Fire in the Pasture: 21st Century Mormon Poets
. . . the bounty of [this] anthology reminded me of Christ’s generosity in feeding the five thousand. Christ took real substances—a little bread, two small fish—and he created from them . . . food that nourished the people and made it possible for them to return to their lives both physically and spiritually renewed. Poets take matter (language, emotion, thought, experience) and make of that matter a new creation, a work of art that did not exist before the poet organized it, a work that has the potential (each poet hopes) to nourish—to make readers see what they did not see before, to offer insight, to create empathy, to provoke thought, or to express beauty, soundness, depth. To offer abundance in place of scarcity.
–Susan Elizabeth Howe
Random Posts
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Mormon Poetry, Have You Met TED? The Case of Calvin Olsen
14 February 2013 11:34 AM | No CommentsMaybe that should read, in the voice of Robert Pinsky, “TED, have you met Mormon Poetry?” Or more specifically, though still in Pinsky’s voice, “TED, have you met Calvin Olsen, American Poet?” But I’ll get to Pinsky and Calvin soon...
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Mirroring Mortality: Calvin Olsen’s Haiku #100
26 June 2012 10:12 PM | 2 CommentsAnthology Poet Highlight 43/82: Calvin Olsen, Haiku #100 I’ve been fascinated with haiku since I started writing poetry and for a time I, like Calvin, used haiku as a springboard into writing longer poems. I think I was drawn to...
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Warren Hatch’s Mapping the Bones of the World: “An Economy of Grace”
29 October 2011 10:44 AM | No CommentsAnthology Poet Highlight 13/82: Warren (Scott) Hatch, Mapping the Bones of the World Although it might seem contradictory to suggest that Mapping the Bones of the World, a collection of long narrative poems, is economical—as if the poet had composed...
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Ah, To Live for Dizziness: Mark Bennion’s “Still Life”
22 October 2011 5:05 PM | 1 CommentAnthology Poet Highlight 6/82: Mark Bennion, “Still Life“ (Scroll down) Mark Bennion’s first collection, Psalm & Selah is a great example of what a good poet can do in response to the Book of Mormon, which is to explore the...
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But We are No Eden: Emily Stanfill’s “Then I Became Eve”
10 November 2011 10:26 AM | No CommentsPoet 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...
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Laura Nielson Baxter Archive
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Airing the Cultural Laundry: Laura Baxter’s “Take Care of Your Soul—It’s Flapping in the Breeze”
Posted on November 30, 2011 | No CommentsAnthology Poet Highlight 32/82: Laura Nielson Baxter, “Take Care of Your Soul—It’s Flapping in the Breeze“ “Take Care” is an exercise in absurdity. I mean, a neighbor airing his soul on a clothesline like recently washed laundry then leaving it...
