Your Twenty-First Century Prayer Life

Poems

Hansen

• Verlag: Cascade Books
• Jahr: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781532641152
• Thema: Literature
• Thema: Religious Poetry

What does prayer look like in contemporary America? With a welcoming tone and plainspoken diction, the forty poems in Hansen's collection explore that question. Including elements of autobiography, Your Twenty-First Century Prayer Life investigates Christianity in the present, depicting a faith in God that is continuously in flux. Readers journey through the seasons of the church year as Hansen recounts doubts, conversions, frustrations, and confessions. Ultimately, these poems are concerned as much with words as they are with the Word.

IV.

That First Easter (I)

No pyrotechnics

as with the burning bush.

No heavenly pronouncements

as at the transfiguration.

No disciples—they tossed

in hopeless sleep.

No legions of angels—

one or two dislocating stone.

Decorum

You pursue best line

breaks, metaphors, stanza

shapes, pin-point imagery.

You’re never complacent

or naïve to commit

drafts to stone.

You prefer paper’s

smooth portability.

Your mind corrals

lines for the night,

daily lets them roam.

Your prayers—tough

to tame—resist

domestication.

They rush counter

to your demands,

incessant requests.

They require freedom

that you fear offering.

You secure the gate

with a heavy-duty chain

any chance you get.

That First Easter (II)

Joy ravished me that sunrise

service, the hour I believed after years

in pews Sunday after Sunday.

Predictable scriptures through

which I’d nodded (groggy or wakeful)

now fresh as French-press coffee.

I couldn’t sing hymns I’d heard

ad nauseam. A quickening surged

in my throat, my eyes—

the beautiful ache of belief.

Some days, it’s all you can do not to pray

randomly. An hour earlier you were fine,

adjusted, even-keeled, then there was pressure

in your chest you had to answer.

There is no way to explain.

It doesn’t happen often enough

to suggest a doctor’s visit, but enough

to unsettle you for an afternoon or evening.

All you want is to be alone and pray:

in your car, in your bedroom, in your office.

Or best, in your backyard watching the feeder

where purple finches, cardinals, spa...

Inhaltsverzeichnis

• Title Page
• I.
• II.
• III.
• IV.
• Thanks and Acknowledgments