Philip Harvey led Carmelite Conversations on Wednesday morning the
4th of March on the poetry of the Carmelite nun Jessica Powers
(1905-1988). The session was essentially a poetry reading, for enjoyment and
edification, of many of her poems. Two brief papers were given, a biography of
the poet and an introduction to aspects of the work. Here is the poetry
introduction.
In the year of her perpetual
profession (1946), Jessica Powers writes a poem called ‘At Evening with a
Child’:
We walk along a road
at the day’s end, a little
child and I,
and she points out a bird, a
tree, a toad,
a stretch of coloured sky.
She knows no single word
but “Ah” (with which all
poems must commence,
at least in the heart’s
heart), and I am stirred
by her glad eloquence.
Her feet are yet unsure
of their new task; her
language limited,
but her eyes see the earth in
joy secure.
And it is time I said:
Let the proud walls come
down!
Let the cold monarchy be
taken over!
I give my keys to rust, and I
disown
castles of stone for ambushed
roads in clover.
All the vast kingdoms that I
could attain
are less to me than that the
dusk is mild
and that I walk along a
country lane
at evening with a child.
(SP 140)
While this poem is dedicated
to someone called Maureen, the child in the poem could as well be Jessica when
young – her adult self walking with her younger self, as we do in life and in
poetry. While as well, we have here a clue, a guideline even, to how Jessica
understands poetry. All poems must commence with “Ah”, by which she means exclamation,
acclaim, the following words are coming out of discovery and wonder, at the
moment when the thing hits you, when all of a sudden you see the meaning. It’s
worth keeping in mind the “Ah” that starts each of her poems, unstated but
present, there in the voice.
When I read the
well-constructed poems of Jessica Powers my most immediate awareness is of her
religious language. This is quite predictable of me, to attend in particular to
a vocabulary that is rich, historical, and circumscribed within the long
traditions of Catholic Christianity. It is a familiar way of talking, sets its
own terms, and dwells within a larger conversation without beginning or end. It
is also, as we know, the daily language of the convent.
A divide occurs in her style
of writing, between poetry of Catholic conventions and poetry that uses
original ideas to find its expression. Her understanding of address, i.e. who
speaks to (God, Christ, herself, a lover, a friend, or a stranger) is
accomplished. Her use of extended metaphor, metaphysical tropes, and other
analogous and paradoxical games is all part of her rich box of tricks, and she
turns to it as if by second nature.
When I say poetry of Catholic
conventions, I mean work that ranges between an inward piety and an outward performance
that can only be (I think) fully appreciated by a reader who lives that
Catholic life of faith. It is in-talk and not easy of access for the
uninitiated. I hear Richard Crashaw, Henry Vaughan, John Henry Newman, &c.
Her poetry of original voice is
not so much a departure from this convention in terms of subject and purpose,
it is though a whole new adventure in making sense of what she knows and needs
to say. It is a leap in the dark, a trial of invention, a new way of saying
what must be said. I hear many voices in this style of her poetry: Emily
Dickinson, Christina Rossetti, even Mary Oliver.
Gradually as I read her
poetry over days and weeks I become increasingly aware of the performative
aspects of her lines: they are meant to be read aloud. Many of them have sprung
from the ongoing conversational and devotional life shared with the nuns, instructional,
responsive and reciprocal.
It should go without saying
that these words were written by someone who lived an enclosed religious life.
Of course she is going to talk on religious themes. However, her collected
poetry tracks a life lived before and after her entry to Carmel, both outside
looking in, then inside looking out. Her early work speaks of loneliness,
yearning, and struggle, which are concerns of hers after she goes into the
monastery as well, though changed, transfigured if you like, turned into the
meanings enabled by her Carmelite life, her life in God. So that much of what
we read here are evidences of her journey, understood best as the outward signs
of her own lived experience in community in that solitary place.
When we turn to her poems we
meet someone who is everywhere opening the self, her self in this case, to God.
Sometimes she uses the three-letter word directly in her address, other times
God is implied as You, the subject or object, the receiver and inspiration of
the words. We find this in ‘The Gift of Love’
My thoughts of you are fair
as precious stones
out of the memory’s deep
mysterious mines.
I cut and polish, hold the
gems to light –
color of sea water, color of
wines
coaxed from the earth’s
sweetest fruit. I drop them
down
into my heart, into the
lifted hands
of love whose lone concern is
your renown.
(SP 52)
It is her thoughts of the
beloved, God, that she sees as fair and precious, to the degree that she will
do whatever she can from her store of memory, to show them yet fairer and more
precious. Notice how these thoughts are then dropped into her heart, and her
lifted hands of love, where indeed they are stored and given again. There is no
end to this giving, once she (and we) are aware of love’s gift. We may read the
precious stones as the poems Jessica works on through her life, proffered to
God and us; that is an essential element of her poetic life. Yet the precious
stones are all and any thoughts coming from God “that live and move and have
their being.” (Acts 17:28) Through all of this though we are led to the
punchline, where she says in conclusion, her “lone concern is your renown.”
Notice the word ‘lone’, with its meaning of it being both her only concern, and
the concern that comes from her own self alone. Her concern is with God’s
renown, with how love is that which should be known above all other things,
above herself, and anyone else, above her poetry and anything that may come
from that, and from any of the many ways of naming God.
Another poem, written at the
time she was hanging out with the New York literary crowd (1938), makes
prescient sense of her impending move into orders.
‘Manuscript of Heaven’
I know the manuscript the
Uncreated
writes in the garden of His
good estate.
His creatures are the words
incorporated
into love’s speech. O great
immortal Poet, in Your volume
bright
if one may choose a portion,
write me down
as a small adjective
attending light,
the archangelic noun.
(SP 54)
Here we meet a theology in
which the Uncreated (God) creates a manuscript, a manuscript of words that
exist only because of love, created by an immortal poet. Jessica Powers
understands metaphysical conceit. Indeed, she implies that even though poets
like to think they have a little brief immortality, in fact the only poet who
is immortal is God. This must be a humbling knowledge for some poets, when it
finally occurs to them, but for her it is the truth of her limits as a human,
and of the limits of her own expression. That she would hope to be an
adjective, that element of vocabulary that qualifies, colours, and clarifies
the words around it, is certainly one of her good jokes.
Almost every day, residents
of monasteries recite psalms. They read and hear the portions of scripture.
They are overeducated in a language that is liturgical, and for them never less
than personal through repetition. This regular encounter influences this
poetry, such that there are times when poem and psalm become almost
indistinguishable. Here she includes line 4 of Psalm 17 as ground for her
meditation.
‘The Monastic Song’
The theme is penance, poverty
the language.
And no luxuriant adverb must
come here
to swish its velvet robes, no
adjective
save one that is content to
meet and marry
with the obscure, the frugal,
the austere.
The theme is penance; this is
earth, not heaven.
The desert chant demands a
solemn note
that would persuade the
reverential throat
to naked speech and
unembellished phrase.
Love is, of course,
admittedly the music:
because of the words of
Thy lips I have kept hard ways
One who would gain this door
to preach appeasement
or lay these heavy song-books
on their shelves
would but betray us – though
by kiss of friendship –
into the hands of our ignoble
selves.
Life would be cluttered
discord, not the strong
chaste nudity of song.
(SP 159)
Another essential reality of
the common life of a monastery is silence. Silences are kept as part of
religious practice and of prayer. Learning to live with silence becomes routine
and meaning. Silence, we might suspect, is somehow at odds with poetry, with
its strong desire to say something, to say it rather meaningfully, and to say
it sometimes with some complexity, and, at times, at some length. I observe
that Jessica writes few long poems and that that she breaks silence. For
example, in the following sonnet:
‘Counsel for Silence’
Go without ceremony of
departure
and shade no subtlest word
with your farewell.
Let the air speak the mystery
of your absence,
and the discerning have their
minor feast
on savory possible or
probable.
Seeing the body present, they
will wonder
where went the secret soul,
by then secure
out past your grief beside
some torrent’s pure
refreshment. Do not wait to
copy down
the name, much less the
address, of who might need you.
Here you are pilgrim with no
ties of earth.
Walk out alone and make the
never-told
your healing distance and
your anchorhold.
And let the ravens feed you.
(SP 85)
A feature of her poetry is
its clean, unadorned vocabulary and syntax. I have wondered if this doesn’t
have something to do with an avoidance of show, of poetic effect purely for its
own sake. The quote at the start of ‘Renunciation’ is a sharp warning from the
French Carmelite Saint Thérèse of Lisieux about the priorities of art: “To
compose the most sublime poetry is of less worth than the least act of
self-renunciation,” itself Jessica’s own reworking of Thérèse’s words “the
smallest act of pure love is of more value to her than all other works
together.” (GC 1129) The poem itself is an extended metaphor in which she pokes
fun at poets and argues for the fundamental necessity of first loving God and
neighbour, before going off into some literary sublime.
Let the rapt poet with his
dulcet art
this finer rhythm heed.
Past plodding iamb, dancing
anapest
here is a lyric of the
absolute
for genius to create or
scholar hold –
book to the light – and read.
Those walking toward the
angels always rise
from sound to silence; the
harmonious soul
goes outward from the discord
of the senses,
lays down the tasted and the
spoken word
and is made whole
by the unsavored, the
inaudible.
Secrets to ears of earth yet
loud in heaven
is this pure music, rhythm’s
utter gain.
As we approach God and as we
hear
its soundless cadences, our
hungers strain
to sate themselves on
metaphors of suffering
and new melodious similes of
pain.
(SP109)
I wish to conclude this part
of the conversation with an undated autobiographical poem that sets her writing
career in perspective. She describes the arc of ambition, disappointment, and
right direction in terms that prioritise humility and wonder. She dedicated her
life to Christ, all the time conscious of her poetic gift, which she used wisely,
and which she defines here as “I cast the little virtues from my hand / and
wrote brief notes to stars and seraphim.” Our job today is to spend some time
with these “little virtues” and “brief notes”.
‘Return’
This was the fever that beset
my years,
that led by pride, I put my
aim too high.
I strained my spirit,
grasping at the moon;
my heart I wearied, reaching
for the sky.
My thoughts like ways and
social climbers were
who spurned their childhood
home for vistas dim.
I cast the little virtues
from my hand
and wrote brief notes to
stars and seraphim.
I must come home again to
simple things:
robins and buttercups and
bumblebees,
laugh with the elves and try
again to find
a leprechaun behind the
hawthorn trees.
(SP 157)
Other poems read during the
session by the group in the time permitting:
One Time as a Child
Birds
Come, South Wind
Water and Light
The Books of Saint John of
the Cross
The House at Rest
Sources
Powers, Jessica. Selected
poetry of Jessica Powers, edited by Regina Siegfried and Robert F. Morneau.
Sheed & Ward, 1989 (SP)
Thérèse of Lisieux, Saint.
General correspondence, translated by John Clarke. Institute of Carmelite
Studies, 1988 (GC)
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