Tag Archives: embodiment

#MormonPoetrySlam, Day 16 (2014): Jim Richards reads
“Angels of Mercy” by Darlene Young

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“Angels of Mercy” by Darlene Young
"Faith, Hope and Charity" from elycefeliz on Flickr.

Here’s a link to the poem if you’d like to follow along as Jim reads. Read more about the Mormon Poetry Slam here and see the posting schedule here. Vote for your favorite performance here (the link will go live once all the entries have been posted). Use #MormonPoetrySlam if you post about this in your social media circles.

#MormonPoetrySlam, Day 11 (2014): Joe Plicka reads
“Grandma Dyed Her Hair” by Rubina Rivers Forester

"Skokräm" from europeana

Read more about the Mormon Poetry Slam here and see the posting schedule here. Vote for your favorite performance here (the link will go live once all the entries have been posted). Use #MormonPoetrySlam if you post about this in your social media circles.

Is There Deep Play in Heaven? Or, Rest Well, Brother Swenson, Rest Well

Anthology Poet Highlight 41/82: Paul Swenson, “Negative Space” [audio: http://fireinthepasture.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Swenson_Negative-Space.mp3] (My reading of “Negative Space”) On the afternoon of the first resurrection, I want to sit on my sister May’s bench and read her new poems. So, maybe, if you’re still around when I go under, I wonder—could you burn me, turn me into ash, and slip me in [the… Read more »

How Do We Do It?: Jim Richards’ “Cleave”

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Anthology Poet Highlight 39/82: Jim Richards, “Cleave” [audio: http://fireinthepasture.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/tumblr_lxc4b0b5581qldxkx.mp3] (My reading of “Cleave”) I take Jim’s “it” to be, yes, sex—but also more than sex. It take it to be the much deeper state of being, the more-than-intimate connection, the dual state of oneness entered into when partners become more than lovers, lovers more than partners. Such eroticism goes much… Read more »

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 »

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 »

Alex Caldiero’s “Seeing a Body”: The Shape Sound Makes

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Anthology Poet Highlight 20/82: Alex Caldiero, “Seeing a Body” This poem, which I’ve taken to calling “Seeing a Body” for ease of reference, melds performance and content in order to compel an awareness of the body’s connection to the earth and to language and sound—even to compel an awareness of the body’s connection to the earth and to tradition through… Read more »

Kimberly Johnson’s Ode To a Woman’s “Most Matronly Adornment”

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Poet Highlight: Kimberly Johnson, “Ode on My Episiotomy“ Yep. That’s right. Episiotomy. A woman’s “most matronly adornment,” as Kim has it. What better reason, then, to write an “Ode on My Episiotomy.” (Not that I have one—not that I’ll ever have one, unless, like I ruminate here, I can slip on my wife’s. Not likely though.) I adore this poem—as… Read more »

Finding the Immutable Wayplace of God in Kristen Eliason’s “Arms Upon Arms to an Earth”

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FitP Poet Highlight 11/82: Kristen Eliason, “arms upon arms to an earth“ “Kristen Eliason’s delicious prose and poetry drive a hard bargain between elegy and Japanese wabi-sabi.” So says whoever wrote the bio note on this event page announcing a Kristen Eliason reading at Notre Dame. I nod in agreement: “Yes. Yes, Kristen’s poetry is elegaic, very haiku-like in its… Read more »

“Not Satisfaction, but Its Proxies”: Javen Tanner’s Curses For Your Sake

Anthology Poet Highlight 10/82: Javen Tanner, Curses For Your Sake “The title of Tanner’s chapbook frames well the experience captured in his lyric narrative poems. Extracted from the decree God directed towards Adam and Eve at the moment he expelled them from the Garden of Eden, the phrase ‘curses for your sake’ (see Gen. 3:17) suggests that moral paradox and… Read more »