Category Archives: Poet Highlights

The Flesh is Charged with the Grandeur of God: On Elaine Christensen’s “Sermon on Manchac Swamp”

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Anthology Poet Highlight 30/82: Elaine Wright Christensen, “Sermon On Manchac Swamp” Ah, “[t]he world is charged with the grandeur of God. / It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; / It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil / Crushed.” So Hopkins, for whom “nature is never spent.” For whom creation is a living fountain of… Read more »

Jonathon Penny’s “Confession, after battle”: A Soldier’s Litany

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Anthology Poet Highlight 29/82: Jonathon Penny, “Confession, after battle“ At first glance, “Confession” seems a simplistic poem: the poet repeats the same structure for four, essentially five, stanzas, changing only a word per stanzaic turn. The structure is thus something of a template— I’m sorry that I killed your ______ I did not know he was your ______ I only… Read more »

Clinton F. Larson’s “City of Joseph”: This Soft Array of Leaves and Light

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Poet Highlight: Clinton F. Larson, “The City of Joseph“ While “The City of Joseph” is obviously meant as inspirational verse (especially considering its venue of publication: The Ensign), I don’t find it sentimental in anyway. In fact, the language and imagery and the way Larson binds them together in his poetic vision are quite striking, quite accomplished. In fact, I… Read more »

The Urge and Urge and Urge of Danny Nelson’s “Creation”

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Anthology Poet Highlight 28/82: Danny Nelson, “Creation” Danny’s “Creation” revises the Old Testament’s opening text. As such, it delves deeply into the “procreant urge of creation,” a phrase straight out of Whitman. Indeed, in Danny’s poem, as in Whitman and, I would argue, most poetry, I find this “Urge and urge and urge, / Always the procreant urge of the… Read more »

“Lingua Doctrinae“: Arwen Taylor’s Linguistic Worship

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Anthology Poet Highlight 27/82: Arwen Taylor, “Lingua Doctrinae“ amicus, amici, amico, amicum, amico, Amice. The window, with its morning salty joke of squinting scowls, unfolds a dusty yellow ray of light on you, while I still close-eyed soak in shadows in the middle of the room. We resurrect the third declension, bring the plural genitive alive, resume linguistic worship, conjugate… Read more »

“Like Passing the Sacrament”: Will Bishop’s “When I Do Go On My Honeymoon”

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Anthology Poet Highlight 26/82: Will Bishop, “When I Do Go On My Honeymoon” Afraid but not afraid to let her touch me, we’ll undress slowly like passing the sacrament … Will captures the thrill—and the anxiety—of embarking on a (pro)creative journey in this poem. He begins by engaging a paradox experienced by unsuspecting virgins when they sexually collide atop the… Read more »

E.S. Jenkins’ “Weary”: Sorrow, Greatly Multiplied

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Anthology Poet Highlight 25/82: E.S. (Sarah) Jenkins, “Weary” I counted them as they came—sons and daughters who didn’t count. I counted their limbs, perfect limbs, like their father’s— nothing so imperfect. I found him perfect, my one week of us, my one weak husband. In her moving elegiac poem, “Weary,” Sarah highlights a less than pleasant aspect of the woman’s… Read more »

The Lust that Flowers on Timothy Liu’s “Tree that Knowledge Is”

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Anthology Poet Highlight 24/82: Timothy Liu, “The Tree that Knowledge Is“ (scroll down) This short poem illustrates Tim’s double-voice as both a gay and deeply religious poet. As Bryan Waterman observes, “A number of signifiers [in the poem] resonate with a Mormon audience: God’s ’still small voice’” “a favorite Primary phrase” with considerable cache in the Church’s pedagogical culture. Additionally,… Read more »

But We are No Eden: Emily Stanfill’s “Then I Became Eve”

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Poet Highlight: Emily Stanfill, “Then I Became Eve“ What strikes me most about the poem, first, is the way the poet “verbs” the adjective innocent, using it not to describe her Eve—as in, “I am/was innocent/an innocent person”—but as a means of modifying her, as in, “He made me innocent.” This out-of-the-ordinary usage highlights, for me, the possibility of Adam… Read more »

Language—and Beyond Language: Lisa Bickmore’s “Dog Aria”

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Anthology Poet Highlight 23/82: Lisa Bickmore, “Dog Aria” Lisa’s poem is about a dog. And not about a dog. On the surface the poet narrates her dachsund’s relationship with water and with song, showing the canine “baying adagio,” swimming “among the staves”—the movements of the sprinklers, the dishwasher, the washing machine—as the hush of water grows thick in his ears… Read more »