Tag Archives: the body

The Present Sense and Semantics of Pain

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I’m revisiting Elizabeth Garcia’s poem “The Semantics of Blessings”. Here’s an excerpt from my 23 October 2011 post on the poem and my recent reading of it. The excerpt: The first four lines are especially striking: “Do not steal my fire and ice, make null / my trial, void it with another name / than pain. The cut of a… 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 »

“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 »

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 »

Elizabeth Garcia Talks “The Semantics of Blessings”

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Anthology Poet Highlight 7/82: Elizabeth (Cranford) Garcia, “The Semantics of Blessings“ (My reading of Liz’s poem) Liz’s unrhymed, free-variation on the sonnet, “The Semantics of Blessings,” took an Honorable Mention in Segullah‘s 2007 Poetry Contest. Cranford also took First Place in this contest with her poem (another sonnet), “Reproach.” Both, I think, are excellent poems, tightly crafted and nuanced enough… Read more »

Ah, To Live for Dizziness: Mark Bennion’s “Still Life”

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Anthology Poet Highlight 6/82: Mark Bennion, “Still Life“ (Scroll down) (My reading of Mark’s poem) 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 stories many Mormons know so well in ways that shed new light on them, in… Read more »