Four Questions With David Wheeler
Engaging with different voices is always important. In blogging it is so easy to concentrate on your own view, and let other views orbit around it. “Four Questions” is a series on Everyday Liturgy which looks to authors & artists to ask them four questions about their craft.
David Wheeler is the author of Contingency Plans and a fair number of essays around the internet. He lives, works and creates in the Seattle area. You can read some of his recent poetry on his site Dave Writes Right and a newly published poem “Through A Glass, Dim but Never Dark” on GENERATE Magazine.
Everyday Liturgy: As a poet, how do you see spirituality or faith influencing your craft?
David: Poetry has a musicality to it that has a rich history in spirituality, liturgy, worship and prayer. It’s meditative to write. In that sense, every poem I write is like a prayer, but that doesn’t mean I feel limited to spiritual, meditative, or even reverent subjects. I do, however, notice its influence on the tone I take, much of the time. Still, a poem of mine like “Your Bright Wounds” is a snide criticism of acting injured, a boy who cried wolf approach to taking things personally, self-indulgence. I don’t think critique like that falls outside the purview of spirituality, especially when self-important injury is an attitude I see so prevalent in religion today.
EL: When I was just starting to write poetry as a high schooler my poetry was highly devotional. It was like George Herbert kind of stuff (in tone and content, definitely not in craft!). I think that reading older poets like Herbert and Hopkins has set the tone that poets of prior generations have filled the blatantly religious poetry category, so to speak. Contemporary poets are urged to be more subtle. Do you find yourself trying being subtle with spiritual aspects in your poetry?
DW: Sure; I strive for subtlety. Not because I feel oppressed by earlier generations’ heavy hands (devotionally, confessionally, formally, etc.) but because one thing sticks with me from writing courses, and that’s Emily Dickinson’s urge to “Tell all the truth but tell it slant.” It’s boring of me to state that I’m, on occasion, dissatisfied with my body. I wish I was less bony, kept better posture, had a fuller beard, had a darker complexion. I’m not distraught; I’m just vain. But for me to truly get across how it is, I write a poem like “On Anatomy & Physiology,” infusing those feelings of ingratitude and vanity with the slanted truth that we are all fearfully and wonderfully made.
EL: Do you think there is a place for more blatantly devotional poetry in the poetry world today?
DW: Certainly. Scott Cairns, for one, is a powerful poet whose devotional poetry is clearly (at least to me) craved by many. And I don’t think we’d be the same without someone like Thomas Merton, who maybe falls more heavily on the devotional side, but is nonetheless a poet. Kathleen Norris, too, when she was publishing more poetry. Even Wendell Berry makes the poetry world spin inside and outside religious circles. There’s clearly a place and desire–Rumi and Hafiz are some of the toughest to keep in stock at the store–but like all poetry, tastes are nuanced. For me, I like Stephen Dunn, and I’m not even aware of his spiritual leanings. [Eds. note: David named three of my favorite authors—Berry, Cairns & Norris—all in one answer. We're tracking here!]
EL: I view the crafts of poetry and prayer as merging or blending together sometimes. How do you see poetry in respect to prayer?
DW: One of my favorite Barbara Kingsolver quotes is this: “When the writer converses privately with her soul in the long dark night, a thousand neighbors are listening in on the party line, taking it personally” (“In Case You Ever Want to Go Home Again,” High Tide in Tucson). I very much agree. Poetry is a type of prayer that lets others pray with you. I keep St. Augustine’s prayer book around my house. Every once in a while, I peek through the liturgy. There’s something about praying other people’s words that opens my soul up to bigger things; I appreciate that I don’t have to spend all my energy thinking of what to say. But in the rare instances I do have something to say, I can’t help but wonder who’s listening in, taking it personally (in a good way).
You can read my review of David’s book of poetry Contingency Plans on Englewood Review of Books as a special preview of their print edition.
Poem: Forty Years Without Fire
Forest unaware it sheds itself
Twig by twig, branch by branch
Gifting vestments to the dust
When dust settles upon car hoods
Rain packs it away to street gutters
As sustenance for the journey to sea
When sea waters beat our reflections
Into mirrors, shatter mirrors into glass,
metamorphoses into puzzle piece shards,
Into shards of glittering sand; then our faces
Become as fragmented as the beachhead.
Heat sponges up water, raptured into rain
When rain falls it animates the forest
Unto breathing, unto light, unto life:
When water dies, the forest survives.
Poem: Psalm 2
Serve the LORD with fear
and rejoice with trembling.
Kiss his son…
Kiss the ground like you would the
grave of a swiftly taken lover―one who
perished scootering on vacation
or snorkeling for gold doubloons. Like
prostrate Luther wondering why the
thunderous hammering god would smite
his scalp and beat on bulging eyes with
verocity, kiss the ground out of sheer fearful
exultation. Bow down to soil our King
Solomon, and look upon thousands of
concubines, the lilies of the field and the
elder trees. Hug your lips around the humus,
mouth moisture between your tongue and
biting teeth, lacerate roots of legumes with
your incisors. Kiss the ground because it is kingly.
Kiss the ground because it is our atomic lover.
Kiss the ground because it is our spiritual act of
worship. Kiss the ground, treasure chest of
corporeal essence. Kiss the god-forsaken
ground because it is our beloved sister death.
Broken For You
Broken for You
The dog days of summer have swallowed us up this year.
Too hot and humid to bother barking,
they whimper on the sticky, green linoleum,
begging for respite
splattered with tomato juice.
Their heat crawls up my ankles as
perspiration drips, co-mingled, down
through my shirt, the tie of my apron,
to the flip-flops, stuck to the floor.
At twelve years old
I stood in an operating room next to my mother
during open heart surgery.
Wearing the same scrubs she wore,
my hair covered, gloves on, germs contained,
I presided over the head of the table.
Mom flanked the surgeon.
I peered under the hospital sheet at the white-washed
play-dough face of a perfect stranger with eyes taped shut.
The thirty-pound box half empty, finally,
the compost bucket nearly full of cores,
I slice each tomato with a cross
and dunk it into boiling water.
On my tiptoes, over the sanitized blue drapery,
I watched the break of the sternum,
the cranking with sheer force to open the rib cage,
the tossing of ice cubes right into the chest cavity,
slowing down the heartbeat, melting and flowing with blood.
The sink is already filled with ice.
I run the cold water, and watch
the tomatoes as they leap from the decades-old bowl,
as if they were made for this.
Their pierced skins slide off in my hands,
the soft flesh still hot.
My knuckles ache from the cold.
This is my body.
When the surgeon grabbed a soldering gun,
the sound of the sizzle
the smell of the smoke,
the burning arteries, the blood clotting,
churned my stomach.
And I was hungry.
The Divine Intoxication: Exulting Land & Sea
In May I had the privilege of helping to organize an event at International Arts Movement: a combined poetry reading and musical event which pulled a line from an Emily Dickinson poem as its title, “The Divine Intoxication: Exulting Land & Sea.” L.L. Barkat, Carey Wallace, Joy Ike, Amy Leigh Cutler, Christopher Cocca and others read and performed, including myself.
There is video of the whole event, so if you missed it take heart! You can watch the whole event in two parts (I’m in part 2).
Part 1
A Divine Intoxication: Exulting Land and Sea, Part 1 from International Arts Movement on Vimeo.
Part 2
A Divine Intoxication: Exulting Land and Sea, Part 2 from International Arts Movement on Vimeo.
If you liked one of the poems let me know and I’ll email a copy.
Poem: A Sestina, for a Wedding Day
The dew descends into the murk of dust,
Spade in hand to mix the soil with water.
Planting the seeds into now moist ground,
We plunge the tool while holding hands
Like young lovers, marrying the earth
With solemn vows in an empty church.
We kneel to plant like worship in church,
Our penitent hands caked in wet dust―
Our souls feasting on the naked earth:
We baptize our fingers with well water,
We shake the soil with a clap of hands,
We lie prostrate in prayer on the ground.
We have built our house upon this ground,
Placed our family in the world, a little church
Intent to establish the work of our hands
Upon the microbial peat and trick dust
Into producing edible flesh with just water
And the nutrients of a pregnant earth.
Lay your head down to sleep upon the earth
May your only pillow be the cool night ground,
May your only blessing be a glass of water
Sustaining us all like elements at church
Set upon the altar. Fingerprints of dust
etched upon the glass with weary hands,
you match me with palmer’s prayerful hands
and descend to sleep with me on this earth.
We make our bed sheets from the cotton dust
And rest tucked tight like seeds in the ground.
Dream of your picket fence house besides the church
On Main Street, three blocks from the river water.
When we rise we drink the bright, still water
And splash the coolness on our face and hands.
The morning is pierced with bells from the church
Two blocks away. We read quietly by the hearth
And eat toast and eggs with our freshly ground
Coffee. I watch sunlight transfigure dust
And go out to water my small tract of earth.
I place my clean hands into the dewy ground
Like prayer at church consubstantiates the dust.
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