Evermore Give Us This Bread

Five poems by Dr. K, with art and a poem by Julian

All the artwork accompanying this post was done by my son and co-author, Julian.

I would imagine most of my readers are not aware that I have enjoyed writing poetry, off and on, all my life. The first poems were written in high school, and took the somewhat embarrassing form of imitations of modern poets like E.E. Cummings and T.S. Eliot. (Not that it would be embarrassing to imitate them well, but I was quite incapable of doing so at that age.)

A big step forward occurred in the year I spent at Georgetown University (1989-1990), where, in one marvelous literature course I took with Prof. Paul Betz, an expert on Wordsworth, I fulfilled the requirement for a major paper by writing — obviously, with Dr. Betz’s prior agreement — a one-act play on the French Revolution in heroic couplets, that is, rhymed iambic couplets. It was called The Hidden Manna (I didn’t know at the time about Fr. James T. O’Connor’s book of the same name) and was set in a French monastery that was ransacked and burned by revolutionaries. To my great regret, somewhere in the many moves of that period of my life — from Washington DC to California, from California back to DC, from DC to Austria, and then from Austria to Wyoming — I lost the only copy of the work I had. The block-like Macintosh on which it had been typed out had also long gone the way of old computers.

At Thomas Aquinas College, I became fascinated with the sonnet form and wrote quite a few sonnets in strict form, either English or Petrarchan. These, however, reflected some spiritual turmoil and experiences I preferred not to hold on to, so at a certain point I burned all of them. Decades later, I regret having done this, though I understand why I did it at the time.

As a young father, I turned to writing Bellocian humorous verse (in the vein of The Bad Child’s Book of Beasts), and these amusing pieces are in a folder somewhere, as I’m sure my children would not forgive me if I ever got rid of them!

For most of my adult life, my creative energies have gone into composing music for the Church. I have written about 150 works in a modern classical style, with nods to Renaissance polyphony and occasionally to Arvo Pärt. When I’ve been in charge of a choir and had my free choice of repertoire, it was relatively easy to insert an occasional new piece, custom-made for my singers. (Those who are interested in exploring my musical work can find recordings and scores at my dedicated music website CantaboDomino.)

When I moved away from Wyoming, I became a “regular old singer” in a local men’s schola, and this, together with lots of travel and other obligations, has mostly silenced the composing Muse. But, in accord with what seems like an ironclad psychological law, “when one door closes, a window opens,” I’ve felt drawn in recent years to writing poetry again. Today I’d like to share some of my recent poems with you (and, of course, read them aloud in the voiceover!).

Initial in a hand-illuminated copy of the Rule, showing the raven and dove, symbols of Benedict and Scholastica.

Can We Still Write Traditional Poetry?

Just a very short digression about style. I do try to avoid exceedingly old-fashioned diction and sentence structure, because it can call so much attention to itself that it becomes a distraction from the main point of the work, or can sound excessively derivative or formulaic. But I think the insistence on using only a modern vernacular style, without any deviation from contemporary English, is a mistake, an unnecessary straitjacket that limits expressive possibilities, desirable allusions, and emotional resonances.

Have you ever wondered why modern poets in general, even ones who still write in rhyme and meter, choose such a plain modern-language mode of delivery, rarely reaching for the older and higher registers available to poets? Shawn Phillip Cooper speculated about this:

The resigned, unquestioning acceptance of this state of affairs — especially by those who, through championing traditional form, should know better — continues to imprison this present age of creativity in a literary cul-de-sac. The advent of neo-formalism is, for this reason, a liberation of half-measures: given license to return to the traditional forms which had been cast off by the modernists, today’s poets are nevertheless constrained to adopt the modernists’ language and style, or else risk being told by their teachers and publishers that their verses are still dressed in pantaloons.

To such a mentality, it is as if the centuries of development of a poetic register were just a dark and mystical superstition of the past, happily dispelled by the Wordsworthian move towards ordinary language in a way as salutary as the invention of the electric lightbulb and the advent of Pasteurisation.

But the development of a unique poetic register did not impede works of genius, even though it was brought about through a certain degree of historical and cultural happenstance. At its height, it provided the basis for a tremendous outpouring of some of the greatest works of English poesy, both in quantity and quality, and including most of the Romantics (Wordsworth, too!) despite the preference that some of them claimed to have for ordinary language. It was only when the literary revolution of the early 20th century — “the men of 1914” — gained a stranglehold upon English letters that the whole historical development of poetry thereunto was consigned to the dustbin as just so much useless and burdensome artifice.

Not surprisingly, as a Catholic traditionalist I do not consider the “unique poetic register” of pre-World-War-I poesy to be “useless and burdensome artifice,” and I think we can and should still write in it, just as we can and should compose polyphony in a neo-Cecilian style that leans heavily on Renaissance conventions while yet conveying something expressive of and appropriate to the modern age and to the unique soul that gave it birth.

Whether or to what extent any of my music or poetry succeeds in standing on its own two feet (so to speak) while simultaneously leaning on the great artistic tradition that precedes me is not a matter for me to judge, since, as Aristotle wryly remarks, poets love their poems as parents love their children, making it hard to be an unbiased critic! But if you enjoy these verses, then I shall be content and give thanks to the Lord.

Deathless Shepherd (for Christmas)

The deathless shepherd who should be
revered—“I am who am”—
Himself becomes the Servant; he
Becomes the slaughtered Lamb.

The one unseen, unheard, all past
The realm of mortal ken,
Takes flesh and face and voice; at last
He’s fellow man with men.

Unchanging Word in changing speech
Expressed, come down to earth,
To places where no light could reach
Until this piercing birth.

What fellowship hath Christ the Son
Of God with sons of wrath?
The answer, clearly, would be none,
Without the blood-won bath.

Upon the Tree he spilled this wine
Of love—it trickled down
From branch to branch, from vine to vine,
A flood enough to drown

All sins, all crimes, all guilt and pain
Of heaven’s loss and hell’s
Encroaching, shadowy domain—
All this, the Blood repels.

Bright Liquor, crimson Draught, I drink
In faith the life You give
In all I do or say or think,
That dying, I may live.

I cry to You, with heart and voice,
“O King, be king of me!
Transpierce my sense, my mind, my choice
To set my freedom free.