Posts Tagged ‘scene’
Poetry Friday: “The Name of God”
October 20, 2017
In Scripture, “the name of God” equals “the power of God.” Think of Jesus saying, in John’s Gospel, “I will do whatever you ask in my name” (14: 13-14). What Anya Silver does in this poem is invent a litany of extraordinary images for her personal relation to the name of God. She longs to…
Read MorePoetry Friday: “Underwhelmed”
September 29, 2017
Put on your hiking books and grab your compass, magnifying glass, and shovel: this poem is taking you on an exploratory adventure. What the poem is tracking down is the manifold concepts in the word “under.” Some of the poem’s “unders” are recognizable: like “under the splay-handed palms,“ “under the coral’s forest of horn,” “under…
Read MorePoetry Friday: “Medieval Miniatures: Entry into Jerusalem”
September 15, 2017
Dan Murphy has written a series of poems inspired by medieval miniatures: those marvelously detailed paintings crammed full with colorful life. In this poem, Murphy uses the miniature of Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem to multiply images for our human need to reach for the beyond. I love the variety of these images: someone climbing a…
Read MorePoetry Friday: “Russian Bell”
September 8, 2017
In this stirring poem by Anya Silver, the bell becomes a blueprint. First, the bell shape is transposed on her own body dangling freely in the “arc and blur” of a rope swing. Then, it becomes her open mouth and uvula. And, finally, we see the heart as a shattered peony (“unpeeling, pealing”) dropping petals…
Read MorePoetry Friday: “Japanese Wall Hanging”
June 23, 2017
I find myself reading this poem both literally and as a metaphor for our lives. On the literal level, Moira Linehan focuses with intensely loving detail on the Japanese brush painter. The first four lines list with tender concern all the things that might go wrong in the painting process. The next five lines move…
Read MorePoetry Friday: “June Prayer”
June 2, 2017
How to pray for someone bent over by grief when nature is stretching upward in the June sunshine? This is the question posed by Robert Cording’s “June Prayer.” We learn in the course of the poem that the young son of a woman “I love” has died months ago, and that she asks the poet…
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