Neither Be Afraid: And Other Poems

By Miriam Pollard

This book presents a series of unique poems written by a Cistercian nun on a variety of spiritual topics. Sister Pollard, author of other spiritual works, uses themes connected with Scripture, the Liturgy, the life of Christ, prayer, nature and more. These beautiful and moving poems will deepen our awareness of God's presence in our lives and help us to respond better to the call of Christ.

"The poems of Miriam Pollard are all by themselves reason enough to believe in yet another springtime of the most dynamic sort of religious poetry. Not since first discovering the poetry of Charles Péguy, Gertrud von le Fort and Gabriela Mistral many years ago has my imagination been so jolted as now by the marvel of Pollard's vibrant music and unforgettable images. Pollard sustains an almost flawless lyric intensity that is never sentimental and enfolds with seamless coherence. To read her is like allowing a swift stream of cool, cleansing water to course through your heart and mind."
-Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, Author, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word

"I have not developed the fine art of appreciating poetry, at least in a general way. Neither Be Afraid is a clear exception. These poems stir my spirit to prayer and inspire me to peer more deeply into the mysteries of our salvation. I recommend this book to all for enjoyment and inspiration."
-Fr. Michael Scanlan, T.O.R., President, Franciscan University of Steubenville.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ignatius Press
• Release date: Nov 9, 2010
• ISBN: 9781681493510

Book preview

FOREWORD

The poems of Miriam Pollard contained in this slender volume are all by themselves reason enough to believe in yet another springtime of the most dynamic sort of religious poetry. Not since first discovering the poetry of Charles Péguy, Gertrud von le Fort, and Gabriela Mistral many years ago has my imagination been so jolted as now by the marvel of Pollard’s vibrant music and unforgettable images. With Péguy she shares the long meditative line and what some would call a scandalous familiarity with God. With von le Fort she clearly visualizes states of soul and renders them concrete. And with Mistral she possesses endless receptivity for the sensuousness of creation, teaching us how to perceive the world as God himself must.

The collection in this book is obviously the final distillation of a creative process drawing nourishment equally from the varied splendor of the world and from the urgent presence in it of the Mystery of Christ. For the length of twenty-nine deeply moving poems (twenty-five shorter ones and four longer broken-line meditations), the poet sustains an almost flawless lyric intensity that is never sentimental and that unfolds with seamless coherence. Her vision delights in roaming the universe with all the freedom of a child of God—as one moment (in The Vine) she glimpses the chaste sensuousness of the world as created in the beginning (Mangoes would swell to such juicy splendor / you would have to eat them in the river to stay clean), and the next moment she pauses solemnly in a luminous couplet worthy of a seventeenth-century Metaphysical or of Gerard Manley Hopkins himself:

We bless this soft withdrawal of the light,

for Christ is blazing in the starless night.

                              (Northwest Autumn)

Not only can Miriam Pollards work clearly aspire to the company of the great poets just mentioned. Her combination of utter simplicity and sudden insight continually evokes for me the genius of Emily Dickinson, for instance in the poem titled Cold, which begins:

This is the season of snows,

when the sky, all in pieces, is falling, and bells from invisible towers

are soundlessly tolling.

From this hushed beginning we leap within three short stanzas to a passion of soul that appears ignited from the very cold:

Feed then my eyes and my ears.

God, feed my hunger with hunger,

my longing with slow falling snow,

my heart with your winter.

And if I were to find a creative spirit kindred to hers in the contemporary world, I think the natural choice would be Czeław Miłosz, with whom she shares a liking for surprise endings full of quietness, as well as a vision unable to separate the mystical and the ordinary, the spirit and the flesh, the suffering of any person and the suffering of Christ. This is how Pollard describes the Creator during the work of creation in The Vine, a poem that will forever change my reading of the first pages of Genesis:

And so he puttered. The God of splendor strolled beside the river

in an old slouch hat and dungarees,

along a hedgerow and between rows of young corn.

Adam’s inspiration as described in this same poem is, in fact, identical with the poet’s:

On that breath hovered cultivation and carpentry,

prayer and poetry.

What we have in the book before us is prayer that is poetry and is (again) prayer—as the act of contemplation and praise, sprung in the heart of the poet, passes onto the written page and from there into the heart of the reader. I cannot resist pointing out