First Things RSS Feed - Paul Lake

Dirty Laundry

Tue, 01 Aug 2017 00:00:00 -0400

The town’s dilapidated Laundromat
Is packed this morning with a crowd of men
And women, hauling bulky laundry sacks—
A full month’s worth, in fact. It’s Saturday,
The last one of the month, the day when all
The members of our church’s outreach team
Provide the rolls of quarters so that they,
The patrons of the joint, don’t have to pay
To wash away the dirt and lives they’ve stained.

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Hearing Voices

Sun, 01 Nov 2015 00:00:00 -0400

When Saul of Tarsus lost his sight
Along the hot Damascus road
And heard the resurrected Christ
Cry out his name, Saul, Saul, why do
You persecute me?
And Saul replied,
“Lord, who are you?”
while in his head
Manic voices must have cried
Till Ananias in his dream
Heard Jesus order him to lay
His hands upon their enemy
So that the Holy Spirit might
Restore their adversary’s sight—
Then baptized Saul, as emissary.

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Saving Jesus

Sat, 01 Mar 2014 00:00:00 -0500

“BrickHouse Security saves Jesus for 8th year in a row, offers free GPS tracking of nativity scenes and holiday displays.”

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Thumblings

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0500

Far more than Once Upon a Time,
A lonely would-be single-mom
Wished for a child, and one soon came,
Not in the usual way”but sprung
From golden seed of barley corn
Sold by a fairy. And when it bloomed,
A little unborn maiden stood
Among the flower’s velvet stems,
So small, a shell served for her bed.

She slept beneath a counterpane
Of rose leaves, till a thieving toad
Abducted the unknowing child
To make her the unwilling bride
Of darkness in an underworld
Of labyrinthine tunnels where
A blind mole made his fetid den.

Or else a couple who bemoaned
Their childlessness conceived a son
Curled like a cashew in the womb,
A shadow pulsing like a drum
No bigger than his father’s thumb,
Like pictures on a sonogram,
And in but three months, out came Tom.

Now dressed in cobwebs, thistledown,
And apple rinds, our little Tom
Mourns being traded for the coin
That made his parents prosperous
But him a tiny beggared orphan;
While Thumbelina, like swansdown
Floats in the wind on borrowed wings,
Still haunted by the wedding gown
Woven by spiders her dark groom,
Clad in black velvet, dressed her in.

Now she’s escaped that narrow tomb,
Riding a swallow pierced by thorns
Who resurrected from the dead
To fly her to where tulips bloom
And thumblings fill the sky with laughter:
So Thumbelina and Tom Thumb
Have found a happy ever after.

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The Ballroom of Heaven

Sun, 17 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0400

As a Boy Scout, Dad decoded
The dit-dit-dahs of Morse, the swashed flags
Of semaphore, bugled “Taps.”
At war’s end, trumpeted jazz,
Sported a dashing Errol Flynn mustache,
Drove a Mercury coupe, led a brass swing band.

Growing gray, he bought a Mustang,
Captained boats down the Chesapeake,
Tracked game, and bow-hunted bear
In the snow-packed Appalachians.

A snappy salesman with the gift of gab,
He spoke loquaciously, and loved to boast
Of his singular prowess”how he closed a sale,
Bagged a buck, or sang a tenor solo.
Rising late, he rode his route,
Carrying customers’ cash, lugged
A black debit book, big as the Baltimore directory
Bound in crocodile hide, holstered a Colt
Semiautomatic, and often flashed
The gold badge bestowed by the Sheriff
When he ran the county’s Democrats.

Then cause and effect was suddenly
Suspended. He got lost in a crossword
As in a cul-de-sac. Was flummoxed by phones
As if after Babel. His tongue got
All tangled, his words turned to blab.

Now housed in a hospice, he greets his grown children
“Good guy, good guy,” misplacing their names.
Seeing the woman he once swept off the dance floor
And the daughter named after the music they made,
He draws blanks”while a bunch of balloons,
Like a gaggle of gossips who gibber behind him,
Distract his attention, till he’s almost unglued.

Pliant as clay, he grows softer and kinder,
More rarefied”as if refined by affliction.
As we quietly mourn his premature absence
And mortified pride, our prayers turn to Please ,

Let wings take him up now to the ballroom of heaven
As a brassy young boy he took up the horn.
Let him trumpet the tunes that wooed his young wife.
Make melody again. Dance the jitterbug of joy.

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At Stake

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Brave luminaries, Jan Hus and William Tyndale,
Were made to glow like scrolling leaves on Kindle,
Snuffed out like candles and condemned to night
For bringing Christ’s free gift of grace to light.

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Brokenness and Modern Poetry

Fri, 10 Dec 2010 04:02:00 -0500

A recent On the Square essay entitled “A Poet Haunted by Brokenness” occasioned a small disagreement among some First Things readers. In the essay, Losana Boyd, the Director of Creative & Marketing Services at First Things , and a poet, favorably reviewed The Eternal City by Kathleen Graber, praising the poet’s fluent syntax, arresting imagery, and elegant, well-crafted lines.

Some readers in the comments section responded by charging that the poetry was instead “slovenly” and “shapeless,” and little more than prose affecting poetic lineation. As the poetry editor of First Things , I thought I’d step in and open a wider discussion of poetry, particularly as it pertains to First Things .

Ms. Boyd is right about some aspects of Graber’s poetry: It does have fluent syntax and effective imagery, and her poems encompass a wide array of themes and subjects. Ms. Boyd has also correctly adduced the poet’s mentors and self-professed influences. Further evidence that Graber’s volume was worthy of notice might be found in the fact that her book was the first selection in the re-launched Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets and—as one reader reminded us—a nominee for a National Book Award.

On the evidence of a small sample of her work, however, my view is that the style of Graber’s poems appears to put her squarely in the murky middle of the American poetic mainstream. Her book’s success results partly from emulating some of today’s most popular poets, who tend to imitate each other and employ the same baggy style. The problem with her verse is that it not only comments on modern brokenness, it embodies it.

In the past, poets had a much wider array of devices to shape their poems and delight attentive readers: argument, narrative, allegory, extended metaphor, metaphysical conceit, to name a few. They also had a wide range of genres to choose from: epic, drama, pastoral, satire, dramatic monologue, epistle, lyric—along with a wide range of poetic forms, meters, and stanzas to shape their music. Today, the poetic mainstream is dominated by a more or less shapeless free verse, often written like Graber’s in long, rectangular verse paragraphs.

Yes, Graber’s lines do possess fluent syntax, which she skillfully plays against her line-endings and internal pauses; but what happens within her lines rarely exceeds the level of good prose. Unlike traditional verse, Graber’s poems have no baseline rhythm to heighten a reader’s attention and carry the thing along—although some lines parasitically allude to iambic pentameter. With a few exceptions, one of which Ms. Boyd noted in her essay—Graber’s employment of internal rhyme of the words “coo,” “soothe,” “vacuum,” and “womb” to interesting effect in her poem “Dead Man”—Graber pays scant attention to such sonic devices, another reason why her lines tend to lack the music of well-honed verse.

In today’s mainstream style, genres often merge unhappily, pitting one mode against another. The once-lowly lyric has eclipsed the larger poetic genres—while being stripped of the things that made it lyrical . In its loose organization and use of “associational slips,” it further imitates the meditative lyrics of Coleridge in “Frost at Midnight” and Wordsworth in “Tintern Abbey.” Such poetry is a throwback to early Romanticism—but without the shapely forms of its lyrics or stately measure of its blank verse meditations.

Which brings me around to the poetry of First Things . In contrast to most journals, we favor an epigrammatic style. As one would expect from a magazine devoted to religion, politics, history, and literature—and whose board members and editors are distinguished scholars and writers—we favor tradition. Stylistically, the journal’s last three poetry editors have been formal poets, though on occasion—and sometimes out of necessity—the journal publishes a wider range of styles. Ms. Boyd’s review of Graber’s poetry collection gave us one such occasion to stretch our poetic sympathies.

For readers and potential writers, here are some of the qualities we tend to look for in selecting verse:

First, some indication that the poet has read more deeply than R. S. Gwynn’s Narcissus in The Narcissiad , who “knows his poets, too, for he has read / The works of many, three of whom are dead.” To entertain this journal’s highly literate readership, a poet should exhibit some knowledge of the literary tradition and command of poetic techniques.

Pleasure. As with athletic and musical performances, poetry should evoke some oohs and aahs with its virtuosity, as well as its fresh insights.

Logical coherence. A poem should make sense—on one or many levels. But at least on one.

A fitting length. Verbal compression. A cube of beef bouillon, not a gallon of broth.

Fresh language and metaphors, in a style not far removed from living speech.

Engaging subjects: childhood, faith, love, death, aging, failure—the small and large occasions of human life. And, given the mission of First Things , poems that deal with religion, politics, and their intersection—the hardest to find and write.

Finally, wit and humor. Shakespeare included some laughs even in Hamlet . Remember, though, the advice of Polonius—ironically, the play’s most loquacious character—about the “soul of wit.” Keep both Shakespeare’s example and Polonius’s remark in mind when writing, and things will be fine.

Of course, it’s hard to consistently attain an ideal standard, but we do appreciate your thoughts on the poetry we publish. When reading poems in First Things that delight or disappoint you, feel free to comment. When submitting, don’t send poems that sound like national award winners, and if it reads like a “self-important audio essay on NPR,” send it to American Poetry Review instead.

Paul Lake is the poetry editor of First Things . His latest book is the satirical novel Cry Wolf: A Political Fable .

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The Republic of Virtue

Sun, 01 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0500

In Year One, the month of Vintage , time began.
Fog hovered above the earth, like an emanation
Of spirits underground. The scents of rose water
Sprinkled on sawdust, bird lime, blood, and fungus
Commingled in the air, like a chimera
Exhaled from broken mouths. The word Virtue
Rumbled above the roar of distant cannon
Like muffled drums, drowning our lamentations.
Nude women promenaded down the streets
As the Marquis de Sade stepped blearily from prison
To raucous cheers. On crumbling balustrades
We fired guns and wept like communicants.
“Man is born free, but is everywhere in chains,”
Declared Rousseau. To break the Social Contract
And signify a city stripped of saints,
The twelve months were reborn, the weeks transfigured
To decades of ten days. Without a Sabbath
To toll the bells, a shining new Republic
Of Virtue was proclaimed. De-christened streets
Wore names of heroes. One Easter Sunday morning,
De Sade lured a young beggar named Rose Keller
To his chateau and bound her there in chains,
Enacting scenes he’d first composed in prison
In Justine, or The Misfortunes of Virtue ,
Till, slipping her restraints, the girl escaped.
“Revolutions, my friend, are not made out of rose water,”
Cried Danton, as The Committee of Public Safety
Sent spies among the crowd to sniff complaints.
Addressing fellow citizens as “Ladies”
Could lead to steps where other traps were sprung
And heads sent rolling. “ If virtue be the spring
Of government in peace ,” roared Robespierre,
“ The spring of government in revolution
Is virtue joined with terror .” In Thermidor,
The month of Heat, his words rolled to their term
Among piled corpses. Women doused the ground
With rose water, as choirs of children cheered,
Rags pressed against their mouths to blunt the odor.
For “ Terror is only justice, prompt, severe
And inflexible; it is then an emanation
Of virtue .” On the streets renamed for saints
Of the Revolution, we celebrate Feast Days
Named Virtue , Genius , Labor , Payments , Reason .
From Fog to Fruit , we watch the months revolve
To Thermidor again. We watch our tongues
And sniff the air for portents. In strange seasons,
Counting our numbered days. Thinking If the spring
Of government in peace be virtue , terror
Lurks at the crossroads, smiling, suave, severe.
An aging libertine, extending terms
To beggar girls. Exacting in return
For martyred flesh, the spirit’s liberation.
In Declarations born of blood and tears.

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The Resurrection of the Body

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400

A neighbor passing by the widow’s house
Stopped dead on seeing him in the garage
Behind the wheel of his new Lincoln, slouched
Half toward the dashboard, as if tuning in
A Cardinals game. The shape was no mirage,
He said, but Clarence, or a living twin,
Though just how that might be, he couldn’t judge,

Being a Christian minister, whose faith
Allowed for no one but the Son of Man
To rise above the grave, and like a wraith
Pass through locked doors, or with his friends, break bread.
And yet, if Christ could in the book of John
Soon after he’d arisen from the dead
Dine on fresh fish, why might not anyone

Who loves a thing return in his own flesh
To savor it like sea bass laced with spice
When the spirit moves? Until Christ comes to thresh
The dead like wheat and blast the thorns and weeds
To plant us in a second paradise,
Why might not some arise, like dormant seeds
In winter, to revisit once or twice

The things they loved . . . as at the funeral
Our dead friend lay surrounded by his toys-
Old typewriter, bronze trophies, white baseball
Clutched in a fielder’s mitt; the Cardinals cap
He wore in pictures playing with his boys;
The scratch and tip sheets used to handicap
The ponies at Oaklawn? Given the choice

Of breathless heaven or a dusty track
Where nags without a hope to win or place
Break hard at the last turn to lead the pack,
Who wouldn’t pick long odds and a hot day
To sip cold beer and thank God for His grace
In wedding souls to flesh that we might play
The sport of kings; then having run our race

Like ancient champions, be put to field
Still hankering for glory and high hay.
Though what we’ll be then has not been revealed,
Faith promises fresh fields beyond the seen
Bedecked with lights that turn the dark to day,
And diamonds carved from dust, and grass so green
It stuns the eye-where, when called up to play,

The spirit swells to fit skin’s softened mitt
And put on body like a uniform
To run and slide, to leap, to scratch and spit
And sing loud anthems. Though the Gnostics say
We’re spitless phantoms or Platonic forms
Once we’ve escaped the cold confining clay
Of our spent flesh and left it to the worms,

I’m glad our friend now sleeps in oaken shade
Above the rolling thunder at Oaklawn,
Sharing the shocks and tremors of the crowd
Until a trumpet beckons, and he wakes
From oaken slumber to the starting gun
In sweat-sheathed flesh that dazzles like a sun
And hurtles home to glory and high stakes.

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Three Holidays in One Afternoon

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 00:00:00 -0400

A bloody handprint on a windowpane
Beneath which, blood-scrawled letters spell Beware .
Across the street, a pumpkin with straw hair
Gathers his seedy thoughts like Harvest grain.

Then, like an evening shadow, Halloween
Spreads darkness down the block, and black despair.
The bloody handprint on the windowpane
And blood-scrawled letters crying out Beware

Now seem a portent to the son of Cain
Who walks past where the dumb beasts kneel in prayer
A few doors down and sees the manger where
Hosannas rose, then stone, where, sun or rain,
His blood, His hand, adorn each windowpane.

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