Reading My Friends #8

Angela Alaimo O'Donnell, Holy Land

Welcome to Reading My Friends.

This is Lyman Grant, coming to you from the 4 Door Lounge, my backyard study in Harrisonburg, Virginia, deep in the heart of the beautiful Shenandoah Valley.  I have been traveling for a while, and it is good to be back.

Thank you for joining me for the eighth installment of our podcast.  Remember you can subscribe on Substack or find us on the web at 4doorlounge.com.  I also post reminders on Facebook, so befriend me, why don’t you?

Do you folks remember the old Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, in which you tried to connect any movie actor to Kevin Bacon through six or fewer fellow actors? Actor A was in a movie with actor B, and B acted with C, and so on until we get to Kevin Bacon.  Well, here is a new game for you. In two moves connect me with the Pope. [Pregnant Pause…]. Well, I know the poet Angela O’Donnell and Angela O’Donnell just met the Pope. Like last week.  In Rome.

If you listened to episode #5, you might remember that I read poems in which Alan Berecka addressed three of our mutual friends. One of those friends was Larry D. Thomas. We looked at one of his books in the previous episode. A second mutual friend is Angela Alaimo O’Donnell. Two weeks ago I read her 2022 book Holy Land (which she gifted the Pope). I first met Angela at the old Windhover conferences at the University of Mary Hardin Baylor. I admired her work back then, so much so that when I moved to Virginia and saw that she was doing a reading at American Catholic University in D.C., I hopped in my car and drove several hours to see and hear her again. 

Holy Land is, I believe, her ninth book of poems. In the “Afterword” to the book, Angela reports that the book’s genesis was, generally, a 12-day pilgrimage to the Holy Land, yes, that Holy Land. And, specifically, with a run by the Sea of Galilee, that produced this poem:

Here’s “The Storm Chaser.”

The Mount of Beatitudes, October 16, 2019, 7 AM

Running along the Sea of Galilee,
I see you in your boat, tall brown
man that you are, standing in the prow,
arms raised in supplication to the skies,
wind-whipped tunic blowing wild & high
as the waves that have paralyzed your friends,
who have hit the deck and now lie prone
on the sodden wood, dumb as stone
and waiting for what surely is the end,
so low in the boat I can't even see them.
You alone are all might, pure motion
in the shape of a god, this small ocean
no match for your infinite love--for them,
for the sky, for the sea. And, yes, even for me.

“The Storm Chaser” begins a sixteen-poem cycle called “Christ Sightings.”  Here is another poem in that cycle:  “Via Dolorosa.”

"Station five, Chapel of St Simon of Cyrene: To the right of the lintel in the corner of the wall at shoulder height is a smooth stone with a hollow where Jesus supposedly placed his hand when he stumbled while carrying the cross."--The Skeptic's Guide to the Holy Land.

Put your hand in my side, Christ said
to Thomas. I put my hand in
the hole in the wall. It was just
the size of a suffering man's,
it was just the size of my sin.
I faltered, too. I did not trust
the stone or flesh. Both men are dead.
But in this place I felt our hands
touch. The space was just the span 
of my five fingers.  Nothing can
convince me now he was not there,
that Magdalene's unruly hair
was not soothed by that healing hand,
that he was not more than a man. 

If you didn’t catch on, both of these poems are sonnets, or variations of sonnets. The book includes 87 poems in six sections, and two-thirds, or so, of those poems are sonnets, or rather they are 14-lined poems with rhyme. And each of them, end, similar to Shakespearean sonnets, with a rhymed couplet. However, if you pay attention, you will notice that some of the poems are not pentameter, but tetrameter, and you will notice that the rhyme schemes vary quite a bit, so the rhymes are unexpected.

These moves are really clever, and they give the poems the feel of free unrhymed poems, while still remaining intensely musical. In addition, while poems deal with large matters—where is Christ for the believer? where is home? what does it mean to be a foreigner? what is holy? where is holy?—the poems remain poignantly personal.

Like this one: “The House.”
Bronxville, New York

At night I set my house on fire.
   By day I build it up again.
The night's a cheat. The night's a liar.
   The day's my confidante and friend.
The flames consume the things I bought
   and brought to fill an empty space.
Things I loved and things I thought
   could love me back. I made this place
a storehouse of our old desires.
   Now nothing else will do but fire
to purge the past from our full rooms,
   to leave what doesn't serve in ruins,
to sweep away the dust and ash,
   to make a new house that won't last.

This poem is iambic tetrameter. And its rhyme scheme is abab, cdcd, then the pattern changes to ee, ff, gg. And the exact rhymes of bought-thought and space-place, begin to slant at the end to rooms-ruins and ash-last. 

Having praised the sonnets in the book, I have to say I am particularly enamored by the fifteen triolets in the final section of the book, called “Border Songs.”  I think the triolet is a risky form in our post-post-modern age. Too musical, with great temptations toward sentimentality. But these poems replace sentimentality with compassion and empathy. Persona poems, they give voice to men and women who attempt to cross our southern borders.  While a certain type of critic might accuse Angela of inappropriate appropriation (you know, American Dirt and all that), I think the poems instead illustrate how a poet who wants to love others as Christ loved others (without the evangelizing) can use their art to form bridges. Here are two.

Border Song #4

My child sleeps in a cage and yet he sings
like the birds of paradise we left behind.
Knowing nothing of the fear the future brings
my child sleeps in a cage and yet he sings.
The children in the States live like kings.
The lies they told us haunt my waking mind.
My child sleeps in a cage and yet he sings
like the birds of paradise we left behind.

Border Song #15

Face down in the river lies a father.
Beside him lies his little daughter.
The saddest death is death by water.
He held her when the current caught her.
He did not leave. He did not falter.
Face down in the river lies a father.
His arms around his little daughter.

Well, we are ending on a sad note. Still, I hope everyone stays well. I am going to be on the road for awhile again. I will return as soon as I can.