Jessica Powers - The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers

Edited by Regina Siegfried, ASC and Robert F. Morneau ICS Publications
2131 Lincoln Road, NE
Washington, DC 20002
1999 Publication Acknowledgments Many of the poems selected for this edition have been published previously in the following magazines:

America	Harpers
American History	Poetry: A Magazine of Verse
The Bible Today	Sign
New Catholic World	Spirit
Commonweal	Spiritual Life
The Forge	Today
The Franciscan

The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press has granted permission to quote from Letter 955 of the letters of Emily Dickinson. Dedication For the members of Sister Miriams community, the Carmelites of the Carmel of the Mother of God, Pewaukee, Wisconsin. Acknowledgements Emily Dickinson wrote: The Thank you in my heart obstructs the Thank you on my Lips (Letter 955, 1 Dec., 1884). We too have words of gratitude in our hearts that we need to express. People who have been particularly supportive, interested, and encouraging in a variety of ways are: Rev.

Bernard McGarty of La Crosse, WI, Sister Miriams cousin; Dolores Leckey, executive director of the Secretariat on the Laity and Family and Sister Miriams biographer; and members of Ruma province of Adorers of the Blood of Christ. Sister Pauline Grady, ASC and Sister Paula Lynch, ASC were meticulous, precise, and enthusiastic as proofreaders. Marquette University Archives is the repository for Sister Miriams manuscripts and papers as well as Sister Reginas research. Marquettes archivists, especially Mr. Charles Elston, deserve our words of thanks for their professional expertise. Finally, Sister Miriams community, to whom we dedicate this book, was always gracious, warm, and hospitable during our visits to the Carmel.

They continue to welcome us as friends. Sister Miriam herself knew of the close relationship between gratitude and love when she wrote: The Gift of Love My thoughts of you are fair as precious stones out of the memorys deep mysterious mines. I cut and polish, hold the gems to light color of sea water, color of wines, coaxed from the earths sweetest fruits. I drop them
down into my heart, into the lifted hands of love whose lone concern is your renown. Copyright 1989, 1999 by the Discalced Carmelite Nuns of Milwaukee, Wisconsin All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by an information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the Copyright holders (see above).

ICS Publications
2131 Lincoln Road, NE
Washington, DC 20002
800-832-8489 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publications Data Powers, Jessica [Selections. 1999] The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers / edited by Regina Siegfried and Robert Morneau.
p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN (paper): 978-0-935216-68-4 ISBN (epub): 978-1-939272-05-8
1. I. I.

Siegfried, Regina. II. Morneau, Robert F., 1938- III. Title. PS3531.09723 A6 1999

811.54dc21

99-048356

ContentsI.
VisionII.
Of God and Angels, and other Glorious ThingsIII.
The Human Journey: The Agony and the EcstasyIV.
Of Birds and Rainbows, and All Assorted Things In his work, The Nigger of the Narcissus, Joseph Conrad captures well the mission of the artist: To arrest, for the space of a breath, the hands busy about the work of the earth, and compel men entranced by the sight of distant goals to glance for a moment at the surrounding vision of form and colour, of sunshine and shadows; to make them pause for a look, a sigh, for a smilesuch is the aim, difficult and evanescent, and reserved only for a very few to achieve. But sometimes, by the deserving and the fortunate, even that task is accomplished.

And when it is accomplishedbe hold!all the truth of life is there: a moment of vision, a sigh, a smileand the return to an eternal rest. (29) Jessica Powers is an artist, painting in words the movements of the heart, the aspirations of the soul, the homelessness of a pilgrim people, the joys and sufferings of the mystic, the song and dance of those in love, the beauties of creation. The reader of her verse will pause for a deep look into the solitude of Gods presence, will be drawn, through wonder and awe, to sigh before the voluminous garments of Gods mercy (see The Garments of God), will smile at the poets claim that inebriation occurs in the name of courtesy to a God who offers too much potent goodness. But Not With Wine O God of too much giving, whence is this inebriation that possesses me, that the staid road now wanders all amiss, and that the wind walks much too giddily, clutching a bush for balance, or a tree? How then can dignity and pride endure with such inordinate mirth upon the land, when steps and speech are somewhat insecure and the light heart is wholly out of hand? If there be indecorum in my songs, fasten the blame where rightly it belongs: on Him who offered me too many cups of His most potent goodnessnot on me, a peasant who, because a King was host, drank out of courtesy.

Jessica Powers has written over four hundred poems, nearly three hundred of which have been published in a variety of periodicals including America, Commonweal, Sign, and many others. She lived in the Carmel in Pewaukee, Wisconsin.

Her Scotch-Irish ancestry, her many years of rural living, her love of St. John of the Cross, her desire to draw people into the presence of God have all radically influenced her poetry and her life. Jessica Powers ability to arrest our attention, we who live in a frenzied century of activism and consumerism, is no small achievement. Yet that ability is grounded in the fact that she is able to be moved deeply by the words of others. Her poem, Come, South Wind, flows from St. John of the Cross where he says, By south wind is meant the Holy Spirit who awakens love.

While a scripture scholars comment that virtue puts the house at rest triggered the poem The House at Rest, the poem also patently bears the mark of St. John of the Cross, and, less obviously, reflects the wisdom of St. Teresa of Jesus dictum that, unless we practice the little virtues, we will remain spiritual dwarves. Her poem The Leftovers grew out of a homily that touched her heart. Grounded in the present moment, this poet is able to catch the stirrings of the Spirit because she is a listener and a lover. William Carlos Williams, quoted in Inner Companions, specifies another dimension of the poets mission: I wanted, if I was to write in a larger way than of birds and flowers, to write about the people close about me: to know in detail, minutely what I was talking about to the whites of their eyes, to their very smell.

This is the poets business. Not to talk in vague categories but to write particularly, as a physician works upon a patient, upon the things before him, in the particular to dis cover the universal... (78-79) Poetry comes in a variety of forms. Emily Dickinson focuses some six hundred poems on the mystery of death and dying; Robert Frost leads us down the various paths of nature in delightful and rewarding ways, regardless of the roads we have not taken; Shakespeares sonnets attempt to unravel the mysteries of love and human foibles. Jessica Powers primary focus is on the