Scriptorium: Poems [Paperback]

A collection of poems exploring questions of religious and linguistic authority, from medieval England to contemporary Appalachia

A National Poetry Series winner, selected and with a foreword by Tracy K. Smith

The poems inScriptoriumare primarily concerned with questions of religious authority. The medieval scriptorium, the central image of the collection, stands for that authority but also for its subversion; it is both a place where religious ideas are codified in writing and a place where an individual scribe might, with a sly movement of the pen, express unorthodox religious thoughts and experiences. In addition to exploring the ways language is used, or abused, to claim religious authority,Scriptoriumalso addresses the authority of the vernacular in various time periods and places, particularly in the Appalachian slang of the author’s East Tennessee upbringing. ThroughoutScriptorium, the historical mingles with the personal: poems about medieval art, theology, and verse share space with poems that chronicle personal struggles with faith and doubt.Foreword
Tracy K. Smith

Verdigris

Labyrinth, Chartres

Ashburnham

A Skiff of Snow

Orpiment

Negative Theology

Kermes Red

Flat as a Flitter

Navajo Code Talkers, WWII

Tyrian Purple

Pigs (see Swine)

Ofermod

Lampblack

Fortunes of Men

Nicodemus Makes an Analysis

Biblia Pauperum

Minium

Anagram: See a Gray Pine

Solidus of the Empress Irene, AD 797–802

Incarnational Theology

Woad

Hit

Vernacular Theology: Mechthild of Magdeburg

To Swan

Ultramarine

Crooked as a Dog’s Hind Leg

All Creation Wept

The Giants’ Sword Melts

Gold Leaf

Cento: Natural Theology

Regionalism

Scriptorium

Shell White


Notes

AcknowledgmenlC