m starting God in the Yard this coming week. I’ll let you know how it goes.

The 13th Day of Community: Monica Sharman

Last month, a number of us participating in the “Twelve Days of Community” (see the button at the top right) sponsored by The High Calling Blogs. The purpose was to highlight the blog or web site of someone other than ourselves during the season of Advent and Christmas. I made a point in each post about this was something we should be doing throughout the year, and now I’m putting my money where my mouth was.

Each week this year, I will highlight a blog or web site of a person whose thoughts and writing have had an impact on me and others. And today is the first one for 2010 – Monica Sharman.

Monica and her husband Charles have three boys. Charles is the author of Through the Bible with My Child, a plan for studying the Bible with young children in four years. (All proceeds from the book go to support a ministry in India.) And she is a former engineer.

Monica explains on her blog, Know-Love-Obey God, that she has three purposes, which came as a result of a study she did in March 2008 of Paul’s epistle to the Philippians: the advancement of the gospel, the edification of His Church, and the glory of His name.

Those three purposes play out across her writing. And what wonderful writing it is, saturated by her love for God.

In December, she did a guest post at Ann Voskamp’s blog, A Holy Experience. She used the metaphors of coins to describe her “gratitude list,” and you have to read it to experience just how good it is. (Item No. 6 under “husband:” Crow’s feet lines in husband’s smiling eyes.)

Or consider her reflections upon reading Stone Crossings by L.L. Barkat: “Besides the state of my home and emotions, I read Stone Crossings in the same way I curled up with Ramona the Brave and Because of Winn-Dixie and The Great Gilly Hopkins—tears on the brink, heart in my throat, brows raised in anticipation over eager, unblinking eyes.”

And then there’s her poetry. She writes a lot of poetry, and it’s poetry that reaches down deep into the heart and soul. An excerpt from her poem “White:”

White is the Lamb
perfect white Lamb
taking His cup
drinking
for us
thorns piercing
blood flowing
blood from the Son of God
amazing, this blood
thick with love
though red
it washes white

Read and follow her blog. Follow her on Twitter. She has the sweetest, most discerning spirit. And you will learn, and you will immeasurably benefit yourself.

2009: The Poem in the Dentist's Chair

Tuesday, I was at the dentist for a temporary crown. I should have been there 90 minutes tops; the hard work had been down the previous week. But because my teeth have a will of their own, and for a few other, unexpected reasons, I was in the dentist’s chair for four hours, four hours of alternating intense work on my mouth and waiting.

So, I wrote a poem, the one I posted yesterday, “Once a Place.” Six handwritten drafts, redrafts and edits, all done while my mouth and sinuses felt like numbed cotton. The idea had been in my head, prompted by a photograph of me at 5 years old on my new Christmas bike. (It was red, with plastic streamers coming out of the handle bars.) I found the picture, one of many, in an envelope from a cousin in Shreveport; the photos all belonged to my grandmother and had been sitting for years in the accumulations of the long life she lived. (My family is Southern; we get around to doing things like cleaning out relatives’ estates when we get around to it.) (My grandmother died in 1984.)

I’ll likely write about some of the photos another time; quite a few of them are pictures of my father as a little boy in the early 1920s. It’s almost impossible for me to imagine my father as a child, but there’s the photographic evidence. And he looks a little like me but a lot like my younger brother; the resemblance is almost uncanny.

I found that picture of me on the new bike, and began to consider that only two years before that picture was taken, that front yard was part of a shallow swamp. Somehow, bike and swamp connected in the dentist chair, and thus the poem.

A poem in the dentist’s chair: for me, a kind of mixed metaphor summarizing 2009.

I rediscovered poetry this year, in terms of reading it; I discovered it, or perhaps it discovered me, in terms of writing it. And now I help edit an online poetry journal called TweetSpeak Poetry.

I had never had a broken bone in my life; this year, I had four – ribs, to be precise, courtesy of a bike crash (and no one blame except myself). The upside of spending my first night in the hospital since 1974: I read L.L. Barkat’s Stone Crossings straight through in the dark hours of a summer morning.

I started this blog in March, and I’m awed by the people I’ve met because of it, the talented, gifted people who share their gifts for stories, for humor, for art, for encouragement, for a good rant, for unorthodox and off-the-wall thinking, for faith, for life. I’ve learned about farm life in ways I never could by simply reading news stories. I’ve followed the progress of a pregnant mother through to the birth of her son, and how she managed a toddler in the meantime. I’ve seen one friend publish a book of poems and another get a contract for a novel for publication next year, and got to share in the joy and excitement of both of those achievements.

I’ve found new friends, so many that I’m still surprised. I’ve found and been edited by good editors, who are so good that I don’t mind being edited by them for guest blogs posts and online articles because they’re improve what I write. (I do mind being edited by people who don’t make improvements but are doing other things, like promoting agendas.) I’ve read stories that made me laugh out loud and stories that brought tears to my eyes.

I led a team at work that accomplished extraordinary things, achieving things no one thought possible. It was amazing to be a small part of that.

My wife and I learned that, come March, we’re going to be grandparents. A whole new chapter of life is starting.

I read a few outstanding books, a lot of good books and a few not-so-good books. I was introduced to a a genre of writing called something like Stephen-King-like-Christians-horror-suspense-scare-your-socks-off. And the debate that’s continuing to grow about what is, isn’t and perhaps should be “Christian fiction.” I learned that if you write a review of a book, and you’re honest about your reaction to it, you better be prepared for the imperial storm troopers to attack.

I learned the kindness of strangers in comments on blog posts, both my own posts and those of others.

So yes, 2009 was, for me, a lot like a poem written in the dentist’s chair. And I’m grateful for all of it.

The Ninth Day of Christmas: A Book

So I veer off a bit from what we’ve been doing at High Calling Blogs to celebrate Christmas – celebrating 12 days of community by pointing to favorite writers, bloggers, tweeters – “others” besides ourselves.

For this ninth day, I want to talk about a book. And not just any book, but one for which I can’t really give a dispassionate review. Several of us were “there at the creation” of one part of this book – we actually saw it unfold online. We were there when the first news of the book-to-come was eked out in barely contained excitement via Twitter and email. (To be truthful, there was no “barely contained excitement” about it – it was more like squeals of euphoria, and we joined in.)

I had the privilege to read a partially completed manuscript (Word) version of the book. The author asked, hesitantly, what parts I liked best. I said it was easier to say what parts I didn’t like – because they weren’t any. And then to see the first reports of “it’s arrived on my doorstep,” followed by “it’s up on Amazon,” well, that was excitement of the first order.

The book is InsideOut: Poems. The author is the friend I’ve never met but talked on the phone with once, L.L. Barkat. The book's web site is here.

I first met L.L. through her memoir Stone Crossings: Finding Grace in Hard and Hidden Places, published in 2008 by IVP. I’ve told the story here about how I read it straight through one night, actually one morning in the wee hours, while I was in the hospital for broken ribs and a partially collapsed lung. And I told the story again here as well, with a little more information about what happened when I read it. Books can have big impacts, and some books can have profound impacts, and Stone Crossings had a profound impact on me.

And now the poems.

The one several of us saw being created was “In Your Dream,” because it happened during one of Twitter poetry jams (plug here for TweetSpeak Poetry, our online journal for the poems created on Twitter). Here’s one of the poem’s stanzas:

I was the story
in the burning book,
leading you beyond
frost and fields
lapped by time
towards a clearing.

The poems of InsideOut are about life and death, about family and brokenness, about color and lushness, about children and art and love. They’re arranged in seasons bit they transcend that arrangement. Just when you think you understand one, your eye catches a word or phrase you missed the first two times and the meaning changes again.

I’ve read the volume twice in its bound form, three times if you count the manuscript stage. I’ve gone back to read portions again. And I will do that again, and then give it another full reading. It’s that good.

InsideOut is published by the International Arts Movement, an organization that does some pretty cool stuff.

(Over at the High Calling Blogs, we’re celebrating the 12 days of Christmas by highlighting a blog or web site of someone besides ourselves during this season of Advent and Christmas.) (Which is what we should also be doing the other 353 days of the year.)

Crossing Some Stones: A Reflection

First stone crossed: It was in the hospital that I first met L.L. Barkat’s Stone Crossings: Finding Grace in Hard and Hidden Places. I had crashed on my bike three days before, and it took that long to figure out that something was very wrong. As my wife rushed me out the door to the emergency room, I grabbed Stone Crossings, figuring I would need something to do while we waited. I was wrong; we didn’t wait. They did x-rays immediately and then pronounced, like a medical benediction, three broken ribs, a fractured fourth rib, and a partially collapsed lung. With an oxygen tube up my nose and an IV drip for pain meds in my hand, I finally got to a room about 11:30. An hour later, I started reading, and didn’t stop until I was finished, sometime near 4 a.m.

Second stone crossed: The writer in me loved the book’s structure, each chapter like a stone, or two stones, really – a stone of remembrance and a stone to cross. Some of the remembrance-stones were painful, and some of the stones to cross were scary. Each stone had a simple name, like love, forgiveness, fear, gratitude and justice. The writing, ah, the writing: extraordinary.

Third stone crossed: It’s easy to see Stone Crossings as a kind of meditative memoir. And it is that. But about a third of the way into the book, I realized that something profound was happening, something very powerful for a reader. The stories were becoming my stories; the stones were becoming my stones to cross.

Fourth stone crossed: As each stone became more and more my own, the pain behind the author’s remembrances became my own, and I started turning my own stones over. There it all was – the pain, the hurt, the ugliness. And much of it was my own, of my own doing. None of the book’s promotional statements prepared me for this.

Fifth stone crossed: So many things go back to my father. He died more than 20 years ago, and quickly, from a massive stroke, which for him was a blessing. He would have hated any kind of disability, and in the worst way. But he left behind some heavy stones – he hadn’t spoken to my older brother in more than two years; he had just gotten mad at me for some reason still unknown earlier that week he died; so many unresolved issues with my mother; and a business that was a mess, an accounting nightmare. And I was the executor of his will. Grief, sorrow, anger – it was all bottled up while I helped my mother through all the legal morass. Two years later, I broke down and cried in my wife’s arms. More than 20 years later, as I picked up this stone in the hospital, I forgave him. And me.

Sixth stone crossed: And then with the pain of each stone came the gratitude. Someone had already turned my stones over, found the ugliness and cleaned it up. All of it. Instead of hiding ugliness and weighing me down with guilt and regrets, the stones had become steps forward, ways to cross the stream.

Seventh stone crossing: I read Stone Crossings in late July. Now I go back and reread the stones. And the gratitude grows.

(Note: Joan Ball over at Beliefnet.com will be featuring Stone Crossings in early December. Check out Joan's site -- it's a deep one -- and see what she does with Stone Crossings.)

Findings on Today's Web

Mike Duran over at deCompose has a good post today about the aim of Christian fiction. Is it discipleship, evangelism or both? His argument, and I think a good one, is that it's supposed to be both but skews heavily towards discipleship, i.e., the Christian market. Interesting discussion.

L.L. Barkat, who has three blogs and posts on several others, has a short, sweet post today at Seedlings in Stone called "Nothing in Return" and one at Love Notes to Yahweh about coming into wild roses. (OK, so I'm a fan. I like her writing and her art, and her children are no pikers in the art department either.) (I have a real rube's definition of art -- if I can draw it or paint it, it's not art. I can't do what L.L. does. And I can't do what her children do, either.) And in only the way that the internet can, I tweeted a reply to an question from Intervarsity Press about a favorite IVP book (Stone Crossings), L.L. retweeted it, IVP retweeted my blog post about it, and my blog got a rush of visitors. Crazy but fun.

I'm still reading Michael Snyder's Return Policy. I'm deliberately reading it slowly, catching the rhythm and the pace. I don't think I've read anything quite like it before. It reminds me, in a way, of John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces, but Snyder has his own distinct voice.

I spent part of the weekend working on two articles about blogging about layoffs. The editor who commissioned them saw my posts here and asked if I could write one or two articles about them. (He was editorially nonchalant, and I was editorially gaga, at the request.) We'll see how the editing and rewriting process goes.

Short Notes

A few short notes today.

My article on engagement -- employees or leadership -- is posted this morning at InsideWork.net. If you're interested or concerned about faith in the workplace, Inside Work is a good place to visit. Currently, it's featuring articles on public education, a different philosophy of success, causing God pain, charitable giving, and dealing with annoying people.

I've completed a short review on L.L. Barkat's Stone Crossings: Finding Grace in Hard and Difficult Places and posted it on Amazon. This is the book I had with me at the hospital when I had my ribs and lung attended to. The author is a writer and poet and writes for several print and online publications. If you're interested in exploring her work, a good place to start is her web site.

Currently I'm reading Faces in the Fire by T.L. Hines. He's written several books; this is the first of his I've read. It's an edgy, gritty supernatural thriller -- four interlocking stories about a man with no memory, an email spammer, a tattoo artist/heroin addict and a hit man. It's unlike any Christian fiction I've ever read -- Hines grabs the reader by the throat and doesn't let go.

Finally, I continue to mend after my bike crash. The last four days had been marked by doing very little except resting, reading and writing. The pain and soreness are lessening; I'm relying less on the prescription and more on over-the-counter stuff like Aleve, which is good. I plan to return to work on Tuesday; I have a check-up with the doctor on Wednesday. Thanks for your notes and prayers.

Routines, Reading and Writing

I've learned that broken ribs feel better during the day -- something happens at night, probably not unlike fevers getting higher at night. It's the evenings that let me know my ribs are there -- and they hurt.

I've napped a lot, read a lot, napped some more, talked with my son and daughter-in-law who have just arrived in St. Louis. They're moving here from Phoenix. So I give up biking the Arizona Canal Trail once a year in exchange for having them around all the time. OK, it's a deal.

I've spent some time yesterday and today rereading parts of L.L. Barkat's Stone Crossings: Finding Grace in Hard and Hidden Places. I cited it in my last post -- it's the book I read during my short hospital stay -- and I'm working on a longer review. It's good. In fact, it's better than good. It's remarkable.

Today, I opted for something completely different and began reading Faces in the Fire by T.L. Hines. It's suspense and thriller and supernatural suspense/thriller and I already know not to try to read it before I go to sleep. I'm hooked -- Hines does that to a reader.

I've also spent my enforced rest to work on an outline for a post, either here or on another blog, about layoffs, and how and why organizations get disconnected when they do them. The idea came from a conference call I was in the other day. Someone was discussing the problems so many companies and organizations were facing with employee engagement, and said it was perplexing management across America. It was one of those "Duh" moments, and an idea for an article was born.

And somehow, between hosptial visits, broken ribs, family arriving in town, work and having to rest, I'd managed to write about 5,000 words on the novel. Ar first I thought it was getting completely out of control, until a I reread the whole thing with the new material included. And the story is actually becoming more focused.

Then again, maybe it's the pain meds.

Broken Ribs and "Stone Crossings"

On Wednesday afternoon at work, I began to feel increasing soreness in my back. At 5 p.m., as I walked from my office to my car (I work on a large campus; the walk is about a block), the pain was so increasing that I was having trouble catching my breath. By the time I got home, my dentist appointment at 6:30 was becoming problematic, but I kept lumbering around with the thought I could still do it. At 6:05, I asked my wife to cancel the appointment and take me to the emergency room. I grabbed a book I'd been reading as we rushed out of the door.

Off we went. They got me in right away -- Wednesdays aren't like weekends for an emergency room. The x-rays showed I had (have) three broken ribs, a fourth with a minor fracture, and a partially collapsed left lung. My Sunday bike crash (see previous post) was more serious than it seemed or I had thought.

It was the lung that had everyone, including me, worried. Broken ribs hurt, and hurt a lot, but the lung issue was nothing to play around with. Fortunately, it was only a small partial collapse. The ER doctor talked with my doctor (who's also a cyclist) and they agreed I could go home and come back in the morning for an x-ray, or stay the night in the hospital. The ER doctor leaned toward the "stay" option. After almost fainting and being laid in the bed in the ER examining room, I agreed with the "stay" option. They rolled me upstairs, hooked up to an IV and oxygen, about 11:20 p.m., once a room was ready.

Hospitals are no place for rest. They're designed to heal you, not give you a mini-vacation. I hadn't expected to be staying the night, but I'd brought with me Stone Crossings: Finding Grace in Hard and Hidden Places by L.L. Barkat, which I'd started reading. The pain medicine had kicked in, I was settled for the night, and I picked up where I'd left off.

This slender work of prose is many things -- a memoir, a devotional, a journey of faith, an invitation to join a journey of faith. It is also incredibly fine writing. Barkat shifts the normal frame of reference for a Christian, and you discover yourself looking at God, faith and yourself in an entirely different way. It's like you've been lost in a forest looking for water, holding on to the compass you've owned for years but thinking it's not doing you much good, and then suddenly you stumble into a small clearing with a spring-fed pool. Stone Crossings is that pool.

The story she tells is searing, honest and vulnerable. At several points, it brought me to tears. I could blame it on the pain meds, and in fact did that once, about 2 a.m., when the nursing assistant came in to take my blood pressure and temperature.

"Are you hurting?" she asked.

I nodded. "But it's not my back. That's OK."

She glanced at the book in my hands. "Good book?"

"No," I said. "Great book. It's ripping a hole in my heart." And I'm glad.

My x-ray this morning showed my lung is stable. I'm home now. I'm taking my meds for pain and I'm rereading parts of Stone Crossings. My ribs and my lung are mending. So is my soul.