Promise and Memory (Poem)

What follows is a found poem drawn from Michael Kimmelman's The Accidental Masterpiece: On the Life of Art and Vice Versa. Some words are his; some are mine. I find the intersection, the collage of texts that found poetry presents extremely interesting. Maybe I'll actually work up an essay on it an post it later in the week. For now, click on the link above to find out a little more about the history and use of the found poem and to read some other examples. Any comments or suggestions (i.e. what works, what doesn't work) are welcome. Feel free to share your thoughts.

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Promise and Memory: A Found Poem

Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change,
nobody will ever die.

-Vladimir Nabakov

It isn’t likely that he set out that morning to
find a partner, a muse to endlessly draw and paint;
but in eighteen ninety-three, by an accident of fate,
Pierre Bonnard was walking down

a Paris street (or so the story goes)
when he spied an elfin woman dropping from a tram.
She was maybe five feet tall, was thin and fragile
as a bird, a resemblance, they say, she never lost—

the startled look, the liking for water and for taking baths,
the weightless walk that comes from wings, her
slender high heels as spindly as birds’ feet; she even had
something of the bird’s gaudy plumage. But she croaked,

she didn’t sing, and was often hoarse and breathless,
a woman condemned by slight and delicate health
for an early death (though she outlived this
misdiagnosis by half a century). Reclusive and suspicious,

she’d told him she was sixteen, named
Marthe de Méligny. He followed her to work.
But it was years before he learned her real name and age:
Maria Boursin, not sixteen, but nearly twenty-six.

For the next fifty years she became
the defining figure of his life and ecstatic, inward-
looking work, a world built on the promise and memory
of handling her flesh, of bringing his body to hers.

And yet he holds back: she
is too dear, too brittle to hold so he leaves the flesh
to be caressed by the light that plays over it, invades it,
infuses it as it infuses the surrounding space. Maybe

at first sight he’d sensed this something in Marthe
and was drawn into her skin as a child is drawn from the womb.
Had he walked down another street that day or looked the other way
when she’d stepped off the tram; had he not pursued her

but turned into a café or to find a friend or just stopped
to tie his shoelaces, he might have met another woman,
discovered a different life, put on a different skin, painted
a completely different though, perhaps, no less enormous

memory of her.

A Motley Vision about Blog Addiction, or Blogging Responsibly

Over the past few years, I've gained an increasing interest in questions of Mormon culture, including Mormon literature and literary/cultural criticism. This has come, by and large, as a result of my academic life, which centers on the reading and writing of literature and literary criticism, and my desire to circumscribe all truth into one great whole. I've been able to feed this interest, to some degree, by immersing myself in what others have written on the topic. This exercise takes me again and again to A Motley Vision, a blog dedicated, in the words of its founder, William Morris, "to exploring the world of Mormon arts and culture. Or to be more specific: Mormon literature, criticism, publishing and marketing—plus film, theater, art, music, and pop and folk culture." This past week I noticed an interesting thread developing about blogging and priorities and couldn't hold myself back any longer. (Some of the language in the original post is PG-13; so if you follow the link, be warned...and don't shoot the messenger.)

So I left my seat on the sidelines and jumped into the conversation with this:

I’m relatively new to the blogging scene, only claiming my own blogspot since June of this year (although Blogger will tell you I’ve had property since March—an initial attempt that ended as soon as it began because, well, I was afraid to take the leap, or in OT terms, didn’t want to spill my intellectual seed). I know I have at least one faithful reader (me) and the occasional visit from family and some others directed my way by Google (although I’m pretty sure they leave once they realize I probably don’t have what they’re looking for; none have ever returned—hospitality was never my cup o’ tea); and even my family doesn’t come around very often. They seem to prefer the other blog my wife wanted to start and post pictures and family updates on. Apparently I post too many words and too few images (read: 0 so far) for the taste of some.

I started blogging for some of the same reasons Patricia mentions: for social and artistic opportunities, to work up writing that might later become something more concrete (what is a blog, anyway, but a mostly unrefined collection of personal essays, some with more potential than others?), and because it (potentially) allows me to interact with like-minded people, especially since I spend 24/7 looking after three little girls and often revert, in my at-home dadness, to kid-speak—sometimes I just crave adult conversation.

So far, however, it just feels like an exercise in existentialism, like a waste of time and words, like I’m just talking to myself, which I wouldn’t mind so much if I wasn’t someone I already spend way too much time with.

Nonetheless, I can’t stop myself—partially because I see too many online forums where the comments section turns into a mud-slinging session and I’m sick of it; and partially because I see the potential of blogs (not necessarily mine, but blogs like AMV and the few others that I regularly and voyeuristically frequent) to change something about the world, to raise the level of public/online discourse to a point where someone’s amalgamation of carefully chosen (or carefully spilled) words can actually make a positive difference in someone else’s life.

Who knows: maybe some of that overflow will eventually make its way into fertile ground and bring forth a tree with such irresistible fruit that everyone will want a piece.

Until then, I’ll just be over here, talking to myself about, well, whatever I want.

As the discussion progressed, some talk emerged about giving up blogging completely. Since my own writing has been so benefited by blogging, I couldn't imagine this (not to mention my blogging addiction won't let me give mine up...) So I responded with this:

c jane posits an interesting parallel to the blogger’s challenge to balance life with blogging demands when she points out Alma’s choice to give up his chief judgeship so he could devote himself fully to the office of high priest over all the church. The main difference I see between Alma and us, however, is that he was the president of a church that was basically failing in its progress and he knew that his main priority, at that point in his personal ministry, rested not in his political seat (or, in terms of our present discussion, in his own personal blog) but in wholehearted commitment to the duties of the high priesthood, i.e. the bearing down in pure testimony (or working on his next novel). When he returned from fulfilling this higher responsibility—with the expedient job of regulating the church—he still worked with the chief judge to maintain political and religious order in the land of Zarahemla and throughout (most notably in the case of Korihor).

Theric presents a similar parallel when he paraphrases king Lamoni’s father’s desire to give up his sins (including his blog) so he might know God (or at least write the great Lamanite novel).

And yet, I don’t see blogging itself as the sin. Perhaps the “sin” of many (shall we say, Mormon) bloggers doesn’t reside so much in the supposedly ephemeral nature of the blog itself but in the amount of time and resources invested in blogging that could to a degree be more fruitfully invested elsewhere. In other words (and in the tone of Elder Oaks), maybe the goodness of blogging turns bad, maybe the strength of the blogger becomes weakness when the blog takes us away from more meaningful pursuits, when it keeps us, Martha-like, from choosing “that better part”, crowding out what the prophets suggest should be among our highest priorities: God, family, work, Church callings and service, education, participation in one’s community, etc.

Maybe the answer, then, isn’t to completely drop the blog, as c jane and Theric suggest, but to devote a little less time to blogging and a little more to [place priority here]. Or even to simply cut back on our devotion to good blogs or a high quantity of blog postings and to focus more on posting quality work and on seeking out of the best blogs words of wisdom…or at least discussion that can help us lead and create more fruitful lives of our own.

In my mind, blogging can’t be an end in itself, but it must serve as means to a much higher end, including that end suggested by M. Russell Ballard: to support the work of the Church in building Zion. I’m convinced that only then can our investment of time and resources bring lasting value to our labor of blog-love (and temper our obsessive compulsion to blog!).

And with that I must say, "Blog on, my friends, blog on. But do it responsibly." (Oh and come drop by A Motley Vision if that's something that interests you. It might just give you something to think about...or at least give you another blog to stalk. Either way...)

Sestina of Seven Births (Poem)

Sestina of Seven Births

1. 27 November 2006, Morning
They’d said it would come,
with December just around the bend.
Still it caught me off guard. Outside
in pajama pants, t-shirt, bare feet, waiting
for the dog to make: the first flakes layered
cornered leaves with winter’s afterbirth.

2. 16 July 2003: Our First
The day Sidney was born,
her water came
on the bathroom floor. As I’d layered
a towel to soak the spill, my wife bent
over the head to catch any leaks, waiting
for labor to turn her insides out.

3. New Mother
Sitting beside
the ashen body of her stillborn
son, waiting
for the cry that never came,
she bends
her breath across his chest, warming the empty layers.

4. 12 February 2006, 2:23 AM: Our Second
Rising through layers
of sleep into wet sheets, she’d stood beside
our bed, questioned her continence while bending
lamp light across the spill. “Looks like your birthday
present’s coming,”
I’d said as she winced at the onset of labor’s weight.

5. Sarah
As she wearies beneath the weight
time layers
on her womb, he comes
to her. Inside
the tent, a moonbeam gives birth
to galaxies as her universe bends

to God’s touch.

6. On the Lake
Ripples bend
the water’s crimson weight,
distorting autumn’s birth
with each stroke layered
on stroke. Reaching over the canoe’s east side,
our nine month daughter watches her reflection go and come.

7. Solstice
Rereading “The Second Coming” on a winter night, birds bending
circles inside Yeats’ words as the tide spanning generations waits
to drown my own, I draw the poet’s layered veil and fall into Christ’s crimson birth.

Shameless Plug: National University's Online MA in English (Review)

In light of a recent personal accomplishment, completing my master's degree in English from National University in San Diego (I finished my thesis mid-May but my degree conferral date is July 20, which just happens to be today), I thought I'd put in a shameless plug for the school and its fully online, fully accredited programs, especially the MA in English, which is really the only one I can speak for.

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The greatest strength of NU’s intensive online MA program is that it provides a unique opportunity for students with restricted access to campus-based programs to gain a quality education. I especially like the accelerated, one-class per month format, which allows students to focus on one class at a time. This is especially helpful to those with priorities in addition to gaining a graduate-level education. As an involved husband and at-home dad, this process has allowed me to fulfill my family responsibilities while at the same time permitting me to study literary theory and criticism and great works of literature in a structured and challenging online community. It has further encouraged associations with willing and concerned professors and other graduate students in ways that have supported my pursuits and interests as a student of literature and writing. I’m convinced that this environment permits the dedicated and conscientious student to refine their own scholarship and to develop the skills necessary to collaborate with others in refining theirs in a technologically mediated environment, a virtual location certain to become the classroom of the future.

As exemplified at NU, distance learning programs don't have to sacrifice the intellectual rigor and educational merit associated with their onsite counterparts. Their particular strength resides in the fact they can and must require that students develop an increased measure of self-direction and self-motivation as learners, the proper autodidactic ends of any educational system and philosophy. While at one time I considered online education sub-par, my experience with NU has shown me otherwise. While I would changed a few things about the program platform, such as the availability of past courses and past course materials once students have moved on (once the class is over, students can only access the cyberclassroom for, at the most, two weeks) and individual course requirements for peer review of final papers (each class concludes with a 10-12 page paper, something that could be made less intimidating with less procrastination and, to the extent possible, more peer support), I wouldn't trade my experience and the confidence I gained through my accomplishment for anything.

If anyone's interested in a quick but no less intense master's degree, check out NU's list of program offerings here.

Rain (Poem)

Rain

Sing “Rain, Rain”
with me, Daddy,
she says, falling back
from the window

into our queen-sized
bed, curling
into the gap between
my outstretched arm

and ribs. Okay, I say,
and sing, Rain, rain go
away, come again some
other day. Rain, rain

go away come again
some other day, while
hoping the rain will stay
to keep her and her sisters

home, away
from the thunderheads, the
lightning, the hail, the hands
of the jerk I saw on the news

who touched a little girl
at the store while her mom’s
back was turned, then turned
and walked away.

Enduring (and) the Church

This post was written in response to a discussion thread on Feminist Mormon Housewives (more specifically to a comment [#81] that the Anti-Nephi-Lehies were not pacifists, just people trying to avoid any possible temptation to relapse into sin). As I wrote, it got longer and longer, perhaps too long for a comment in an online forum, but I submitted it anyway.

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The Anti-Nephi-Lehies were, quite essentially, pacifists or, as I prefer to call them, peacemakers. In their attempts to make and keep peace with God and themselves, they buried the weapons they’d used in so many murders and changed their collective name as witnesses that, in the words of king Benjamin’s people, they had “no more disposition to do evil, but to do [and to be] good continually” (Mosiah 5:2); that their very natures had been transplanted into the doctrines of Christ and his gospel of peace. By deciding “that rather than shed the blood of their brethren they would give up their lives; and rather than take away from a brother they would give unto him; and rather than spend their days in idleness they would labor abundantly with their hands” (Alma 24:18), they showed their devotion to the cause of eternal peace, which ultimately comes through service and sacrifice, especially that sacrifice offered in similitude of Christ—for the lasting benefit of others. They showed their belief that Christ would come to them, that he would not leave them comfortless if they could just endure the violence from without and from within: the jabs, the bullying, the finger of scorn, and the incessant temptation to give up their covenants and to give in to sin. In their conscious resistance of evil, then, including the evil of war, they were intent on offering their last full measure of devotion, firm in the hope that they would find eternal rest and bring peace to others if only they honored the covenants they’d made. If that’s not the essential principle and embodiment of pacifism, I don’t know what is.

Further, if that’s not the essential principle of Mormonism, of Restoration theology—at the center of which stands Christ, the Prince of Peace, the Man who, Isaiah tells us, “was wounded for our transgressions” and “bruised for our iniquities” (Isaiah 53:5); the Man who was chastised, oppressed, and afflicted for our peace, all without opening his mouth; the Man through whose “stripes we are healed” (53:5)—I don’t know what is. Having read Lisa’s post and most of the responses to it and through my own experience as a dues-paying member of the Church, I’m convinced that what we really need is a greater emphasis on this, on finding peace for ourselves through Christ and his institutionalized priesthood and on helping others find that same peace.

I realize, however, that this isn’t an easy answer and that most “active” members don’t actually seek or try to understand that peace themselves, even though, when it comes down to it, we all want the warmth of peace to cover our inadequacies and sins, to bolster our aching hearts. I’ve sat through Gospel Doctrine classes and Sacrament Meetings in which Christ is only a cursory player, his name only coming up at the end of a clichéd prayer (“Please help us to take this lesson into our daily lives” or “Please bless those who couldn’t be here today that they can be here next week” or, my favorite as prayed at the beginning of the meeting, “Please help us to travel home in safety when the time comes”) or during the blessing of the sacrament, often also (unfortunately) a clichéd experience. I think this failure often comes because we get so bogged down in keeping up appearances, policies, and programs and playing to what we perceive other people ought to think of us, that we neglect the better part, the salvational aspect of Church membership. If only we could see the sorrow hidden in each heart, could understand the silent struggles of the outwardly tied together Gospel Doctrine teacher/Relief Society/Elders' Quorum president. If only we could see that keeping up with the Joneses might just mean floundering through depression or chronic illness or the pain of a physically and/or emotionally and/or sexually abusive relationship or, as seems to be the case with many in this forum, the depths of doubt or self-doubt.

And yet, I’m glad I don’t see those things. I’m grateful for my own specialized tutorial, which consists of personalized tests that, to a large degree, have come through active engagement with the Church as a social institution with bureaucratic leanings and as an organization of people I wouldn’t dream of associating with otherwise. Literally. I’d much sooner converse with an old friend or a good book or sit at my laptop writing as I would venture out my door to attend Church weekly, to interact with people I’m only slightly acquainted with and may not even care for (or want to care for) personally.

And there’s the rub.

In my efforts to find and commune with Christ, I’ve learned that his Church (which I’ve been a part of for my entire life) afflicts as much as it comforts, if not sometimes more. As someone with deep inclinations toward criticism and as something of an outsider in my chosen Faith (I’m an at-home dad of three little girls and I also consider myself a feminist, someone interested in and influenced by the way social constructions of gender influence individuals), I sometimes wonder if the Church has place for my difference, for my gendered and reasoned faith. And I always return to a lesson I learned from a perceptive, thoughtful, and thought-provoking Institute teacher and later reiterated in my reading of Eugene England (now deceased), Mormon teacher, writer, and critic.

Towards the end of an Institute class called “The Power of the Word,” a course focused on teaching us to make greater use of the depth and breadth of scriptural resources and references available to Latter-day Saints in our efforts to study and teach the gospel, the teacher warned us that our newfound insights would tempt us to judge gospel teachers more harshly, against the light of our own understanding. Then he suggested that we could avoid this temptation to unjust criticism by teaching from our seats, by which he meant we could use our intellectual and scriptural insights and personal experiences to help make the classroom experience better for others. Shortly thereafter I stopped holding my comments back and, a number of times since, teachers have pulled me aside after class to thank me for guiding their discussion, in ways unbeknownst to me, where it needed to go.

This insight resonated within years later when I read England’s essay, “Why the Church is as True as the Gospel.” Responding to the clichéd Mormon statement that while the gospel is true, the Church is not necessarily, that it’s “something to be endured for the sake of the gospel” it houses and espouses, he suggests, rather, that “The Church is as true—as effective—as the gospel because it involves us directly in proving [the central] contraries” of the universe, forcing us, as a matter of faith, to “work[…] constructively with [those] […] oppositions within ourselves and especially between people, [and to] struggl[e] with paradoxes and polarities at an experiential level that can redeem us.” He then gives this piercing witness: “The Church is true because it is concrete, not theoretical; in all its contradictions and problems, it is at least as productive of good as is the gospel,” simply because its practical application of covenant theology moves us into contact with those who are different from us and with whom we would not otherwise associate. In his words:

Church involvement teaches us compassion and patience as well as courage and discipline. It makes us responsible for the personal and marital, physical, and spiritual welfare of people we may not already love (or may even heartily dislike), and thus we learn to love them. It stretches us and challenges us, though disappointed and exasperated, in ways we would not otherwise choose to be—and thus gives us a chance to be made better than we might choose to be, but ultimately need and want to be.

Through this testimony he not only shows us how the imperfect, personal dimension of the Restored Church can temper and ultimately redeem and exalt us, but he implies that we should approach activity in the Church as servants rather than consumers. Through this light, I’ve learned to ask myself how the Lord might use my essential otherness as a means to bless and bring peace to others instead of constantly wondering what (or how!) I can get out of a lesson when the teacher just doesn’t seem to get it, meaning (however selfishly) that they don’t see things my way or do things as I would do them (always a frustrating an exasperating proposition). I’ve also learned that the best way to help others change is to love them into it, realizing that, most often, they’re not the ones needing to change—I am; and that as my vision of the gospel increases and I begin to see God, others, and myself—however darkly—as God does, my capacity to abide the challenge of Church membership and activity increases.

And in the end I’m drawn to conclude that I don’t think God would have it any other way. For only, I’m convinced, as we endure the slings and arrows of Church membership can we draw closer to and become like him, the omnipotent and omniscient Being who puts up with our flawed and fumbling attempts to serve, standing by us, even strengthening us when he might much rather be in the lobbies of eternity, conversing with gods about the glory and majesty of this universe and beyond.

Then again, maybe not; his love is perfect and I’m convinced he’d much rather abide with us. I for one am grateful that this love endures even when mine does not.

My Name is Tyler and I'm a Runaholic

Okay, so maybe running sadist is a better term for it. Either way, I’m addicted to running.

I realized this more deeply this morning after I woke up at 8:00 because Hadley was singing and kicking in her crib. I’m convinced she was giving me the chance to feed her before she started crying and woke the older two up. (I’ve got to remember to thank her for that when she wakes up again in about half an hour. It’s now 9:33.) My watch alarm (on my Garmin Forerunner 50: just wanted you to know that, yes, I have a running watch—complete with heartrate monitor and footpod—and a fairly expensive though lightweight and non-intrusive one, all thanks to my wonderfully giving wife!) went off at 7:00 so I could be out running by 7:20, but I turned it off and held it in my hand with the full intention of sliding out of bed, visiting the john, putting on my running clothes, and going for an easy six; but I fell asleep instead and didn’t wake up until Hadley decided it was time.

After making her a bottle and feeding her, all the while hoping that Sidney and Alex would stay asleep—which, by some miracle, they still are—I fought with myself as I put on my shorts…

“I don’t want to go running this morning.”

“So don’t; it won’t kill you to take the day off. Make it a rest week.” (I only ran three days this week as opposed to my usual four; maybe I should make it five…who knows.)

…and slipped on my heartrate monitor…

“I really just want to go back to bed.”

“So do it. No one will fault you for being a little lazy this morning. Besides it’s the weekend.”

…and my shirt, socks, and shoes...

“I think I’m burned out. I need to do something different today.”

“Ride your bike. It’s exercise and you haven’t taken it for a spin since before winter.”

…took a drink of water, walked out the door, started my watch timer, and ran up the street.

Besides not presenting a very convincing argument against running—either that or I’m too stubborn and addicted to hear reason—I couldn’t see myself skipping this morning’s session. Call it discipline or insanity or addiction, whatever you want. But I can’t see myself not running. From the day my best friend (Jeremy Draper) and I decided that instead of playing junior high baseball (he’d tried out and didn’t make the cut), we’d go out for track, I haven’t been the same. Soon thereafter my now brother-in-law Jeff convinced us to train with the high school cross country team. Since we were already running, it wasn’t that much of jump to follow him into the locker room for the first time. Besides, some of the best runners on the junior high team were training at the high school. Maybe doing the same would help us rise to the top.

Looking back, I can’t see my life sans running. Some of my best friendships were forged on the run, the ones that carried through high school, through pre- and immediately post-mission times, and even into my first year of college. Running has taught me a lot about life, a lot about myself, a lot about suffering (all self imposed) and enduring pain.

And so I run, not always because I want to—though I usually do—but because I have to. It’s a part of me, my escape from the stress of at-home dadness, my muse, my demon; and it’s not something I’m willing to part with, at least for now. Maybe when my knees finally give out I’ll quit. But my wife may have pry the running shoes off of my feet and tie me to the bed because when my Garmin alarm goes at 5:00 the next morning, I’ll be out the door and up the street before my body remembers the pain and I fall into the gutter where I’ll lie until the autumn leaves or the snow or the run-off water bury me and I fade into the next life where the clouds will lessen the impact on my legs and I’ll be able to run the trails of eternity.

Either that or I’ll crawl home and back into bed where she’ll never know I was gone and the only indication that I’ve given up the run will be the stream of tears (mostly tears of pain) trailing down the street, through the kitchen, up the stairs, and into my Ibuprofen induced dreams.

Inflection (Poem)

My first encounter with Pablo Neruda, a Nobel Prize winning poet, came just a few months ago while our family was staying with my wife's grandparents in St. George. They're housesitting for some friends who are currently serving an LDS mission in Hawaii (not a bad deal on either part!). The house is quite large and every room has at least one wall covered in books. Needless to say, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven! Flipping through the poetry section, I came across Neruda's Selected Poems and spent the next couple of days with him breathing in my ear. I was fascinated by the man and struck by the richness and immediacy of his poetry and felt compelled to write something in response. A few days later, I'd refined my thoughts into this ekphrastic poem--a poem written about or in response to art. (For more info about ekphrasis, click here or here. And to link to the picture I've written about, click here.)

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Inflection: On the Cover of Pablo Neruda: Selected Poems

Behind him, to our right,
just beyond the camera’s focus,
a sculpted Chilean mistress
leans into his tilted head. The line
of her low-cut dress slopes
across peaking breasts, then
crossways to her shoulder
where, cropped
by the edge of the print, we fall
into the waves of her
torso’s fertile skin.

Exploding upward
from this painted sea, she
reflects Neruda in the blur of her face,
seducing us
back to his raised eyebrows; his
easy, penetrating gaze;
the distinction of his nose; lips
resolved as the voice projected
through their vibrant arc; along
the buttoned cleft of his shirt;

into the clasp of his priestly hands
where we rest together,
breathing
to the dry whisper
of his watch’s relentless rhythms.

Across the Threshold of Deity

Some context for this post: Since Jess works for the Corporation of the Presiding Bishopic (read: the Church), her department has devotionals once a week. It's her turn to direct next Monday's so she asked me (for some reason) to put one together for her. This is what I came up with:

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Across the Threshold of Deity

[A]s there be gods many and Lords many[...]
-1 Corinthians 8:5

On June 16, 1844 at a meeting assembled in the grove just east of the Nauvoo Temple, the Prophet Joseph Smith stood to deliver one of his final sermons. Wet with rain, surrounded by apostates, many of whom wanted him dead, and sustained by the saints, he spoke plainly and courageously of the Christian Godhead and “the plurality of Gods,” truths that would in part lead to his martyrdom almost two weeks later.

Yet, his message was no different than anything he’d previously taught: “I wish to declare,” he said, that “in all congregations when I have preached on the subject of Deity, it has been the plurality of Gods.”[1] Using ancient and modern scripture to support his reasoning, he took the assembly back to the beginning, showing them the unbroken chain of exalted Beings that extends, Parent to child, across the thresholds of eternity. Pointing to the relationship between Christ and Elohim as his example, he asked, “Where was there ever a son without a father? and where was there ever a father without first being a son? […] [I]f Jesus had a Father, can we not believe that He had a Father also?”[2]

Just over two months before preaching this sermon in the temple grove, the Prophet had stood before a vast congregation of similar make-up at a Church conference combined with the funeral service for Elder King Follett. During this climactic moment of his career, he taught, “If men do not comprehend the character of God, they do not comprehend themselves.”[3] In one sense, then, only as we come to understand God and His eternal pedigree can we really understand our place, as His offspring and heirs, in the universe and beyond. In this knowledge, the Prophet said, we find eternal life, a dynamic condition we “have got to learn […] the same as all Gods have done before [us] […], namely by going from one small degree to another, and from a small capacity to a great one; from grace to grace, from exaltation to exaltation.”[4]

Through these revelations the Prophet not only outlines the eternal nature and development of God’s race and the breadth and depth of God’s experience and understanding; he also unveils the depth and breadth of God’s love. By “lift[ing] a corner of the veil and giv[ing] [us] […] a […] glance into eternity,”[5] he reveals the eternal bonds of kinship that unite God’s children to Him and to one another through Christ, showing us, as Parley P. Pratt commented after a temple ceremony, “how to prize the endearing relationships of father and mother, husband and wife; of brother and sister, son and daughter.” From the Prophet, said Parley, we learn “that the refined sympathies and affections which endear[…] us to each other emanate[…] from the foundation of divine eternal love” and “that we might cultivate these affections, and grow and increase in the same to all eternity.”[6]

Firm in this knowledge of who God is—and by extension who we are—and that His defining characteristic is love, we must move to become like Him. We must “pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that [we] […] may be filled with this love”[7] because, of all things, it will never fail. In a world of constantly shifting morals and circumstances, charity, the pure love Christ and the Father have for us and that we can have for Them, can be our constant. It can steady our relationships; it can heal our deepest wounds and help us to heal others’ wounds; and it can tie us to our potential as children of an Infinite Being whose touch extends into the most intimate depths of every human soul.

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[1]“Gods Many and Lords Many.” God the Father. Ed. by Gordon Allred. Salt Lake: Deseret Book, 1979. 245.

[2] “Gods Many.” 248-9.

[3] “The King Follett Discourse.” God the Father. 224.

[4][4] “King Follett.” 228.

[5] Autobiography of Parley Parker Pratt.3^rd ed. Ed. by Parley P. Pratt, Jr. Salt Lake: Deseret Book, 1970. 298

[6] Autobiography. 297.

[7] Moroni 7:48.

Irreantum: Come Make Ripples in the "Many Waters"

For any in my abundant readership interested in publishing some poetry, here's your chance. Angela Hallstrom, co-editor of Irreantum recently posted this call for submissions on the Association for Mormon Letters (AML) online forum (link to it here):

I’m in the process of putting together the November issue of Irreantum. We have a lot of great stuff ready to go, but this issue needs more poetry and possibly one more critical essay. If you or anyone you know might be interested in submitting, please visit http://www.mormonletters.org/irreantum/submissions.html for guidelines and send us your work. (Of course, you can also submit fiction and creative nonfiction, but it will be considered for later issues.) All poetry and critical essay submissions must be received by July 15 in order to be considered for the November issue.

We also need a few more proofreaders. For those of you who would like to get some solid editing experience on your resume, Irreantum is a great place to start. Elizabeth Petty Bentley heads up our team of proofreaders and does an excellent job. If you’re interested in being a part of that team, please email us at irreantum@mormonletters.org . A short message detailing any experience you’ve had in editing, publishing, and/or writing would be very helpful.

Thank you!
Angela Hallstrom
co-editor, Irreantum

I'll be submitting some of my poetry and I'm hopeful that I can at least get a few more poems published.

Hope to "see" you there!

Hudson's Geese: Reprise (Poem)

Some time ago I read a poem titled "Hudson's Geese" by Leslie Norris (I've pasted it below and included here links to two other of his poems, "Bridal Veil Falls, Early Winter" and "A Blade of Grass"), a renowned Welsh poet who came as visiting poet to BYU a number of years ago and never left. He died on April 6, 2006, but lived an astonishing life, as a Deseret News article of the same title claims. I was deeply touched by his poem and thought of it's reflection of human love when Sidney, Ali, and I were visiting the duck pond on Weber State's campus a couple of years ago. Watching two geese land in the water then take off again, I wrote the first lines of my poem, "Hudson's Geese: Reprise," which I dedicated to Leslie (even though I never met him) and which was published in Irreantum in 2006. Following is our dialogue, beginning with his lines and concluding with my response:


Hudson's Geese
by Leslie Norris

Hudson tells us of them,
the two migrating geese,
she hurt in the wing
indomitably walking
the length of a continent,
and he wheeling above
calling his distress.
They could not have lived.
Already I see her wing
scraped past the bone
as she drags it through rubble.
A fox, maybe, took her
in his snap jaws. And what
would he do, the point
of his circling gone?
The wilderness of his cry
falling through an air
turned instantly to winter
would warn the guns of him.
If a fowler dropped him,
let it have been quick,
pellets hitting brain
and heart so his weight
came down senseless,
and nothing but his body
to enter the dog's mouth.

****

Hudson’s Geese: Reprise
(For Leslie Norris)
by Tyler Chadwick

Day’s last reflections
catch on wind-swept ripples
as two geese throw shadows
across watered silence.
Embraced by echoes,
each circles the other.
Tracing this current,
I watch Hudson’s pair
venturing back
across the continent:
Her wings bear no scars
of hapless encounter
with fox or wolf or man;
his body carries
no hunter’s spray,
the lead that felled him
to the dogs. They bask
in this dusking plane,
watching the horizon
gather them, leaving
phantom indentations
in the eyes of those who
understood their love.

Published in Irreantum: A Review of Mormon Literature and Film 8:1 (2006), 98.