In his prefatory essay to the premier issue of First Things in March 1990, editor Richard John Neuhaus stated that the purpose of the journal would be to discuss the relationship between “religion and public life.” Pastor Neuhaus also said that the journal might have been defined as a journal of religion and culture, culture being “the cognitive, moral, aesthetic, and emotive air that we breathe.” In his Preface to Grace Notes, former First Things editor Joseph Bottum discusses the place of poetry in the journal:
When First Things began, the decision was made that poems should be included, even while many other journals were trimming or even eliminating verse. The founding editors, Richard John Neuhaus and James Nuechterlein, decided that general readers ought to consume poetry if they were going to be concerned about American public life.
Sadly, Bottum notes, the publication of a major poem by an important American poet is no longer a “public event,” whereas in an earlier time “poetry was a player in the public conversation.” The purpose of publishing poetry in First Things is to try to bring poetry back into that conversation—back into, as Neuhaus put it, the “public square.”
Grace Notes is a collection of verse by over 70 First Things contributors during the journal’s first 20 years. Many of these are among America’s most distinguished contemporary poets. The poets appear alphabetically with the date of publication at the end of each poem. The poems were accepted by one or another of the several poetry editors at First Things: Nathan Scott, Jill Baumgaertner, Joseph Bottum, Anthony Lombardy, and (currently) Paul Lake. There is a decided shift over two decades from free verse to formalism. The quality of both kinds of verse is high, but the formalist poets seem overall to have written the better poems. The poems range widely over many forms and modes. These include the sonnet, ballad, sestina, homily, psalm, elegy, epigram, narrative, humorous verse, translations, and variations on earlier poems. The poems are in free verse, blank verse, rhyming quatrains and couplets, and other rhyming patterns. What is most impressive about the best of these poems is the sense that something serious is at stake. First Things, like other conservative journals such as Modern Age and Chronicles, has provided space for poets who address religious and cultural matters too often excluded from other monthly or quarterly publications that print verse. When we recall that Christ is the Word incarnate, that poetry in its own way incarnates ideas and feelings, that Christ’s dying words in St. Matthew’s Gospel were from a psalm, that poetry is the revelation of truth and goodness under the aspect of beauty, and that, according to Jacques Maritain, poetry as an art reveals the “radiance of the ontological mystery,” poetry’s place in conservative Christian journals should be self-evident.
Given the limitations of space, only a brief sampling of the many riches in Grace Notes is possible. (Note: The current reviewer has a two-line epigram in this anthology.)
Some poems deal directly with theological matters. Joseph Bottum’s “Easter Morning” links the spring re-greening of nature and Christ’s Resurrection at Easter to the problems of war and religious doubt in a world that the poet’s young daughter will grow up in. Yet faith remains:
Quick as dawn, the dogwoods have raised
improbable awnings, christened with rain. . . .
The parish bells begin their carols—
down through the trees like flourished prayer; . . .
A cold fear waits—till all that had fallen,
all that was lost, rudely broken,
crossed in love, comes rising, rising,
on the breath of the new spring air.
Catharine Savage Brosman’s poem on tourists visiting a Parisian church, “Saint-Séverin, II,” contrasts modern skepticism about sin and the need for redemption with the Christian hope and faith embodied in church architecture:
For we have come too late, I think—the call
to holiness will miss this century;
in recent years there’s been another Fall,
with gilded globes of power on the tree.
But tourists go in anyhow, and weave
wide-eyed through pillars, chapels, transepts, apse
and look as though they wished they could believe,
acknowledging the truth of human lapse
by what proclaims it visibly, alone:
the weightlessness of ransom wrought in stone.
In “Backyard Triumph,” Stephen Scaer finds in the beauty of petals falling from a tree in April a symbol of grace:
This fragrant celebration
might be for anyone.
I know it’s undeserved
but that has not deterred
me from taking pleasure
in the soft spring weather.
The triumphs that I seek
are held for their own sake,
and shower us with grace
like petals on the grass.
A number of poems deal with love or death. T.S. Kerrigan’s “The Monahans” contrasts youthful love with love in old age. The young couple is first seen making love in a field or meadow. But time matures their love even as it takes their youth away:
Her hair has gone to snow
from shades of palest oak.
For years a vital man,
arthritis brought him low.
Too old for escapades,
they rarely venture out.
How strange that they’d suggest
this latter love is best.
In contrast, making humorous use of the Peter Pan story, Bryce Christensen, in “Bayside Immortals,” meditates on the implications of San Francisco’s century-old ordinance forbidding further burials within the city. I quote the poem in full:
Please come to Mount Parnassus for the view:
The winding streets, the flowered hills, the dock,
The cable cars, the Ferry Tower clock,
The Golden Gate against Pacific blue.
Select a play, or cabaret—a new
Production opens every night to mock
The hang-ups of the strait-laced Christian flock.
We’re free from graveyard gloom and dark taboo: The Tale of Neverland’s our holy book!
We worship Peter, child who won’t be man.
We’re all Lost Boys, who play with pirates, sure
That pixie dust will—once again—beat Hook!
We spurn the earth’s restraints, to soar like Pan.
Like him, we wonder: What are shadows for?
Grace Notes also features a number of excellent translations, including Rhina Espaillat’s beautiful renderings of verses in Spanish by St. John of the Cross on the union of the soul as bride with the Bridegroom, Christ:
The bride has come to rest in
the pleasant garden’s most alluring space,
and at her ease to nest in
her quiet leaning place,
within the sweetness of the groom’s embrace.
Also notable are translations of sonnets by Portuguese poet Luís de Camões (William Baer), of a hymn to the Virgin from the Latin of Gerard Manley Hopkins (Philip C. Fischer, S.J.), and of King Hrothgar’s homily to Beowulf from Old English (Alan Sullivan and Timothy Murphy).
Finally, there are several moving poems against abortion. These poems in particular demonstrate the power of art to persuade, not by direct, logical argument, but by being true to its own nature. Here is “Choice,” by Sally Thomas:
Extra place set at your mind’s table
like Ezekiel’s: empty glass, clean spoon.
Hands that never pointed out the moon,
laid the baby in the Christmas stable,
dried dishes. Voice that doesn’t call
downstairs that he or she will be there
soon. In steam behind a bathroom door,
no one puts on makeup, leaves a towel
for you to find. No hairdryer.
No C in French. No midnight curfew,
no slamming door, no not-speaking-to.
When was it you began to hear
silence? They don’t tell you
about that voice, clear, insistent, steady
as a heartbeat, asking, How weren’t you ready?
Grace Notes is an excellent text for a creative-writing class (particularly in a conservative, church-affiliated college), a parish adult-education class, or a seminary class on art and religion. This anthology illustrates the truth stated in these lines by one who in himself united religion and culture by being both priest and poet, George Herbert:
Hearken unto a Verser, who may chance
Ryme thee to good, and make a bait of pleasure.
A verse may finde him, who a sermon flies,
And turn delight into a sacrifice.
[Grace Notes: Poetry From the Pages of First Things, edited by Paul Lake and Losana Boyd (New York: First Things) 116 pp., $12.95]
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