An Axe for the Frozen Sea by Ben Palpant

Ben Palpant, an author and poet, “compiled his singular, one-on-one interviews with eighteen poets” in An Axe for the Frozen Sea*. I wasn’t sure I’d like it, but I did. The list of poets is:

Scott Cairns
Robert Cording
Dana Gioia
Malcolm Guite
Karen An-hwei Lee
Li-Young Lee
Maurice Manning
Paul Mariani
Marlyn Nelson
Tania Runyan
Luci Shaw
Ryan Whitaker Smith
Jeanne Murray Walker
Jeremiah Webster
Mischa Willett
James Matthew Wilson

Some I knew, many I did not. All incredibly interesting. I knew Ben Palpant was a man after my own heart when he quoted Aslan in The Last Battle.

Poetry offered me insights that drew me deeper into life, and, in particular my life with Christ. Poetry drew me, as Aslan says in The Last Battle, “further up and further in.” p. xii*

Ben also said he “wanted [the interviews] to read like two people trying to dig deeper into what it means to be human, two friends exploring why poetry matters of all of life.” p. xiii*

I think he succeeded.

The book is full of dog-eared pages, underlining, and notes in the margin. I couldn’t stop myself! Here’s one about tears that I could relate to since I’m such a crier.

[Malcolm Guite reads a poem that ends with:]

But we might waken yet and face those fears,
If we could see ourselves through Jesus’ tears.

[He goes on to say:]

I guess I was playing with two ideas in that poem, I wanted to challenge the idea that people are blinded by tears. Since tears are a sign of love, maybe they actually clarify our vision. To know that you’ve been wept for is to know that you’ve been loved.

The other thing I was trying to wake us up from was compassion fatigue…What is the solution to the problem of compassion fatigue? It seems to me that if we weep with Jesus, if we see ourselves and the world through his tears, then we start seeing people through the compassion of Jesus…If the answer to that cliche’ question “What would Jesus do?” is to cry, then you should cry. pages 76-77*

Fire up for crying! Yeah!

Many of the poets talk about poetry (duh!) and I liked what Karen An-hwei Lee said:

Instead of striving to find precise meaning or representation all the time, maybe we should let the words float over us, let them bring us to a place of contemplation. page 86*

Li-Young Lee says about poetry what I also heard Billy Collins say:

When you read a poem on the page, the line keeps pulling you back to the left margin, to the beginning…[Quoting Robert Frost, he says:] Each line is a tribute of the current to the source, to the beginning of the poem…

But he’s also talking about something much bigger…He’s saying that our motion and words have to pay tribute to the Source. page 108*

Luci Shaw says, “You know, I’ve always been attracted to truth expressed beautifully.” page 238.

At the end of each interview, there is one poem from each poet. I often googled and found more. Once you’ve learned a little more about the writer, it adds depth to reading their work. I hope you will read this book, get to know the poets a bit, and read at least the one poem included for each. Here is one by Tania Runyan that I particularly liked. I only recently heard of Tania when I saw a series of poems she wrote as “Poet Jesus.” In those, she writes as if she is a kind of secretary or scribe for Jesus, writing what he himself says. Super intriguiging. In this poem, she writes as if she is Mary, the mother of Jesus. I love the human-ness of it.

Mary at the Nativity
by Tania Runyan

The angel said there would be no end
to his kingdom. So for three hundred days
I carried rivers and cedars and mountains.
Stars spilled in my belly when he turned.

Now I can’t stop touching his hands,
the pink pebbles of his knuckles,
the soft wrinkle of flesh
between his forefinger and thumb.
I rub his fingernails as we drift
in and out of sleep. They are small
and smooth, like almond petals.
Forever, I will need nothing but these.

But all night, the visitors crowd
around us. I press his palms to my lips
in silence. They look down in anticipation
as if they expect him to suddenly
spill coins from his hands
or raise a gold scepter
and turn swine into angels.

Isn’t this wonder enough
that yesterday he was inside me,
and now he nuzzles next to my heart?
That he wraps his hand around
my finger and holds on?

* An Axe for the Frozen Sea, Ben Palpant, Rabbit Room Press, 2024