“The poet is the priest of the invisible.”
Wallace Stevens
Growing up, poetry was a banal and delusional literary expression…that rhymed. That it was typically understood only by scholars in ivory towers who puttered between a daybed to bookshelves. That poor image of poetry was relieved from its post thanks to the poems of Wendell Berry, Mary Oliver and Gary Snyder. As the years have stacked upon each other so has my poetry collection. I’ve discovered many vibrant voices of today’s poets, those walking the planet with us right now. Part of my hope for Contemplify is that it will bring poetry into pubs over pints, read aloud to brewing coffee as the sun rises, or written in a letter to daughter moving across the country.
This series will introduce you to two such poets who help me circle the mystery: Chris Dombrowski and Jericho Brown. My hope is that through these conversations you’ll get a taste of poetry as a contemplative gateway. Poetry has played that role for me as a contemplative practice; seeing reality from an angle that I had not yet noticed. Clear enough to see and yet cloudy enough to draw me closer, to engage all of my faculties in this new perception of reality. This practice of poetry drops me into the depth of my self, into the depth of Mystery.
In this trailer Chris Dombrowski reads, ‘The Hunt’ from his latest collection Ragged Anthem and Jericho Brown reads, “Of My Fury” from his latest collection The Tradition
Conversations and the poetry of Chris Dombrowski and Jericho Brown coming down the pike in the weeks ahead.
Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash
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