Raising the Sparks E-Book

Jennifer Wallace

• Herausgeber: Paraclete Press
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 70

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Raising the Sparks, Jennifer Wallace's sixth poetry collection, is inspired by the alignment of Christian and Judaic traditions. The idea of raising the sparks, tikkun olam, comes from 16th century mystical Judaism—the belief that, if people worked to "gather or raise the sparks" from the sacred vessels that shattered at the moment of creation, a repair of the world from its initial splitting would be complete. It is the duty of each one of us to raise the sparks from wherever they are imprisoned and to elevate them to holiness. Also informing this work is the Jesuit idea of finding God in all things and conversing (without clerical intervention) directly with Jesus. The poems in this collection engage with these theological traditions by witnessing the human joys and challenges of attending to their mandates. Raising the Sparks is published under Paraclete Press's Iron Pen imprint. In the book of Job, a suffering man pours out his anguish to his Maker. From the depths of his pain, he reveals a trust in God's goodness that is stronger than his despair, giving humanity some of the most beautiful and poetic verses of all time. Paraclete's Iron Pen imprint is inspired by this spirit of unvarnished honesty and tenacious hope.

Leseprobe

RAISING THE SPARKS

Poems

Jennifer Wallace

2022 First Printing

Raising the Sparks: Poems

Copyright © 2022 by Jennifer Wallace

ISBN 978-1-64060-511-4

The Iron Pen name and logo are trademarks of Paraclete Press.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Wallace, Jennifer, 1954- author.

Title: Raising the sparks / Jennifer Wallace.

Description: Brewster, Massachusetts : Iron Pen/Paraclete Press, 2022. | Summary: “In these poems, Wallace endeavors to find God in all things, and elevate them to holiness”-- Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021037348 (print) | LCCN 2021037349 (ebook) | ISBN 9781640605114 | ISBN 9781640605152 (epub) | ISBN 9781640605138 (pdf)

Subjects: LCGFT: Poetry.

Classification: LCC PS3573.A4263 R35 2022 (print) | LCC PS3573.A4263 (ebook) | DDC 811/.54--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021037348

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021037349

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All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in an electronic retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Published by Paraclete Press

Brewster, Massachusetts

www.paracletepress.com

Digitally printed

We must learn to live in the world.

Robert Penn Warren

CONTENTS

LAMENTS AND BENEDICTIONS

To All of You, Who Are Out There

The Man Billions Pray With

Bad News Soon Becomes Normal Days

A Poem for Those Who Suffer, Sent Out to all Their Angels

City Bus

In Dark Winter

Lament

Paradox

Light Litany

Yesterday the Cat Got a Dove

Bad Times and Their Causes

Meditation on a Photograph of a Manta Ray

Body of Water

Snowed In

Sleeping with a River under Me

The Effort

There is another world, and it is under this one

The War Shadow

On the Occasion of Pittsburgh’s Synagogue Massacre

Dark Trio & Coda

Easter Vigil

An Ecology, Earth Day 2020

Unintentional Beauty

When the Trees Sing

Praise restores us to the world again, to our luckiness of being

Hymn for Naming the Difficult Times

Prayer

Psalm: My De Profundis

The Meeting Field: An Attempt to Conjure

Wilderness: Waking to What Is

Prayer: Ripples

He Must Have Trembled

Some Things I Have Learned

Homer’s Whale

On the Camping Road — Apex, North Carolina

To Gather My Desire into One Simple Word

Movement

Lake Michigan, Early Morning, Late September

Dreaming on God’s Stone

From Within

LETTERS TO JESUS†

RAISING THE SPARKS‡

The Light, the Vessels, the Shards: Raising the Sparks

My List of Sparks

Where are the Sparks in the Messes I Make?

Where Are the Sparks in a Cotton Field?

Where Are the Sparks in Bitter Cold?

Raising the Sparks from the Flood-Stained Waters

Sparks/Surprise: Adel, Georgia

Raising the Sparks by Going against My Grain

Aubade: Raising the Sparks from Under

Raising the Sparks by Loving the Unlovable

Raising the Sparks from Human Lights

Raising the Sparks from Other People’s Shoes

What Kind of Sparks?

Raising the Sparks from Clouds

NOTES

CITATIONS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

LAMENTS AND BENEDICTIONS

To All of You, Who Are Out There

Your beingness energizes me.

Though we might not have met, I can

picture you — out in the fields, studios, cubicles,

in your living rooms, libraries, among the scrap heaps.

Maybe in your pick-up truck, hospital bed. Maybe

you are folding your monogrammed towel.

Surely, I expect, you wonder and worry.

I bet you’re alive with uncertain certainty.

We are kin — attuned, beads in the one web,

likewise set aglitter by the same shining star.

And, if you believe all this, you’re as gullible as me

or as wishful, eternally scanning the heart’s horizons.

This is my wager, my reach, my offering, my handshake;

right here, in your hands, your ear, wherever and

whenever you are.

The Man Billions Pray With

—for Pope Francis

He prays, too — on his balcony, alone in his room;

white robes rest in holy cabinets

far from his puffed-up cardinals, arms crossed at the gates.

When he takes off his velvet shoes at night,

switches off the lights, we are alike.

It’s not blasphemous to say so: mistaken, grievous,

we are both alone in our separate quarters,

the suffering cross ever-hanging on the wall about our hearts.

We want the same peace for the same ‘turning world,’

for the lonely souls we call our own.

Bad News Soon Becomes Normal Days

All of what was planned has been released or hijacked.

Who knows which, or by whom?

An aviary door, wrenched open; every cherished being

freely flying out of reach, out of sight, giving way,

over and over

to whatever the sky happens to be on each new day.

They come home at nightfall, roost out of sight, only

to leave again at dawn. Every day — revised —

and waiting to be revised again.

We continue with our planning —

all our crumpled lists end with the same words:

“Come back! Come back! We’ve stockpiled the oily sunflower,

millet, your favorite — cracked corn.”

A Poem for Those Who Suffer, Sent Out to all Their Angels

Please watch out for them in their clutch of sadness.

Slide your warmth — cloud-soft — under their heads.

And the ones who care for them, also help them.

City Bus

A stubbled man unweighted himself

on the city bus today. Easily. Let go.

His arm tight against mine. He slept,

head flopped on my shoulder in a soft pile.

“Hmm,” I wondered. Push him aside? Shrug him off?

Help him to my lap — so high, after shooting up?

So tired after working all night?

I was there with him,

all the while wondering. And finally,

I let it all be fine.

It was a good day, to have started this way.

On the bus, he and I.

In Dark Winter

— for Katherine Kavanaugh

In dark winter

ink-stained morning equals ink-stained night.

The numb sun, if it appears, hardly shines —

brittle in the birdless wind.

In dark winter

the day slips early away,

an orange-pink splits the shrouded sky,

but briefly, before a blue-black violet muffles again.

The wood I’ve hauled makes a trail inside,

bark and ice chips on the rug. Messy wild.

Once the stove door shuts, all goes quiet — even flames.

The cottage windows, sealed tight, stare at me and I stare at them.

In this artic season, far from dormant,

insight is old and filled with ghosts:

Orion’s child broods with the Dane upon the ramparts;

the frozen match girl huddles near the bricks with her

frozen gloves;

fugitives from inner realms bed down in their heart caves,

alert to the howling wolves.

A household lit at the horizon’s edge

recedes further and further recedes.

Without light’s sharp resolution,

a deeper gravity pulls everything

toward nearness and

“other than” becomes “the same.”

And I reside inside, imagining what was

before the famous breathing into clay,

temptation, trees or names; before

the Lord said anything about light.

In this muted clarity, dark meets dark.

Minor chords resound. A pressing need

unfolds ‘the maker’s holy hands.’

And I, yet formed, am zero — warming at the hearth of faith.

Lament

Each day the papers have more to say

about those among us (among us!),

who shoot, stab, spit at others,

even though the ones they target

are mostly like themselves.

Haters love their sons and daughters,

their gods and rivers, eagles, lizards, leaders, too.

They are like us, but

on a rampage, tipping the funeral stones.

Fearmongers stir up trouble.

We must live again with water hoses,

bullet hoses, attack dogs, attack slogans.

In this scary season,

on the ropes in one giant ring,

look at mercy stumble —

neglected in its corner —

within reach, but weak.

Who among us will intervene?

Paradox

— after a sculpture by Scottish artist Steve Dilworth

Feather made of stone,

a thing that lifts and also fails to lift.

Nothing quite works: air argues with earth,

earth with air. Angels battle rock, rock longs for heaven.

Like objects in a mirror,

but with a second, facing mirror.