Scriptorium
Page 4
the vernacular proclaims, in one dull tint,
a second illumination,
of which Eadfrith was not unaware:
this good news is for everyone,
like language, like color, like air.
SHELL WHITE
The monk grinds bleach from mollusk-carapace,
pestles his basket of beach-combed sea-crumbs
so limed hides might beam brighter for the Lamb.
Before he paints incipit, interlace,
he blenches before the page as if it were the face
that he might hope to glimpse in prayer, numb
within the blizzard of love that strikes dumb
the heart, shell-shocked before the story’s grace.
Eyefull of Snow, Dazzling Blank—
I believed you once the union of all light
and pled the searing of my eyes. Then I blinked.
My wool-puller, my white-hot blind spot,
I’m washed up, shelled out, your thankless monk,
or else the page you’d scour, whitewash, illuminate.
NOTES
“Ashburnham”
On October 23, 1731, many singular volumes and manuscripts in the Cotton Library, including the only extant copy of Beowulf, were irreparably damaged or destroyed in the Ashburnham House fire. Some of the poem’s details are from A Report from the Committee Appointed to View the Cottonian Library . . . [signed by] W. Whiston. Printed for R. Williamson and W. Bowyer, London, 1732. This poem is in memory of John Miles Foley.
“Negative Theology”
Negative theology, also called apophatic theology, is a branch of theology that attempts to describe God by negation—to say what God is not, rather than what God is. Pseudo-Denys, a.k.a. Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, was a fifth-century Neoplatonist thinker and mystical theologian. His Divine Names and Mystical Theology are considered foundational works of negative theology.
“Navajo Code Talkers, WWII”
The quotation “Kill the Indian to save the man” is attributed to Richard Pratt, founder of the Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
“Pigs (see Swine)”
According to Library of Congress rules, one must classify Children’s books about pigs under “pigs” and adult books about pigs under “swine”; the terms are not interchangeable.
“Ofermod”
The Old English word ofermod appears rarely in the Old English poetic corpus; it most famously describes the warrior Byrhtnoth’s foolishly proud (some say arrogant) battle maneuvers in the poem “The Battle of Maldon.”
“Fortunes of Men”
This poem takes its inspiration (and its structure, and some of its language) from the Old English poem of the same title.
“Biblia Pauperum”
Literally translated as “Bibles of the Poor,” biblia pauperum were, in the early medieval period, lavishly illustrated picture-bibles composed primarily of brightly colored illuminations with very little text. Later biblia pauperum were woodcuts without coloration. In this poem, the reference is to the illuminated “Golden Bible” (Dutch, fifteenth century).
“Anagram: See a Gray Pine”
This poem follows the Puritan anagram tradition. Anagrams were a popular form among Puritan poets, who often wrote elegies in the form of anagrams of the deceased person’s name. In this form, the anagram of the person’s name becomes the title of the poem and also recurs thematically throughout the poem. My own anagram on the name “Ena Gay Pierce” follows this convention, with one exception: my poem cheats (as did some Puritan poets!) by using the “s” sound of the letter “c” in “Pierce,” rather than the actual letter “c,” in order to create the word “see.”
“Solidus of the Empress Irene, AD 797–802”
I first encountered this coin at the Art Institute of Chicago, where it was adjacent to a visiting exhibit of art and icons called Heaven and Earth: Art of Byzantium from Greek Collections. The solidus is part of the museum’s permanent collections.
“Incarnational Theology”
The text quoted in line one of the poem is from Jürgen Moltmann’s The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology (orig., 1974; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993). This book itself is a translation of Der gekreuzigte Gott (Munich: Christian Kaiser Verlag, 1973) by R. A. Wilson and John Bowden.
“Woad”
Boudicca was a legendary British ruler who led an uprising against the occupying Romans in AD 60 or 61.
“Vernacular Theology: Mechthild of Magdeburg”
Mechthild of Magdeburg was a thirteenth-century German Beguine. A sort of “lay-religious” group, the Beguines were women who lived in urban communities and devoted themselves to lives of simplicity, chastity, and piety, but who took no vows and followed no rule. Mechthild wrote of her mystical encounters with God in The Flowing Light of the Godhead, considered the first work of mystical theology in the German vernacular; I draw many of the images in the poem from Frank Tobin’s translation of the book (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1998). The lines “so nicely honeycombed” and “you taste like a grape” are direct quotations from Tobin’s translation.
“All Creation Wept”
The title of this poem is a translation of the phrase “Weop eal gesceaft,” taken from the Old English poem “The Dream of the Rood.” Thank you to Johanna Kramer for her help with this poem.
“Cento: Natural Theology”
This poem is constructed of words and phrases taken from Hildegard of Bingen’s Physica and Causae et Curae, as translated by Sabina Flanagan in Secrets of God: Writings of Hildegard of Bingen (Boston: Shambhala, 1996).
“Scriptorium”
Eadfrith is thought to be the monk who illuminated the Lindisfarne Gospels, c. eighth century; in the tenth century, the priest Aldred inserted his Anglo-Saxon translations of the Latin text between the Latin lines of Eadfrith’s work. Aldred’s is the oldest extant copy of the Bible translated into English. St. Cuthbert was the saint associated with Lindisfarne at the time the Gospels were illuminated. It is thought that Eadfrith created the pigments used in illuminating the manuscript largely from locally found materials—for example, seashells or eggshells for white, the plant woad for blue, toasted lead for red, carbon for black. I gleaned this information from Michelle P. Brown’s books How Christianity Came to Britain and Ireland, Manuscripts from the Anglo-Saxon Age, Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts: A Glossary of Technical Terms, and The Lindisfarne Gospels: Society, Spirituality, and the Scribe. In this and all other poems dealing with illuminated manuscripts, I made great use of the British Library’s online glossary for their Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts, as well as a hefty set of reference books on pigments in the reference section of the Savannah College of Art and Design–Atlanta campus library.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A bottomless thank-you to Tracy K. Smith for choosing Scriptorium for the National Poetry Series. I’m humbled.
Thank you to Helene Atwan and everyone else at Beacon Press for their warm, enthusiastic, and collaborative way of working with me on this book.
Thank you to the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts for residencies that provided much-needed time to work on some of the poems that ended up in this book. And a huge thank-you to Wyatt Prunty and the rest of the good folk at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference for believing in me and giving me a place to call home.
Scriptorium began while I was studying theology and, later, working in the theology library at Emory University. Thank you to Brent Strawn, Don Saliers, Steve Kraftchick, and Lyndon Reynolds for teaching fascinating classes that inspired some of the poems in this book. A big thank-you to the cataloguers at Pitts Theology Library (Armin Siedlecki, Denise Hanusek, and Fesseha Nega) for piling so many interesting books about illuminated manuscripts onto my cataloging cart. Another thank-you to Teresa Burk, Grace Dunbar, and Mike Varin at the SCAD–Atlanta libra
ry for never monitoring what I was doing during my evening shift at the circulation desk (namely, reading reference books about pigments).
Thank you to these gesithas for being my companions in all things Old English: Johanna Kramer, the late John Miles Foley, and the Beowulfathon group: Rebecca Mouser, Julie Christenson, Pete Ramey, and Derek Updegraff.
Thank you to these generous and sharp-eyed folks for giving feedback on pieces, parts, and various versions of this manuscript: Danny Anderson, Aliki Barnstone, Heather Dobbins, Gabe Fried, Andrew Hudgins, Mark Jarman, Thomas Kane, Marc McKee, Claire McQuerry, John Nieves, Rachel Richardson, Austin Segrest, and my wonderful dissertation committee at the University of Missouri: Scott Cairns, Frances Dickey, Rabia Gregory, Johanna Kramer, and Alex Socarides.
And thank you to still more fellow poets and friends who have been a part of this manuscript’s long evolution: Anne Barngrover, Katy Didden, Donna Forsyth, Pilar Gómez-Ibáñez, Kerry Hill, Kimberly Johnson, Marilyn Kallet, Nadia Kalman, Kathryn Maris, Ginger Pyron, Amanda Rea, Elizabeth Spires, and Johannes Wich-Schwarz.
Thank you to my East Tennessee family, whose musical speech was the first poetry I heard.
Finally, and most importantly, thank you to Austin Segrest: first reader, best reader, best friend, best everything.
CREDITS
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors of these publications, in which versions of the following poems first appeared, sometimes under different titles:
32 Poems: “Lampblack”
Birmingham Poetry Review: “Fortunes of Men,” “A Skiff of Snow”
Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art: “Negative Theology,” “Ashburnham”
CURA: A Literary Magazine of Art and Action: “Navajo Code Talkers, WWII”
Ecotone: “Hit”
The Hudson Review: “Pigs (see Swine)”
Image: “Scriptorium,” “Minium,” “Orpiment,” “Kermes Red,” “Verdigris”
New England Review: “Incarnational Theology,” “All Creation Wept,” “Ultramarine,” “Tyrian Purple,” “Shell White”
The Paris Review: “Nicodemus Makes an Analysis”
Subtropics: “Regionalism”
Tongue: A Journal of Writing and Art: “Cento: Natural Theology,” “Woad” (forthcoming)
Western Humanities Review: “Vernacular Theology: Mechthild of Magdeburg” (as “Vernacular Theology”)
“Pigs (see Swine),” “Scriptorium,” and “Incarnational Theology” were reprinted in The Best Spiritual Writing (New York: Penguin, 2010, 2012).
“Verdigris,” “Kermes Red,” and “Gold Leaf” appear in Before the Door of God: An Anthology of Devotional Poetry (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013).
“Crooked as a Dog’s Hind Leg” and “Flat as a Flitter” appear in The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume VI: Tennessee (Huntsville: Texas Review Press, 2013).
Melissa Range is the author of the poetry collection Horse and Rider (Texas Tech University Press, 2010) and the recipient of awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Antiquarian Society, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Fine Arts Work Center (Provincetown, MA), and the Rona Jaffe Foundation. Originally from East Tennessee, Range currently lives in Wisconsin and teaches at Lawrence University.
Tracy K. Smith is the author of three books of poetry: The Body’s Question (2003), Duende (2007), and Life on Mars (2011), which won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
Beacon Press
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© 2016 by Melissa Range
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Range, Melissa, author.
Title: Scriptorium : poems / Melissa Range.
Description: Boston : Beacon Press, [2016]
Identifiers: LCCN 2015049944 (print) | LCCN 2016005063 (ebook) | ISBN 9780807094440 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780807094457 (ebook)
Classification: LCC PS3618.A646 A6 2016 (print) | LCC PS3618.A646 (ebook) | DDC 811/.6—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015049944