Just in time for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, I will be emceeing and reading with Lorraine Healy, Suzanne Paola, and Annette Spauling-Convy from St. Peter's B-List, Contemporary Poems Inspired by the Saints, a spirited and compelling poetry anthology edited by Mary Ann B. Miller and published by Ave Maria Press earlier this year.
As the title suggests, this collection focuses on contemporary responses to saints, from the well-known variety to the obscure. Speaking of obscure, Alice Friman's contribution, "Seeing the Sights," tells of a holy woman named Vilgefortis, Saint Starosta, aka the bearded saint:
There she is
nailed to her five-o'clock shadow. / No weeping mother. No deposition. / No miracle in the tomb. She dangles / in her side-show getup, beyond tweezers / or depilatories, electrolysis or laser, /
forty bucks a shot. Grind golden scissors, / strop a magic blade. It will do not good. This is God's hair, tough as wire, / inspired as twisted nails.
Poems by Edward Hirsch, Dana Gioia, Brian Doyle, Erika Meitner, Martin Espada, Jim Daniels, Franz Wright, Mary Karr, Kelli Russell-Agodon, Susan Blackwell Ramsey, Rebecca Lauren, Sarah J. Sloat, C. Dale Young, J. D. Schraffenberger, and many other fine poets grace these pages with tales of the forlorn to the fabulous. One of my favorites, "Shopping for Miracles: Lourdes, 1979," by Alan Bereka, gets to the root of why this is my kind of saint anthology:
I returned to the States with a glass flask
filled with holy water which I gave
to my mother ... she remained
bedridden and continued to say the rosary
through her pain every day until this died.
In a similar fashion, Kelli Russell Agodon's speaker, in "Being Called Back," welcomes both the priest and the medic:
I know the priest would come,
offer everlasting life and pray
over my body, but I'm betting
on the medic, the EMT, the blonde girl
who works weekends at the fire station
to keep her daughter in private school.
That this book would include poems so utterly doubting the power of faith is testament to its democratic approach, an admirable quality in a book that could have ended up being one-sided, preachy, dogmatic: too damn devout for its own good. Maybe it's that the editor knows there are saints in our malls and parking lots, staying up for us in fire stations, picking up our trash. They may never be recognized by the Catholic Church, and yet no one questions their ability to save us.
If you live in the area and want a taste of the thought-provoking poems that await you, come down to Elliott Bay Books in Seattle on December 8, at 7 pm, and listen to four contributors read their own work as well as their favorites from the book.
Sunday, November 16, 2014
Sunday, November 2, 2014
A Poem by Florentina Tunduc, Student, Bellevue College
FIG
You gave me
the sun
From under
your skin,
You gave me
your light
Trapped in
a thousand tiny seeds.
--Florentina
Tunduc, Student, Bellevue College
My name
is Florentina. Many years ago, I wrote some poetry when I was about 12-13 years
old. The poem was in Romanian, and it was about my little dog named Maxi and my
cat Mimi. I grew up in a family where animals were always welcomed. My
parents taught me to love nature, and especially animals.
Now, living in
the USA with my husband, after many years finally I have a son, three cats and
a fig tree. When the assignment for my English 101 course was about poetry… Gosh,
I said, I won’t be able to write a single line that even makes a little sense.
Days went by
and the due date approached. Suddenly, I had a flash about the joy and
happiness I felt on the day I ate my first fig fruit from my own tree. Even now
I feel those little tiny seeds bursting in my mouth, that silky soft feeling of
the inside of the fruit, its skin like velvet, soft, yet the same time protecting
the richness of fruit inside. My mind clicked to the muse of that day, and my
heart participated by giving me the excitement of such simple and pure joy.
Then I wrote my second poem of my life, but this time in English. Thanks to my
fig tree for saving my assignment and bringing joy to others reading my little poem.
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