Poets and Poems: D.S. Martin and “The Role of the Moon”

Like many literary terms, “metaphysical poetry” was not something that the designated poets themselves invented. Instead, in the decades after they flourished, it was John Dryden (1631-1700) and Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) who popularized the description. They did not mean it as a compliment. Instead, they saw this group of 16^th century poets as writers who abandoned the rules of poetry and created something unnatural. It wasn’t until the 20^th century, led by figures like T.S. Eliot, that the metaphysical poets were seen as something important and creative in and of themselves. 

The five poets usually labeled as “metaphysical” were John Donne (1572-1631), Henry Vaughn (1621-1695), George Herbert (1593-1633), Andrew Marvell (1621-1678), and Richard Crashaw (1613-1649). Sometimes a sixth is added, that of John Milton (1608-1674), but Milton doesn’t quite fit what the other five were about. One of Donne’s short poems has entered the collective consciousness, with its famous lines of “No man is an island” and “For whom the bell tolls.” 

 

Using conversational, everyday language, the metaphysical poets wrestled with big ideas. They often abandoned meter to delve deeper into what they were writing about. Three of them – Vaughn, Marvell, and Crashaw – lived and wrote through the tumultuous decades of the English Civil War, the execution of Charles I, the protectorate under Oliver Cromwell, and the restoration of the Stuart monarchy. Crashaw was an exile who died in poverty. 

 

Poet, writer, and editor D.S. Martin finds the metaphysical poets to be inspirational and creative. And he’s published a poetry collection, The Role of the Moon, to pay tribute. 

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

It is a gift – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

“Butchering,” poem by Rhina Espaillat – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

“Song of Myself,” poem by Walt Whitman – Every Day Poems.

 

“The Turning Aside,” edited by D.S. Martin

It’s a commonplace to hear poets, critics, and poetry readers alike say that poetry is dying and no one reads it any more. Ina literary genre where “bestseller” is defined as 1000 copies (or fewer), there might be some truth to that commonplace. Extremely few poets in the English-speaking world as well as elsewhere make a full-time living from poetry. And what is true for poetry in general is perhaps even more true for Christian poetry.

And yet poets keep writing, and readers keep reading. If the health of the genre can be measured by quality, then the state of contemporary Christian poetry exemplified in The Turning Aside: The Kingdom Poets Book of Contemporary Christian Poetry is very healthy indeed.

Editor D.S. Martin, who writes the Kingdom Poets blog, edits the Poeima Poetry Series from Cascade Books, and is a published poet himself, has selected some 240 poems by 60 poets, defining “contemporary” as including those poets still alive in the year 2000. It thus covers a broad array of 20th and early 21^st century poetry, including some from the World War I era.

Many of the poets are well known – Wendell Berry, R.S. Thomas, Dana Gioia, Richard Wilbur, Luci Shaw, Sydney Lea, Jeanne Murray Walker, Mark Jarman, Scott Cairns, Laurie Klein, Malcolm Guite, and Christian Wiman. Others are becoming better known, like Tania Runyan, Anya Kugiorny Silver, and Dave Harrity.

What is so striking are the quality and the diversity. These poems represent different generations, and different Christian faith traditions – mainstream Protestant, Catholic, evangelical, Greek Orthodox, Anglican, and others. For all the diversity, in this creative endeavor we call poetry, the differences submerge, and the quality, perceptions, and imagery shine forth. It’s as if the differences disappear as each poet speaks from the language of faith.

Exodus by Nicholas Samaras

The Lord was as simple as walking

into evening. We stepped out of our lives.

The tea on the fire, the bread in the bowl.

My book lying face up, open at the page.

Choosing the Lord was a simple as walking

forward, the trust of a child holding onto you,

your own trust settled like believing,

the doors open into a cool, unleavened

evening.

What’s especially memorable here are the contrasts between the fire and the bread on the bowl, and then the “cool, unleavened” evening. So few lines, and so many packed images.

Another wonderful selection is a poem by Laurie Klein.

Unbelief by Laurie Klein

Collection Editor D.S. Martin

Begin with the body:

holy, breathing, real—how we know;

later, call it a book of curves,

home, riddled with contradictions.

Ask those who design, and

by design, deceive: Which is true?

a coin toss, or vote?

an aqueduct, or a well of salvation?

a seven-veil dance worth one life,

or half a kingdom?

Or picture

Moses and Paul, head-to-head,

curled around time, two halves,

one voice, their ropey, blue-collar

topography riveting as a river

flicking a skipped stone,

as if each word cast is a net

enclosing a silver fish—arc

against air—half a second

and one small glimmer

all it takes to re-aim a skeptics gaze.

Martin has done exceedingly well in selecting these poems. They are the stuff of faith, with all of its assurances, grace, doubts, and contradictions.

The Turning Aside is a moving collection of poetry, demonstrating the vitality of contemporary Christian poets and the beauty they create.

Related:

My review of D.S. Martin’s So the Moon Would Not Be Swallowed.

My review of Sydney Lea’s Six Sundays Towards a Seventh.

Top photograph by Lubos Houska via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Poetry as Family History

This post was originally published at The Master’s Artist.

Founded by Hudson Taylor in 1865, the China Inland Mission played a major role in Christian missions to that country from 1866 to 1949, when the Chinese communists defeated the Nationalists and took control. All foreign missionaries were expelled.

The history of the China Inland Mission (today called the Overseas Missionary Fellowship) overlaps the period of almost a century of turmoil and upheaval in China – the decline and eventual overthrow of the emperor, the Boxer Rebellion, the presidency of Sun Yat-Sen, the period of the warlords and the rise of the communists, the Japanese invasion in the mid-1930s and the forces of Mao driving the forces of Chiang Kai-shek to what it now Taiwan. The missions had an impact; even today, house churches exist in China in the face of official government opposition, persecution and often imprisonment.

The story of the mission has been told in memoirs, biographies, histories and novels. Last year, author Bo Caldwell published City of Tranquil Light, a wonderful novel based on the story of her missionary grandparents in rural China in the 1920s and 1930s (I reviewed the novel last December). D.S. Martin, a writer and poet in Ontario, has also told the story of his grandparents, who were in China at about the same time as Caldwell’s but remained until expelled by the communists.

The difference is that Martin has told his story in poetry. And it is a close personal story, in that Martin’s mother was an infant when she accompanied her parents to China and grew up in the country.

So the Moon Would Not Be Swallowed is a collection of 16 poems based upon letters to and from his grandparents and relatives, as well as research on the mission itself. And what Martin demonstrates is that poetry can serve, and serve well, as family history, providing a depth, texture and understanding beyond a traditional family biography or history.

Martin’s grandparents, Ernest and Marian Davis, arrive in China in 1923 and settle in Honan Province. This is the time of roving armies and warlords; security becomes a daily thing to be considered and planned for. From “Darkening Landscape:”

From the open plain to our east soldiers

have driven the brigands across the rail line

& up into the shadowy hills we can see to the west

Up there somewhere

Are the missionaries taken five weeks ago

The poem reads like a letter home, describing their home and the city of Yencheng where they live, across the river from barley fields that “stretch to the horizon.” China in 1923 is largely an agricultural economy.

War and civil unrest continue and then abate for a time. Another report home is the poem “Good Housekeeping:”

Finally war is over

Trains are running

Mail’s coming through…

But there’s much teaching to do

& walks are taboo The beach is horrible

With blood and memory of war

The beheaded & shot were buried in sand

But dogs will be dogs

In China as elsewhere

These few simple lines convey both relief and the horror of what’s happened. You know exactly what the dogs are doing without it having to be overtly stated.

The poems remind everyone that the Davis family is a family of foreigners, and foreigners are often a target of blackmail or brutality by bandits and troops. Another poem describes how close to death they often are: “They lined us up / I took a deep breath hit the floor / & rolled under a bed / lying for two nights beneath the robber-chief’s breathing…”

“Evacuation” describes their required move to Hankow for their safety in 1927, followed by poems which describe letters home about everything except the evacuation. The Davises experience the Japanese invasion, and later are separated for a time. The chaos continues after the Japanese defeat. And the last poem, “The Weather is Changing,” uses weather to describe the change in government, and what will be the end of their time in China.

Martin has honored his grandparents with these poems, telling the story of young couple committed to serving God regardless of the personal consequences.

Related:

Martin blogs at Kingdom Poets.

Illustration by Fran Hogan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

The Poetry of Hope

I was reading D.S. Martin's Kingdom Poets blog, and learned that Martin was the editor of Wipf and Stock Publishers Poetry Poiema Series. And he had a new volume coming out -- Six Sundays Toward a Seventh: Spiritual Poems by Sydney Lea. It was the first volume Lea had published since 2006, and it was a collection of his spiritual poems -- poems of faith -- from a lifetime of writing poetry. I was hooked, and I bought it.

And then I read it.

To see what I learned, please visit my post today at The Master's Artist, "The Poetry of Hope."

D.S. Martin's "So the Moon Would Not Be Swallowed"

The history of the China Inland Mission has been told in official histories, biographies, thousands of newspaper and magazine article, novels and in poetry. In So the Moon Would Not Be Swallowed, Canadian author and poet D.S. Martin has assembled 16 poems that tell the story of his grandparents, who served as missionaries with the China Inland Mission from 1923 to 1949.

To read more, please see my post today at The Master's Artist.