Magnified Through Time
Mary Angela Douglas
"God breathes on the vintage pages as I read."
So says Mary Angela Douglas.
For many modern readers, it may seem odd, perhaps even disconcerting, to come across a poet who sincerely and unapologetically offered up their poems to God. After all, we say, God is merely a stand-in for the unknown, a primitive superstition to be outgrown. This is the 21st century! we know so much more, so much better now…don’t we?
This is the type of arrogance we’ve come to expect, even from our artists: the measuring-stick arrogance that shuts off any grand or divine possibilities.
Instead, we have the personal religion of tasteful loves. And so it is that poets of today if they praise at all, are more likely to offer up their poems in the name of one group or another, some abused pigeons somewhere, or the experience of the idiosyncratic individual: the marginalized brought on stage, defiant, to give voice to their struggle. Which is a fine thing, this giving voice. We all suffer. We are all restricted. We should speak.
But who suffers more? Who is most restricted? Such poets want to know, and seek to remedy by speaking the language of restriction. This type of poetry is eagerly gobbled up by the many highly-qualified judges of today, where awards and indignation is justly, very justly apportioned. The unjust past is brought into the stark light of the unjust present, as if injustice could cure itself through self-torture.
Ah, but what about the other poets, the poets of forever, the poets of light? What do they say? What do they want to know?
Mary Angela Douglas is such a poet. Her poetry says if there is restrictions in life, there is no restriction within the confines of beauty or the knowledge of God. And to be clear, for Douglas, this is the God-man, Jesus Christ. Through the experience of Him, restriction is transcended and suffering silenced in the hope of the resurrection. Crazy, huh?
POETRY IS NOT A CONTEST poetry is not a contest I cried unto the living skies; the flickering of images lit by electrical storms with no warning the telegram from God hidden in snows, the windswept; the crystal breath of angels, who knows, at the windowpanes where small children barely stand after letting go of the word between here and there. the table where the roses were; the room where the table was-- in Shining, long ago; the shaken pillars driven further underground, outside, away, away from sound, nearer to glaciers. poetry is not a contest a competition of herds. of who deserves or not. where, in any of your shadows could you ever find its resemblance clutching at the grass you used to know while hurricanes pass over you or the unnamed stars mary angela douglas 17 november 2015
The poet decries our folly before humbly stepping aside—then an alternative, the numinous, can wriggle its way into the reader. It’s as if one’s wandering through a vast and loving landscape, where hurricanes are mere trifles blown into being by angels for better kite-flying, and a lifetime of injustice and pain is just a useful, minute-long lesson preparing us for eternity.
This isn’t to say Mary denies the world’s suffering. She is acutely aware of it. Her website: angelidicuoremare.blogspot.com is dedicated “To the Russian Poets”--"And most of all, to the poet from the former Soviet Union who, dying, in prison, wrote his final poem in his own blood on the wall: the single word, Hope."
This is far removed from “a competition of herds.” Here is Mrs. Douglas lamenting the current state of poetry:
“How has it come to pass that in a free country poetry, as well as all the art forms, has come to be regarded as important ONLY to the degree that it represents a conversation about social issues? When I think of the incredible, jeweled sweep, breadth and depth of feeling, imagination and beauty of poetry especially in the English language for centuries and see it reduced in our time virtually to only a repository of political will and polemic, I COULD WEEP.”
It’s sad but true. Poetry sucks today, and no one cares. Many of today’s poets have politics lodged in the throat, making for garbled song.
Mrs. Douglas is not a literary critic in any strict sense of the word, but few individuals today care as passionately about poetry as it is meant to be. If indignation is expressed occasionally, it’s the indignation of a child whose favorite doll has been ripped to shreds by a pack of bullies. This is the small price one pays for valuing something worth valuing. Yet, it seems especially small compared to access to realms seemingly lost to most of us since childhood.
NOW WE ARE CROSSING THE PINK PART OF THE MAP now we are crossing the pink part of the map I say to my sleeping soul and next the mint green the lilac countries there were no wars here, no sudden shifts in the earth but everything was the way you feel when you are a little girl and they show you the map and you think to yourself it's all candy coloured a candy coloured world and you feel glad inside so here in your dream it has become the same time of day and you are on the train traversing the candy tinted countryside and your mother is there your Grandparents a hamper with very good sandwiches in it the little toffees we loved a whole thermos of coffee with the most perfect cream I want to stay in this dream your soul murmurs I want to stay but you may not stay a guardian angel smiles wavering in the light of day that streams through the white curtains mary angela douglas 22 april 2017
We can’t stay in childhood forever or in beautiful poetry or music, but that doesn’t mean we can’t visit regularly. Mary visits daily, leaving poem after poem, windows into the transcendent, for some providential reader to pass through.
Like Rilke and Rumi, two other popular and beloved poets who wrestled with the divine, she shuts her doors on no one, litterateur and layman, heathen and Christian, each can appreciate this work, woven with delicacy and passion, not despite its sincere spiritual crying out, but because of it.
Douglas is a testament to the fact that fame and accolades, while entirely fine in their own right, are entirely unnecessary. For the lucky poet, or, yes, whisper it, the blessed poet, poetry is enough; connection to beauty and the infinite is enough.
CHIVALRY IS NOT DEAD CAME OVER THE WRATTLING WIRES to those who imagine as if they could they have overthrown the chivalric, the mythic stalwart who now less and less each hour triumphantly report the trending dour are feebly telegraphing us, say, from the scenes of their irrelevant ancient disasters- take down THIS message magnified through Time that none who lived before are gone that they quest on and in their questing live more vividly than those who imagine as if they could that they have overthrown in their modernity the Good, all those who enchanted the stones to human speech and were unashamed of griefs, of faith, of God remembered of wrongs assuaged in remembering, battling on who lived in Springtime daylight through blizzards of brimming and blossoming fear intrepid in their flights and greener than the green that surrounds you now this May's commencements , through heavy nights they kept the freshness of a dream unto the ebbing of their day the young men fervently schooled to learn their chivalry in turn before the decimating wars oh how will you wipe their blood away their scars the stains on every page of glory beyond this Age of disparagement as far as star is from star still their angels stand in the breach the heavenly Door ajar and will not- give way mary angela douglas 9 may 2017
For Mary, writing poetry is a sacred vocation; perhaps one can hope for the return of more individuals like herself and “the young men fervently schooled to learn/their chivalry in turn/before the decimating wars.”
Heaven knows we could use them.
We’ll end with a few lines from her remarkable elegy to the pianist Van Cliburn, Where Is The Beautiful Kingdom Where You Were. Speaking on Van Cliburn’s critics, those “snipers at Beauty," she asks:
what have they dreamed into leaves and flowers recently who named your career short-lived, too little gleaned too much too soon, too unassuming in intellect as if it weren’t enough to be glad for the music in you and to give it all away.
It is enough. More than enough.