In the 2014 chapbook the “Catholic Imagination in Modern American Poetry,” distinguished poet and educator James Matthew Wilson celebrates that the “Catholic imagination” continues to inform and inspire American poetry. He also suggested in this slim volume that a Catholic sensibility “still plays a credible role in the ever ancient, ever new work of forming our culture.”
Perhaps it was with this in mind that editors April Lindner and Ryan Wilson — both poets in their own right — assembled the new Paraclete Press offering, “Contemporary Catholic Poets, An Anthology.”
James Matthew Wilson is one of 23 poets featured in the new collection, which also includes work from novelists Julia Alvarez and Sarah Cortez, and a host of established and emerging poets from throughout the U.S.
The co-editors have chosen wisely by including James Matthew Wilson and Dana Gioia (former poet laureate of California) in their collection. Both have been at the forefront in revitalizing the Catholic voice in contemporary U.S. art and letters.
The editors consider “contemporary” any U.S. poet born after the year 1950. They have also limited inclusion in the anthology to poets who write within the context of their Catholic faith.
In striving to illustrate the full spectrum of the U.S. Catholic experience, the editors have included long and short poems, rhyming and blank verse efforts, and plain prose readings that adroitly exhibit a sense of meter and measure.
In Dana Gioia’s “The Angel With the Broken Wing,” the poet examines the comfort and suffering of true belief:
“For even the godless feel something in a church,
A twinge of hope, fear? Who knows what it is?
A trembling unaccounted by their laws,
An ancient memory they can’t dismiss …
There are so many things I must tell God!
The howling of the damned can’t reach so high.
But I stand like a dead thing nailed to a perch,
A crippled saint against a painted sky.”
The aforementioned James Matthew Wilson’s poem “On a Palm” laments a loss of true spirituality against the lure of superstition. In this poem, the author muses on the closing down of an inner-city palm reader’s shop:
“I’m glad the window’s dark, For Rent sign hung.
But, when I see my hands gripped round the wheel,
The knuckles growing cracked and lined with age,
I think how there is no one who will peel
Them open, lay the fingers gently straight,
And study all those traceries of fate.”
There are also poems that emphasize suffering, recovery, redemption and an awareness of forces greater than this world has to offer. Author Kate Daniel’s short poem “Getting Clean,” offers the following:
“Even the addicts
who are atheists
learn this lesson:
There is something
bigger than they are,
and unlike them,
it lives forever.”
Ryan Wilson and April Lindner have included some of their own work in this collection. Lindner’s “Our Lady of Perpetual Help” inspires spiritual musings on observing a closed-down inner-city church:
“Our Lady of Perpetual Help is gray,
A dead incisor in a wary smile.
A crevice in her wall allows a glimpse
into the chancel, where a sodden mattress
and dirty blanket indicate that someone
finds this place a sanctuary still,
takes his rest here, held and help apart
from passersby, their cruelties and their kindnesses,
watched over by the night’s blind congregation,
by the blank eyes of a concrete saint.”
One of the most poignant offerings in the entire collection is Franz Wright’s “Letter, January 1998.” Here the lyrical poet turns an examination of conscience into a prayerful verse:
“If I could tell someone.
The humiliation I go through
when I think of my past
can only be described as grace.
We are created by being destroyed.”
This new anthology is an enjoyable read not only for scholarly readers, but also for those whose most recent taste of poetry occurred in the last year of high school English class. In their preface, the editors have added useful information of the importance of poetry, especially for those with Catholic sensibilities. “They (poems) also speak intimately of heartfelt truths, describe local haunts, and address ordinary people directly. They meditate on living, on dying, and on the passage of time. They tell us stories, they tell us lies, and they tell us stories that reveal the truth through lying …. They enchant us with beauty and appall us with terror. Above all, poems remember.”
While the Catholic flavor is not readily apparent in all of the entries, each challenges the reader to discern sacramental elements in often prosaic situations.
“Contemporary Catholic Poetry, An Anthology”
April Lindner, Ryan Wilson eds., Paraclete Press (2024)
240 pages, $35
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Mike Mastromatteo is a writer, editor and book reviewer from Toronto.