The Third Day of Christmas: Two from Bellingham

The internet is all about connections. You read someone’s blog post, you decide to make a comment, you read someone else’s comment on that post, you click on their blog link – and voila, a connection is made.

That’s how I met Jim Schmotzer. I don’t remember exactly whose blog we were both commenting on, but that’s how we met.

He lives in Bellingham, Washington. He’s a husband, a father and a grandfather.

Jim’s blog is The Faithful Skeptic, and he posts poems and short, short, really short stories on it. That’s not entirely correct. He posts really good poems and short, short stories on it. One poem he posted in September is entitled “Thirty Five” – and it’s about a wedding anniversary. It especially caught my eye because a month earlier, I had celebrated my 36th. You can follow Jim on Twitter, too.

In November, Jim wrote what was only slight longer than a short, short story, called “The Tipping Point.” Two people commented – me and a guy named Fred Sprinkle (or that’s his online name). Fred’s also from Bellingham. I clicked on the link – and found a young poet and writer.

He says he grew up living on a sailboat, but that he can’t sail very well. Fred’s blog is I Force It to Rhyme, and he primarily posts poetry and short random memories. I really like his poetry; one example is “Produce of the Spirit” (“Give us cabbage/ in the kingdom/ of God”). And a random memory can be found in Random Memory 1. Fred can be found on Twitter as well.


(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.)

The Poetry Closet

Yesterday, one of the best writers I've run across -- both print and online -- posted this on one of her three blogs, Seedlings in Stone. When I read it, my ears burned.

I've talked before about L.L. Barkat's book, Stone Crossings: Finding Grace in Hard and Hidden Places. This is the one I read straight through during the night I spent in the hospital after learning the results of my bike crash -- three broken ribs, a fractured fourth rib and a partially collapsed lung. Since hospitals are no places for rest, I abandoned all hope of sleep and instead read this wonderful book. And she has a new book coming in 2010 from InterVarsity Press, God in the Yard: Tending the Soul in Small Places.

Yesterday, I had an email exchange with L.L. about how I got into this "poetry thing." I've read a lot of poetry over the years but would never have called myself a major poetry reader or even a minor fan. In high school, I liked the English poets of World War I, like Rupert Brooke, possibly because of the Vietnam War going on at the time. I liked the modern poets the best -- T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Dylan Thomas -- and have also read a number of contemporary poets -- Richard Wilbur, Billy Collins, John Ashberry and Brendan Galvin. I learned that just about anything written by Wendell Berry sounded like poetry. And my background, training and experience and experience as a speechwriter had required me to be as mindful of words sounds, rhythm, cadence, language -- all the proper domains of the poet. But me thinking about writing poetry? Not.

I can actually pinpoint when this poetry "thing" started: Sunday, July 5. Okay, so it's confession time. I was sitting in church, listening to our senior pastor's sermon on John 3 -- the scene with Jesus and Nicodemus when Jesus speaks to being born again. What caught my attention was one of the overlooked parts of the story: Nicodemus came to Jesus at night. As I listened to the pastor, my mind wouldn't let go of that. It was at night. Nicodemus came at night because he didn't want anyone to see him talking to Jesus.

I started taking what looked like notes (my wife was pleased I wasn't nodding off) but were really images and thoughts and ideas. I listened to what the pastor was saying and let what he said form images in my mind that somehow changed into something else when I wrote (the order-of-worship sheet soon looked like a mess). During the next two weeks, interrupted by my bike crash and hospital stay, I worked on what eventually became this.

Then, a month later, came this, based on the story of the crippled man by the pool who's not fast enough to make it into the water when it ripples. That was inspired by another sermon -- same pastor, same situation, similar scribbles all over the order-of-worship sheet. When I posted the first poem, no one had noticed or at least commented. This second one, though, prompted some comments, including one by L.L., welcoming me to the poetry closet.

Was I in the poetry closet?

I'd been following L.L.'s weekly RAP (Random Act of Poetry) on The High Calling Blogs site. This is a weekly invitation for poets to right about a particular topic, and L.L. had been doing a series on rooms in a house. The final room in the series was the closet, and I decided to try it. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done -- 20 or 30 drafts, constant reworking and fiddling with words, most of the drafts written in long hand until I finally typed it and then kept working over individual words. And this poem is SHORT.

The result was "Testimony (in the closet)." It prompted a number of responses and reactions. I had some comments on the blog, but also emails from people, including at work. Perhaps the best response was from my wife. Just as I was falling asleep, she came in the bedroom with tears in her eyes. "It's my wedding dress," she said.

I've done two more since then, "Knows" and "Summer Light." I'm reading more poetry online, from poets like Marcus Goodyear (see "Eve's Second Garden") and Jim Schmotzer. Marcus and L.L. have "introduced" me (electronically) to another whole group of poets who particpate in the weekly RAP. And then I'm finding incredibly good writers and poets like {this restless heart}.

I suppose this means I am indeed in that poetry closet.

Poetry on the Web

Without looking for it, I've been finding poetry on the web.

I read poetry, but not on a regular basis. Last year, I wandered over to a book fair in a nearby suburb and found myself having an extended conversation with Walter Bargen, the state of Missouri's poet laureate. He was standing at his booth, trying not to look occupied, and I walked up and introduced myself. (If nothing else, I thought, I'd make a good prop for the booth.) (I was right.)

Bargen was delightful to talk with -- and eminently approachable. And when I told him I had actually read a book of his poems, he got downright voluble. I bought two more of his books; he signed both and did a special drawing/autograph in one called Feast. It was the coolest thing. Our conversation attracted others, and by the time I left, his booth traffic had ballooned from one to quite a few.

I've read a lot of poetry over the years -- Frost, Dickenson, the English Romantics, Rupert Brooke, Longellow, Whitman, Eliot, Yeats, Wallace Stevens -- all the standards. But I don't really visit the web to find poetry. Until the last month or so.

I'm not sure if I found poetry or it found me. I was looking at a site called The High Calling Blogs, and discovered that it had a Friday feature called Random Acts of Poetry -- poems on a stated topic with links to others also writing on the featured topic. Well, you know the web. Before long, I was looking all over the place at poetry that was really good stuff. I found poems by L.L. Barkat, Jim Schmotzer, Marcus Goodyear and many others -- and it was poetry I connected to on several levels.

We live in a time that's not exactly conducive to the reading of poetry. And yet, in a way, we live in a time when we desperately need to be reading poetry.

A recent post in The Evangelical Outpost by a writer and thinker named Hayden Butler cited three reasons for reading poetry: it breaks us out of our linguistic ruts; it can make us speak more precisely; and it shows we can create beauty in our speech. None of these is necessarily critical for political sound bites or 140-character microblogging, but they are vitally important for expanding our hearts and nurturing our souls.