I hadn’t read Boethius or Petrarch in 1967. If I had, I may not have been so taken, when one late spring afternoon, I read Wendell Berry’s two-sentence poem “To Think of the Life of a Man.” I read it standing alongside the shelf of literary journals in the Johns Hopkins bookstore. I had come to be there by a circuitous route. I had dropped out of college, been rejected by the draft, returned to college, married and with my wife risked all we had to attend the Hopkins Writing Seminars on the chance that I might become a poet and novelist. Each morning my wife went to her job and I went to my desk. Afternoons I went to the library or the bookstore where I read but rarely bought. In nearby Washington, the first protests against the Vietnam … Read More »

One of the most mysterious things about Christian poets today is how little we talk about the poetry of the Bible. We have… It’s true we might sprinkle Bible-y stuff here or there in our poems, but we have yet to explore how the very structures and techniques of Hebrew poetry could inspire our work on a more fundamental, craft level.

I think there may be a few reasons for our timidity:

1) Some writers already feel conflicted about either their faith or their faith in their writing. It’s both a personal struggle and a cultural one. How do we speak authentically about our own faith experience (and what do we even mean by that?)—and in a way that is comprehensible (acceptable?) to the world at large? So we attempt to keep it light by using the Bible in ironic or literary … Read More »

I became a perfectionist sometime in middle school.  This was when I started to read the Bible on my own, and discovered the verse “Whatsoever you do, do it wholeheartedly unto The Lord.” Until then, I only tried when I felt like it; when the task seemed fun or interesting.  After reading this verse, however, I felt compelled to vacuum under every piece of furniture, be sure every dish I washed was spotless, and never say anything mean to anyone.  I became a much better worker, but work also became weighty.  For one thing, vacuuming thoroughly took a lot more time and effort, and for another, it mattered.  If I didn’t do well, I was failing God.  I didn’t believe God would reject me if I didn’t do things perfectly, but I believed He’d be disappointed, which would be almost … Read More »

{an interview with writer, David Ebenbach}

when you picture someone reading your writing, how do you see them? what do they think about, wear, and do? or, maybe a better way to say it: who do you write for? and how do you see your writing nourishing others?

Well, when I’m in the midst of writing, I try not to picture anyone—except my characters, anyway. Otherwise it’s like I’m sitting at my computer while a roomful of people stares awkwardly at me. Once I’m done writing, however, I do think about readers. I somewhat sympathize with Mary Oliver, who wrote, “I write poems for a stranger who will be born in some distant country hundreds of years from now.” In other words, I like to think that my work touches enough of the universal that it can be meaningful to people in … Read More »

{writer and archivist, D.S. Martin, reflects on his calling to poetry by “The Hound of Heaven.”}

Often, we hardly realize how much something is influencing us until much later, and even then we may not understand its impact. When I was in high school, I was not much of a student, and I certainly didn’t have any thought that I could, or should, or would become a poet. Looking back now, I think one of the first steps in the process of my calling was the reading of Francis Thompson’s 1893 poem “The Hound of Heaven”. When I first heard that poem, I read it over and over – despite its considerable length (182 lines!).

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;

I fled Him, down the arches of the years;

I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways

Of my own mind; … Read More »

Having absorbed the music of the Psalms and having grasped something of the personal intensity of David’s lyrics, it was probably inevitable that when I discovered Wordsworth in my late teens I would succumb to his influence. His powerful emotions overwhelmed me, and it would be years before I could temper them with recollections in tranquility.

The Wordsworth who most attracted me was the Wordsworth of the Lucy poems.  I was a young man in love. When in my nineteenth year I gathered the poems I was writing into an awkward, halting manuscript, I chose a quatrain from one of them as an epigraph:

Strange fits of passion I have known:

And I will dare to tell,

But in the lover’s ear alone,

What once to me befell.

Some days, now, I think these lines are a bit precious, but I suspect that thought is a … Read More »

In an earlier essay, featured here on Antler, I attempted to establish the legitimacy and shape of a modern poetic-prophetic ministry. One of the claims of that piece was that a prophet does not choose their call to speak, but are themselves chosen by the Other. True as that may be it doesn’t follow that individuals can’t makes themselves more open to just such a call—or to any other form of Spirit-led service for that matter—and prepare themselves to carry it out. One of the most fundamental of these methods is the use of silent waiting.

While periods of silence may have some physiological and emotional benefits in and of themselves that isn’t our concern here. We are interested in silence as a tool—a method by which an individual may wait on the Lord, and through which the Word may come … Read More »

{John Leax reflects on the poetic nature of psalms.}

One wall of the living room of my late childhood home was floor to ceiling windows.  The wall opposite it was floor to ceiling books.  Never the less, as a child, I came no closer to literature than the animal stories of Thornton Burgess and Ernest Thompson Seaton. Looking back I recognize one exception to that statement; in Sunday school I was required to memorize Bible verses. The only acknowledged, inspired version in a mainline protestant church at that time, the late 40s and early 50s, was the King James Version.  So my first experience of poetry was Psalm 100.

I didn’t know it was poetry.  I don’t think I thought of it as poetry until I was an adult.  
But when I came to poetry as an adolescent, the Psalm was … Read More »

{Poet, Paul Willis reflects on To Blossoms by Robert Herrick}

To Blossoms

Fair pledges of a fruitful tree,
Why do ye fall so fast?
Your date is not so past
But you may stay yet here a while,
To blush and gently smile,
And go at last.

What, were ye born to be
An hour or half’s delight,
And so to bid good-night?
‘Twas pity nature brought ye forth
Merely to show your worth,
And lose you quite.

But you are lovely leaves, where we
May read how soon things have
Their end, though ne’er so brave;
And after they have shown their pride,
Like you a while, they glide
Into the grave.

—Robert Herrick (1591-1674)

Robert Herrick may not be as spiritually sincere a poet as George Herbert, but he awakens me to the beauty and pathos of nature as few other writers do.  For the wistful spirit of carpe diem, he is unsurpassable.  “To Blossoms” is one of his many … Read More »

matthew lippman asked me to participate in in this self-interview project. if you have a book of poetry coming out in the next year or so and want me to tag you, please contact. i need five poets. it’s like a chain letter poetry explosion. here’s what it looks like… – dave

What is the working title of the book?

my next book is called “making manifest: faith, creativity, and the kingdom at hand”

Where did the idea come from for the book?

i was teaching seminarians creative/contemplative writing to help them cultivate imagination and sustain ministry—i thought, ‘hey, i should turn this material into an instruction manual of sorts’

What genre does your book fall under?

contemplative/meditative non-fiction spiritual writing? it’s kinda a strange hybrid of genres.

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

this would make a … Read More »