The most recent ImageUpdate led me to the following poets and books of and on poetry:
- A Poet for ‘Bruised Evangelicals’ - Kara Bettis' profile of the poet Malcolm Guite for Christianity Today positions him as a sort of tribal elder for younger generations of Christians. 'Guite’s doorway—his poetry—brings Scripture to life, struggles with doubt, and reveres Christ through a “baptized imagination,” a phrase Guite borrows from Lewis, one of his role models. Evangelicals love Guite because he is “so obviously orthodox,” Begbie argues. “He’s obviously a believer, but he brings that world alive, so you rediscover its freshness.”' In setting the context for why 'the readership for Christian poetry seems to be growing' Bettis cites Micah Mattix, professor of English at Regent University and co-editor of an Anthology of Christian Poetry in America since 1940, who is optimistic about the future of poets who write through the lens of redemption.
- Christian Poetry in America Since 1940: An Anthology by Micah Mattix (Editor), Sally Thomas (Editor). Showcasing thirty-five American poets born in or after 1940, this anthology confirms that one of the most vibrant developments in contemporary verse has been a renewed engagement with the Christian faith. Andrew Frisardi writes that, 'With superb biographical and critical prefaces placed before each poet’s work, the anthology provides a substantial introduction to contemporary Christian poetry in America, as well as food for thought and multiple models for where such poetry might go in the future.' Louis Markos says, 'This slim but substantial volume gives the lie to those who complain that believers in Christ have abandoned the fine arts. There are still many poets out there with their sleeves rolled up, ready to wrestle with temporal and eternal issues.' J. Mark Bertran says, 'The introduction by Micah Mattix makes a intriguing case for why every lover of poetry, regardless of creed, should be reading Christian poets.' Mattix writes, 'What has been unexpected is that so many gifted poets should write openly religious work that would be published in major trade and university presses—and that one of those volumes, Franz Wright’s Walking to Martha’s Vineyard, which begins with an apology for the existence of God, should win the Pulitzer Prize in 2004.'
- Walking to Martha's Vineyard by Franz Wright. In this radiant collection, Franz Wright shares his regard for life in all its forms and his belief in the promise of blessing and renewal. In an interview for Image Journal, Wright said: 'I think of my writing and my religious experience as very separate, though I know that the religious experience colors the writing. For me, there is no real poetry without a previous visionary experience. In a way, the writing is an attempt to save the experience, to give it a permanent form, to carry it through life after it has waned ... The poems were all attempts to find a place to store the joy and certainty of the ultimate goodness and coherence and tenderness of reality.'
- Ancient Salt: Essays on Poets, Poetry, and the Modern World by Andrew Frisardi. The subjects of the essays are Scottish poet Edwin Muir (1887–1959); Italian modernist Giuseppe Ungaretti (1888–1970); Irish poet W. B. Yeats (1865–1939); Welsh poet Vernon Watkins (1906–1968); English poet and Blake scholar Kathleen Raine (1908–2003); English poet-editor Peter Russell (1921–2003); American poet and Alaskan homesteader John Haines (1924–2011); English poet Richard Berengarten (formerly Burns) (1943–); and American poet-critic David Mason (1954–). Frisardi offers close readings of these poets, and considers their work in light of the challenges of living and writing amid the extraordinary transformations of the modern era. Some of the poets are religious, some are agnostic or perhaps atheist, but all of them articulate a human-poetic response to modernity: its pluralism, mobility, scientific discoveries, innovations, and unprecedented global awareness; as well as its rootlessness, fragmentation, dehumanizing mechanization, materialism, environmental catastrophes, and even systematic genocide. Frisardi's new collection of poems, The Moon on Elba, will be out from Wiseblood Books in early 2023.
- To One Kneeling Down No Word Came is a post by Jonathan Chan explaining why, for the last four years, he has been haunted by the voice of R. S. Thomas. Thomas was an Anglican priest who tended to a parish in Wales while also working as a poet. Chan writes: 'His poems have stood as lodestones in the corners of my mind each time I have prayed, or sat down to write a poem of my own. Thomas’ poems are characteristically spare, suspicious of certainty, hostile to mechanisation, and filled with the ache of doubt.' Chan's debut collection of poetry, going home, was published in 2022 with Landmark Books in Singapore. Rowan Williams says, 'These are poems in which the meaningfulness of the convergence of body and soul is wonderfully captured; a rare, vivid, sensitive, precise voice.'
Franz Wright - Progress and A Word for Joy.
