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Loading Video . . . Beginning with Joel 1 and then expanding to the entire book, poet GC Waldrep explores the divine act of artistically creating while addressing the book's warnings of destruction in this stunning long poem. Joel 1:1-20 COMMENTARY ON JOEL By GC Waldrep Credits: Curated by: John Estes 2017 Poetry Primary Scripture Loading primary passage... Loading Passage Reference... Share This Art: Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy Link I suspect that for the believing artist the question of where, how, when, and to what extent one engages Scripture is always thorny—especially when the grounds of engagement shift from belief itself (belief qua belief) to art, even when art feels essential to the believing artist’s fundamental sense of vocation. When Spark and Echo contacted me, I had already been thinking about a believing (or belief-driven) art as an exercise in parascription, a writing-around the Word. (I’d lately been co-teaching an interdisciplinary class on art practice, theory, and criticism focused on Dada, Surrealism, and Fluxus; it was Jackson Mac Low that provoked me parascriptively.) In the case of Joel, there’s the added question of how one writes parascriptively around prophecy, around prophetic space. If one approaches prophecy as constantly and simultaneously both fulfilled and yet-to- be-fulfilled, then this space, this prophetic space, is an active, quickening zone. I think think this is especially true for the Hebrew prophets as acknowledged by the Christian perspective, their ministry both fulfilled (in the Person of Christ) and ongoing, as texts that reside and reverberate from and within the Word. It’s easy to imagine Joel, for all his apocalyptic fervency, as a poet’s prophet, not so much for his images (although Joel deploys some fine images) as for his associational panache, which various Biblical commentators assure me has few contemporary parallels. The invasion of locusts is either prefatory to or like an invasion of flame (or drought), which in turn gives way (literally or figuratively) to an invading army. Locusts, flame, and armed invaders flicker, merge, fade back into the tightly-woven fabric of Joel’s verses. Similarly, the three valleys in the latter part of Joel function both literally and metaphorically, their aspects exchanging and imbricating. The structure of the book of Joel is associative, a nuanced equation moving organically into the unknowable. Various terms of that equation would have been very familiar to Jewish readers, but not the motion, the charged manner in which those terms were convoked, written-through. As for my parascription, my writing-around, I worked initially in a constrained, rule-governed compositional space, moving through the text and also through four extensive commentaries (two ancient, two modern). That exercise in constraints gave way to the level of autobiography, the “locust”-ridden summers of my Southern childhood (actually cicadas) as well as my work as a young man in a maximum-security prison in North Carolina. My sense was of a gathering in the margins of the Word, an accretion—and then a paring-away. I kept in mind the ancient and sacramental dictum (found in the Philokalia, among other sites) that God cannot be understood, only participated in. Thus, the poem, the artifact as an act not only of circumference, of writing- (or reading-) around, but also of ecstatic participation. Spark Notes The Artist's Reflection G.C. Waldrep ’s most recent books are a long poem, Testament (BOA Editions, 2015), and a chapbook, Susquehanna (Omnidawn, 2013). With Joshua Corey he edited The Arcadia Project: North American Postmodern Pastoral (Ahsahta, 2012). His new collection, feast gently, is due out from Tupelo Press in 2018. Waldrep’s work has appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, APR, New England Review, New American Writing, Harper’s, Tin House, Verse, and many other journals in the USA and abroad, as well as in Best American Poetry 2010 and the 2nd edition of Norton’s Postmodern American Poetry . He has received prizes from the Poetry Society of America and the Academy of American Poets as well as the Colorado Prize, the Dorset Prize, the Campbell Corner Prize, two Pushcart Prizes, a Gertrude Stein Award for Innovative American Writing, and a 2007 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Literature. Waldrep lives in Lewisburg, Pa., where he teaches at Bucknell University, edits the journal West Branch , and serves as Editor-at-Large for The Kenyon Review . Website GC Waldrep About the Artist GC Waldrep Other Works By Related Information View More Art Make More Art And then their gifts looked up, in the shadow of the stranger. I beggared myself at the treasuries of wind. View Full Written Work COMMENTARY ON JOEL G.C. Waldrep And then their gifts looked up, in the shadow of the stranger. I beggared myself at the treasuries of wind. The figs drew in their faces, they pawed the ground. Pears, plucked, stewed in their stone cells. I gathered them from the asphalt’s heavy apron, first at the edge of the mountain, then deep in a midwestern plain. They wore brutal voices in their thighs. We moved further into the orchard, its radiant sleep upon the tilth’s luminous anvil. Radio waves in the galvanized sheds, arrows stored in some persecuted heat. Summon the oaths from their velvet warrens—friend, you recognize this turbid amplitude, abundance’s nodal chain. It was dark inside the body, and the body’s body. The children bareheaded stumbling in single file towards the gap, their tongues like crowns to which the constellations kneel. I did not call to them, speak to them. The war was almost over—we measured dry proofs against our own organs, laid out for just this purpose on exhaustion’s tepid sheen. Acres and acres of prison lighting absorbing the night, contracting the web of low roads by which the dead are loved. I felt the creek’s clean breath against the comet’s shoulder, yeast in my eyes, yeast in my ears, in the pits of my beard. Speak, father, Master, rhythmic bread all time plows under. In my dream dark swallows with blazing teeth chewed right through the letter I’d received. We buried the church in our sojourn; each sculpted his neighbor from wax, disgust, and tears. I had six brothers or I had none, picking my way carefully through the scarlet ranks. I believed in pollen, bones, the twilight valence of the fugue and its dispossessors. We were far away from any village and thirsty, the kingdom shrunk to a single gate, a half-drunk well, one grain lodged in the heart’s torn cloak. And their gifts looked up, the song went. The fruit close to my mouth, enough darkness to garrison any outside world. Little lame empty creatures, imagine another, bolder Christ: go earthless, let speech lay its ancient edge. 1:1 A hymn veins the forest; the hand wears the body like a living suit. The body’s milk spoke as a single voice, a beautiful moon the blood dreams. To wake (the burning animals of the body, the mercy machines). Mercy’s small blue coal disperses. A shadow-embassy, a sleeping lamp—spoken- to , day’s scab, gently burning. 1:2 Hear this, old men (for I am old now, I have dispersed both my javelin and my crown): The steps of fire, leading to the ring of fire. Mercy’s long, unwritten vowel even the forest stretches its green candle towards. 1:3 My face slept. The path of lust, its lipless dualism. Write in the scar’s clear margin, pariah: probe silence’s feast. 1:4 And thus looked back, the breast neither blame nor garment, a perfect salt. Now in the body-dark winter’s decibel hones its bone-knife.> “If a soul were seen as being subject to fire” was my misreading (of St. Cyril of Alexandria), also “dire and intolerable damage,” “insatiable teeth.” Captivities, antigens. Towards God, a single language breaks (the bleak touch of the dead). —Meanwhile we name the animals. This is what the strangers were singing: Inside its blue house, day came burning. 1:5 Neither history nor memory, our bodies reckon blood’s many soul-names, its tine-debt,its perfect blindness. My heart’s winter-palace, snug brother-skin. Wachet auf , the nation’s touch, its emerald question tumbling in the eddy. 1:6 Day-sickle’s tooth season, a white feast. The key of wine, “strong and beyond counting” (see: Green grow the rushes, O). Something blind beneath music’s porcelain law. Considered saints, the living—like peace, grief’s anthem set among stones. 1:7 Beneath mercy, something small and perfect, a flesh or dust. Speak, moon, my brother-within-faith. Children stroked the night’s last honey, within winter’s sweet glands. And yet within war’s bloody Baedeker, grief is always winter’s glass. Strip the fig tree drawn from the black well of war. Mercy’s mind, cold at the edge of Christ. 1:8 “The vintage songs” (Cyril again). Can you teach them to me, can anyone teach them, sorrow’s flushed regime, its bloody tithe. Bride-eye, bride-caught. Sweet noon, the last wars burr this temple’s silence, the discarded husks of constellations. 1:9 Thus, the abolition of sacrifices. View nothing, and the night, thus worshiped, wakes you like a bell. Bread traces its parallax around the image, its blown altars. Enthrone the stones of mourning, which do not know our names. (Once again, we teach them, or try to. Watch us trying to teach the stones our pretty names.) 1:10 In my dream the ovens for the baking of bread were built as mazes. Inside them, birth after birth.... The eye’s scent, discrete, independent of the body. 1:11 The eyes, steeped in language, asked for a perfect church, were offered the body (again) (of course). The very texture of the skin changes as one approaches (nipples, lips). Meat-house, meat-mansion: a good year among those robust silences. 1:12 It’s midnight: Let’s name again, let’s sing the marking song. All together, now? Don’t mind the translations— The heart’s bathed limb, annealed by the clay gate. The pilot’s breath, taken deep through a clear flame, become its own dark fleece. Speak ash, speak garment, speak pinkening desert. Every word made grain. 1:13 Theodore of Mopsuestia observes “the very beginning of his words is a threat.” And yet: here we may pause and think about what we place upon the body, our bodies, any body. The forest making something slowly deaf. The wind’s great door, even hunger, a vagrant lobe (began first to preach its living word). Or: the body’s broken prayer, prayer’s discarded gate, another flesh strung with sleep—its guest-song. Inside night, day clothes the blue wind, the yellow thorn, all of it. Handsome root of the pomegranate. The eye, dead and cold among those green hungers. 1:14 The unavailable ordinances whisper among themselves. They seem troubled. They keep touching their pale wrists, their heavy jurists’ robes. Everybody’s here, the nurses from their weathered cottage, death’s blue map and sine-garment. Something is shifting slowly yet in the tortured ground. The corn’s beautiful tongue sleeps away the hewn night, its ivory amplitudes. 1:15 Write “temple” (or: the writing temple). Sweet little animals hands beneath the photograph, a scrap of winter grass. Bread-psalms, bread-psalms. Memory asked its sweet gun, What will we place in our wine vats, our granaries, our storehouses now? 1:16 What is authentic the wind breaks, across its broad thigh. People ask: why must the war be beautiful? Father, don this broken church. 1:17 Smallest forest among the animals, friend hunger once again in the goldbitten light. Hunger’s eye, heart-passage. My heart’s breath wandered, lame, in the desert. Seeds shrivel beneath their clods, or else their shovels, every husbandry to its own mute tent, oxen stamp in their enclosures, beasts of burden rot in their own dung. Honey-fruit of the eye, withdrawn. Nothing will bring to blossom the wound’s mute leaven. Salt shimmers like glass in the air, death’s sapling deep in the body. So film the corn as it withers, its bread-shadow, the city’s black pavane or tangent. Little blindbody, set the thorn-water in the smallest field. Alive, alive-O. 1:18 On the perplexity of the animals: Depending on the rescension the cattle weep, or the sheep weep. —Always, either way, weeping beasts. Naked country, word-shadow behind the incision-hut, the broad red seed of village life. Now another chalk town, feast of blue wounds, strung gourds, the desert’s taut and perfect throat. The problem of the desert in winter. The problem of drowning, how it is, how can it be that some drown, in night’s war-glass. Late into the night I studied the grafting of figs, the number of horses and their errands, the distinction between scythe and scroll. —Always, either way, weeping beasts. 1:19 First-flame. A glass expanse, its long turquoise border placed against the prophecy’s bleak day-heart. It’s true, I’ve always lived in the burning orchard. But the dense bone of the heart’s red winter must lily. A lily-dream on the burning sea. The bone of the heart, what we habitually call the heart, knows nothing of the empty hives of love, that God-hum (in winter’s lead machine). The dense bone of day made breath (inside death’s dissuasive limit). A pitted honey— 1:20 Now the animals reparate their Word, no longer final (tempered in its falling-guise). The pastures of the wilderness, the beauties, the charming things, the pastures of the range (as some would have it)—fire is faith’s special friend, its third arm, its crutch. Somewhat later, Jonah will cattle even the cattle to repentance. 2:1 Night’s saline weft. We let the trumpet vine take the stump on which the mailbox was mounted, then the mailbox itself, orange throats studding the clump like snakes on some Medusa’s head around which every insect seemed to buzz, fixed, intoxicated (“intoxicated children,” Cyril of Alexandria suggests). The density of cicadas calling in the darkness enveloped us in a slow wound, as if night’s green skin were some planet sleeping. Cicadas are not locusts, are in fact taxonomically unrelated, but they do look the part. Every winter ghost is blind, yes, but this was summer’s phantom, a ghost’s ghost, something to touch-through, faith’s green throne with its orange heralds, their music sifting towards and into the nerve-church again and again. A little beautiful water (called the tongue), a catchment, a basin: cool little hand, perfect like the blond vestment Christ bears His feast inside. I pulled it tighter around my shoulders, thighs. Music offered love’s almost-grammar, a pleasant bread we carried in the mouth. Its cache of honey handed wine another death. Eventually the postal service refused to deliver our mail. Music’s ancient visage, the beautiful surface of the soul (another wound, yes) in the baptismal acre. We chorused: Build a little garment-shadow / from the marriage song, wake its water. Because even the unseen grain almost has a title now, a church, a debt, a prayer. In June, the storm’s heavy touch, a bit of night waiting just inside the glass. Oxygen’s spastic ash, its pilgrim-mouth. Speak body, pale wine-forest of the hidden bride. 2:2 Thus begins the catalogue of resemblances. (Everything now is winter amid my song, even love’s humid dreamway across which my people row at night.) What destroys: the honey-factions, each borne on its creche of rust. Say, like dawn spread out against green hills; a living debt endowed in faith fumbles the Christ-latch (my fingers, soiled with breath and rest). Say: light’s passage, almost a new tongue. Speak the feast, o beautiful bone machine spread against the hills like dawn. Like dawn, return unto me, famished, crusting reef of your long step at dusk, or any darker tune. I will release you into the wound the forest made, its fleshy gate. 2:3 Neither fire nor body, touch’s savant jab, the surface of the soul waiting, a censure in the twilight. Smell the animals sleeping (when faced with war). Like every partisan, man knows fire’s mineral heart. What I’m talking about is something else,the darkness behind fire, its fragrant blood-vault. Eden’s warm forest recumbent and lithe within every schism, every palace. A day-tongue cast towards level ground, every pilgrim within the self names what is beautiful, verb or church. Neither night nor sky, like all bodies so beautiful when the war touches them. 2:4 What destroys us: is like horses, bears the heads of horses, is like horsemen, no, resembles horses fitted for war. What destroys us: moves swiftly, sharpened like an ark. Go, photograph the soul’s empty Christ. 2:5a Not like chariots but like the sound of chariots, at the summits of the mountains, music’s terraced debt and archived brow. Let’s say even a nest among the snow’s indrawn breath. Listen for its blood-tide, its milk-tide. I climbed to where you showed me lilies rustling, in the shadow of old snow. Gently, the bone-machines ruck the blood. (God knows every sky.) 2:5b Not like the sound of chariots but like the hiss of fire, faith’s eye-stub, the eyes caught burning in prayer’s lavish net. The field-smell comes at night, as memory. Take the honey-rind of war, everything dusk smears. A wedding-whisper, debt’s burning mote. Little eye, close to the burning hum or living feast, the feast made passage (anent my sleeping thought). What’s more, the heart’s clean lambs worship ash. Salt-kirk or day-bone, listen: even a blue mercy knows this castaway world. 2:5c Winter-elm, winter-breath, winter’s water: pale soul-beasts, their cloth hands at large among the assembly, glass fabric dense with the elm’s excision, the chestnut, the ash. 2:6 The oldest hive scrapes a little flesh from the heart, or the heart’s surrogate: is heard as mere beast among the blackened monuments. In the field around the tongue, Christ’s garment-song. Cleanse one’s house of every midnight plasma. Self’s onyx scaffold, mitigating the watch. The animals never make God their bride. 2:7 Or, like athletes, the white houses dream in medieval time, cruelty’s scarred city. 2:8 At home among the officers, the scar all but stilled by the dead’s glass touch. Fire in music’s compound eye, a visible god cast like prey against the forest, that distal liturgy. Perhaps the eye parts in the heaven of animals, a great silence whither every shadow lay glistening, the flames’ brined felon, flesh-friend to God. I’m sorry, I’ll demonstrate the trick again: we are unmaimed. The forest’s heavy children watch. 2:9 Or perhaps the body lies deep enough, after all: a bright leaven, song’s medieval guide or gaud. (I say music but I mean theft. Just think how much things tell, from their circle inside the fire. Someone gathers empty fruit, city prayers: to have and to hold. ) The windows, though: they touch hunger’s eye, the clean wolf-eye of this vagrant world. In the little bell-clearing of the body, reach out, carefully touch the eye of God (like a sparrow waiting). Sing your wolf-hymn to the eye of God through the lips of devastation’s fist, hand’s smallest antiphon—its ancient edge, ridged and teething. 2:10 Let’s call it a lamp, the door’s tiny brother. Milk’s new town, always the greater light—rhythms of siege and shelter. 2:11 The locusts have no king, suspended like souls queued beneath unyielding glass. (The dead make sense as animals, perhaps—memory’s half-thawed grove, its copse of pollards, waiting. Tooth, friend, I call upon the forest’s million broken eyes.) 2:12 You go to work in the factory, and then the factory goes to work in you. The sheriff draws his circle of praise round about your lesioned feet, in yellow paint. Thus your pitiless ancestors seared the Earth around that cool spring— 2:13 and REND your heart, which like a garden shimmers in prophecy’s crude wavelength. You, hive-tongue, gate of flesh. Dream now, come touch death’s white sea. You can almost hear time among the beasts, these stones. Insect time, apparel time. (Jabès: “In the desert, fire is a mockery.”) Invisible season of the wayfeast: now . 2:14 Forsaken, this patch of earth in day’s quilt. My observance, pillaged by flame, taught me fever’s gospel. As for pageantry, a bit for psaltery and shawm: In the field I found a book. It was covered in blood. In the field I found a star. It, too, was covered in blood. I gathered both in my apron and took them home, to wash them— How they screamed. The question I asked, again and again: what sort of music did lepers make? for themselves? or for others? If we knew this, would love still be possible? —What is the ferryman’s citizenship, is what I thought I heard you ask. My mistake. 2:15 Free lily, free radical, free märchen , free church—echo’s flagrant priest. A hungry octave charts faith’s russet tone. The mowers turn from their labor, left destitute among strange languages; they see straight through the animals’ long days, their libraries of pain. Inside the forest-made wound, the green breath of the world— You can hear it, the shofar’s clean and makeshift perigee, hapax legomenon. An ark, a nest, an eyelash’s delicate camber between you and all that lightning. 2:16 Parliament of nurses, the city’s clear motion-banquet, any flesh will do. I smote a milk in its orphan fleece, that you carry. Schism decrees, loudly, starve the tent . 2:17 In which the priests of the past salute the priests of the stranger across dust’s copper shore. In which, without music, the body makes hair, mostly. Rather gather day in the dead’s soft hands. Because one may make a body without music, one may set the stones closely, carefully (and call that weeping ). Or, the hand’s lame animal takes sole possession, almost visible. Take heaven, left back among its glittering primes. (As for gossip: the eye’s mercury, lame mammal in day’s mouth. Work the prey as cladding, cloak, zeal, something the heart let back in amidst the city’s silent reign.) I lift the myth from its yellow plate and set it back down again. There is no sense in treating the alphabet as a trembling in the forest. In darkness, your green mouth shaping the right name when I turn. 2:18 Punctual, this revolution. (And the nurses in fear of [ wolves ] [ wasps ] [ leviathan ] fold the washed bandages, replace them gently on night’s shelf.) 2:19 The dead, long since manifest, make their orchid-ways inside the flesh. Children nestled outside the heart may lift their heads, may seek the palace prayerfully glistening among thorns. Now , little city, cast and gather—cast and gather what ye will. 2:20 The great dark chancel of the body’s bell (orchid of the invisible) laves its Galilee. Day’s blind odor, left lame in the blood-ark, less darkness than a voice (a ghost, a theft, a pressure). —What does it preach, Master? 2:21 The first address is to the land, and it goes like this: want carefully, and fear not. (A pentatonic scale.) The world’s flesh-course, acute possession waiting in the still eye of the muscle, a god (like a god, waiting)—its plangent folds. Myth asked the world for its organs, two ancient wars by the great granite sea. Go, Master, quietly outside the body. This page bears where night crept, breathing. 2:22 The second address is to the beasts, not all of them but those “of the field” with their vested interests, their broken, tiny sacraments, what never a tongue nor house might heal. Ho, beasts of the field! The world bears its difficult eye, which you may now drink. Drink the eyes, yes, before the great milk sea and all its most tender prosthetics— the cold tongue’s Christ-tenement, sleeping music’s master-green. 2:23 The third address: to the children: say it slowly, bring the gift to bear: the instruction, NOW, MAKE A TOWN. The silence behind every page, a worship-well. Really, just try: be God’s prelate grove, always a bright silence in the mouth. The former rain, the master teacher, God bears within His body (or almost, so the animals aver and affirm). Yet cast not away the dawn glade’s piping music, nor turn every breath towards fire, sleeping. Men learn almost nothing through time, the skin’s single lymph, that worships day. —Hence, a new town. Tell us new things, the smallest distance friendship measures. Go on, try. I dare you. I’m watching. I hold the bow in my hands. 2:24 Every great waiting’s last call and rhythmic cast (set fast into touch, a blind dart). First gather every orchid, read the testament. First the chapel, first the axe. First gather something blind, then further along, the beautiful city (like a flesh) opens. 2:25 At the point God turns and, heard (the things man proves impossible!), stows His blue breath: another finite point, neither gash nor gland. God’s silent prey, clearing the blind from the presence of some other god(s). Pray away, as the dead gloss the field, part skin, part knowledge. 2:26 Taste the lily’s broth. Taste the breath-sine. Taste the black bread of the poem’s city-heat. Savor winter’s mouth-speech, its smallest sea. Taste this winter-Christ, the church clothed in exile. Taste warmth’s green mercy, upon which the children sprawl. We think they’re sleeping. We hope they’re sleeping. Taste the waiting fruit, make the green tooth suckle. and yes, the small room once appointed for the lepers: take me there, (silence’s) true and perfect stent, inside its prone mammal. O taste and see, little glass church of the blind eye, heat-bearing, fur-bearing, little glass town. Empty light within this new little town. Empty light within new glass, as if sleeping. 2:27 The eyelash: not ashamed. The master-body: not ashamed. Time’s eye knows everything like all prostheses, cast around worship. Day’s million hands bind the sea. 2:28 First, touch the past’s page, its lucid well. Then, empty the past. First, call the church together, I mean from within man. Two bodies well-met asked the world: who bears the animals’ scapula? What is surfacelessness? To whom have I cleaved? 2:29 Friends, this is important. God presses forward: towards time, light, music. I am merely your brother-lamp, creaturely in every aspect. But: we can be visited. Sleeping perhaps outside our first door the cold eye’s miles and miles of nought. Night’s gum bears silence’s cast, whither shall we nurse? Imagine the space around a child’s discarded kite, mollusc in the rubble. Next, imagine what the dark might bear, if the dark could carry. Then, imagine the dark. Everyone circle, watch, imagine, turn. The hand’s small eye-tent, its plasmic skin. The hand, tuned to prey’s zeal, glistening (outside, among prey’s silent fires). Healing : part stone, part invisible touch. 2:30 A brief catalogue of wonders: everything music bodies forth, part flesh, part orchid, part God. Beryl. Heaven’s empty fruit, that science sucks. Things bent outside the making world, for instance the two great margins passing across time. Prey’s possession, like all small debts visible in any green thought. ( Omit Mutter Museum, Fractal Museum, National Children’s Museum of Exploding Toys. Omit wild horses.) The tongue’s lamp, anatomically correct. Smallest night creatures, around which myths clothe and muster. All matter. War’s bright, greasy trumpet. Any desert my brother bears, in lieu of a church. 2:31 That sound—locusts? Tongues of fire? A dew in the high places. Let the animals tell the lost what lame worship wanted, after all. 2:32 Broken, like the great light in breath’s house— Call . This time, it’s a choice, as with apparel. Little mouth, every glass takes your sharp hand. Place the call upon the body. The eye’s milk-well, a brotherly stone. Time’s vast broken music, over which your badge passes. Let me tell you what I taste: the church’s difficult silence (vs. the forest’s). I think of you tonight, having been abandoned by another lover, greater. Sometimes, the sea bears touch’s silence away. 3:1 Where distance went, later, there is always a second master. I stood in the court of the prison and spoke of poetry with another man, a younger man. At that point I remained unscarred, I bore all the usual organs within my one regular body. Even the blood, the breath must house ancient children, I volunteered—Christ bears nothing green (through the eye) was his response. Each week I made the trip, sometimes alone, on foot, sometimes with the beast who was, for a time, my companion. (O companionate beast.) War’s music makes the tongue hum. He had, the young man told me, no memory of the crime for which he had been sentenced, although since he woke, later, covered in that blood, he presumed his guilt. At the shore, later, splendid creatures went on imagining nothing, breathing in the great dark cold skin of the sea. The church makes everything quite small and every war a friend, he guessed. I thought: heal this green well, Master; heal the night, or whatever time calls its other king, brother-arson, sibling-sea, every sensible sorrow: set the lamp to worship, fly. Then I moved from that place. I read in the newspaper, in the light of the trumpet vine, when his appeals ran out. Take back either birds or (invisible)memory, I argued: with distance, the lamp’s skin at the door’s blind edge. Sent, yes, and yet the proper chaplains must find this tedious—all this broken talk. 3:2 The first of the cipher-valleys, where the wind had sculpted the tongue’s brute respiration, a breathing skin. Two difficult things: the mouth, sleeping; milk. What does the tongue worship, then? I thought, perhaps just touch Christ’s door, and go. 3:3 On the buying and selling of children: for the cash to purchase a prostitute, or for wine. (Elsewhere: for silver, or a pair of shoes.) I had written: if a math, I hope / a clean / equation— that for which one casts lots, if one is a soldier (and who, in this century of war, is not a soldier?). Cast away, behind the famished arsenal, the milk-sense of the animals, this war’s lamp, alert and choiring. 3:4 Or, you can bet on the girl, as the soldiers say, Earth’s maimed green nescience. But you must read silence’s beautiful tower first, its aria at the edge of the sea. Turn always inside the blood, speak . Brother, close the organ-case, lock the glass. 3:5 My goodly pleasant things: everyone’s last armistice, whether perhaps marking out another pain or waking the incision. Reparation plays nightly. Empty light, make sense out of the nothing that brought you here, bedighted. Speak first, green tooth (or suitor; I track your cinders among the potsherds, the blazing marquee). Even the hawthorn is susceptible to triage, war’s cataract and theorem-torch. Except that nobody steals a hawthorn. The palette hauled from the village in its canvas sack: all the master tones, their stitch and fletch. You said, Nothing that man imagines blinds the eye. 3:6 Go up, thou bald head. Go up, thou— (Enter bear.) Now take the children away, back past all visible flesh. 3:7 Meaning, then, the resurrection (in facsimile, at least). I want to say this very clearly: LITTLE NIGHT CREATURES, PLACE ME THERE, AMONG THE TWILIGHT BODIES. Me, always the last child brought lame to the sea’s myth. Which is why, when you said “Set a place for everything, even the war,” I did so. In exile. 3:8 It’s the logic of Job’s daughters all over again: children, children, we can always make more, you sell mine, I’ll sell yours. Yet breath perhaps lay near, a tiny town, came within a few bright motes of pearl, of echo.... Speak, Master, imagine music. The resurrection, though: try blood’s mouth-glass, the tongue’s heavy blood. 3:9 Prepare: sharpen the fountains to their diamond depths. Stock the chapels with broken glass, salt the avenues. I could myself play a long note on a wren’s thigh bone—having killed a wren, or found it dead. Your breath Magdalenes you, partisan. 3:10 What the dead man thought first, he thought with his tongue: all the old stories agree. Also the broken page must first mask the blind, and suffer. Friend, tell me a little about the Earth, your place among its robes, its master-distance. Milk the bodies (of their pasts, their castes; later, music). Yet the sea’s broken tower, everything the eye wears, Christ’s bright patch. The fields lie unattended, the orchards all destroyed (locusts, fires, armies). I who lived in the burning orchard now live in the burnt. In the distance, people queued to view the bodies in long rows. 3:11 Almost legibly the white uniform assembles itself. Thinking lends a combustive edge to God’s discrete direction, towards which the sycamores bend. “I do what I do in sensely ways, not crazy ways.” Sprinkle the sulfur where previously clean things had rested, where the ache raised a boil. “Red thing hung up like on a cross”—don’t be afraid of the dead, the veil’s “potential visitors, with labors and contradiction.” 3:12 Enamel, fossil, abdomen: Awake 3:13 and thrust in the sickle, because it’s harvest time again. (I read that on the threshing floors, within the vintagers’ presses “traditional morality was often relaxed,” which enabled something like informal courtship. Comes music’s heavydrawl, friendship’s dusk-academy, a little bell inside the body chiming softly at, say, Compline. Friendpain, the blond room’s sea-lantern, which I sense rather more than I actually see.) 3:14 The second of the cipher-valleys, every second stone through which the night passes (never quite enough). God’s little forest, broken off inside the church. Speak now, dark edge of time’s carafe: multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision, glass’s single distance borne right through this nave of the world and its crutched celebrant. Little night-companion, sharp lamp: I don’t tire of your blurred rood, your anxious chrism. Let the mason gouge every stone, let him fill all the wards of the infirmary. (Theodore of Mopsuestia’s variant text reads “sounds rang out in the valley of judgment.” That, too.) 3:15 Which is to say: we will choose, yes, but in darkness. (Will we be judged in darkness?) 3:16 The vintager’s knife, an ancient implement, related to the grafter’s knife. A sociable debt, very loud knives, as far as knives go. Look, here I have a diagram of one. You may cover your ears, you may set your mouth as a dwelling among the evergreens. 3:17 In their natural park, the strangers ripple—the heat tunes them like instruments. You may hire a little ship to move among them. Fire’s labials suggest some sort of mouth-like part. Shooting directly into the wall of ice, its abandoned sanitarium. Every shot’s gravity, as if the thorn of exile had been returned to us, borne on the backsides of living men. 3:18 The third of the cipher-valleys: the Valley of Shittim, a.k.a. the Valley of the acacias, a.k.a. the torrent of rushes, a.k.a. the torrent of thorns. —We shall be at play in the torrent of thorns, indeed. The pasteurized groves towards which the dead resort (beneath hunger’s plank, lapsing green into war’s nerve). Animals bear the master-myth again, past the blind, past the palace. May want, may lamb, may flock. Little blindbody, alive, alive-O. 3:19 Exile slakes this, the event that’s imminent vs. the one that’s already happening, now. A few earnest souls are still arguing over “trumpet” vs. “shofar.” Mercy’s gift-toll (takes music’s wound and shadow, notches its leather belt). “Some have spoken, to be sure, of the reflection of the sun on the wings of insects.” Shed as vowel-blood, love’s thinking lathe, abandoned trestle over which the moon’s bone travels. We’re past the self-disclosure oracle as well as the assurance oracle. One critic notes, “waiting is a mighty deed.” 3:20 Or, not locusts, rather “peoples, tongues, governments, and kingdoms.” Can you feel me when I touch you here (pause), here. Concede the form of a question, concede form as a question, and what then? Another almost-wound traveling through the forest at night. But we may dwell here, we are permitted. The third garment may keep its guest. (See my entry in the Book of Guests, see “skein of birch,” milk’s lame worship.) 3:21 On the cleansing of the blood: from the tooth to the fig to the yoke. The young bride, or widow, snatched from sight, a parched toy. The truth, when it comes, pronounces . How many incisions are required? The tools the priests bear in mourning may also be cleansed, for they are cast in blood. I was there, I slew their armies. (Remember, the locusts have no king.) * Perish, nation of pierced children. I wrap you in my flag of questions; I will not watch the messengers come from death’s distant city—they know me by a different name. The clouds deny that they have broken me. Brothers, surely you know all the ancient plays: the child with cancer, the desolate palace of unrequited love. Wars versus their generals, surely the smell from the streets was a dream’s long incubation. At dusk, the long shadow cast by simple bread—I stand in it, it’s my child—God blinked once, twice and then night’s lavra descended. In this place three swans, two living, one dead—pain’s Rorschach: two elm trees, no, an idle lover on a fire escape, smoking, no, an animal with the hide of a map. Faith reigns here, invisibly. I wash the stone steps, which are my prayers—with my rags I wear them clean of inscription, day after day. Many corpses decorate the landscape of faith, which is my country. Bees nest in their softening lungs, as Milosz claimed. It’s not a dream, what we’re capable of. Or else some slender green shoot pierces them. And that’s good, right? That wick of compassion, so far from any sea—my warder’s back is arable land, facing the plow. It is possible, it must be (theoretically) possible, to build a city from corpses. I stepped out onto the rock shelf and undid my sadness, let it fall from my chest and loins. I asked, how do I wake a trap from its long sleep, as of tears? I dwelt in the side of a tired hill, like a rib or a cancer. Even there, the servants of the state came to me. Even there, unmarked graves bound in tongue. There was a harp I wanted to buy. Someone else bought it first, though my credit was good enough (at the kiosk of available harps). Still, I felt, I thought, sometimes, its puncture in the night. Out of the pot, cleansed of its fine sand, faith, ready to be devoured. Instead I rubbed it on my arms, my chest, both cheeks perhaps this was the problem: I didn’t know what to do with faith, what others did with faith. When the musicians began to play, I neither danced nor sang nor mourned. I watched them, lined up like teeth in the darkening hall. I built a bridge with it, or tried to. It fell deep into my throat, lodging there like a clef, a scar. You see I am terribly serious, though I laugh often. It’s death that laughs in me, a king I once knew. The uncircumcised graves of my terror provoke me, captain. (Thy trumpet preacheth blood, friend.) What they required of me was my wife, outside the house of praise. NOTES Prefatory to writing this poem I referred to two ancient commentators on Joel (Cyril of Alexandria and Theodore of Mopsuestia) and two modern commentators (Hans Walter Wolff and James L. Crenshaw). Section 1:12 refers (“the marking song”) to Karin Tidbeck’s novel Amatka . Section 3:11 appropriates quotes from Alabama folk artist Emmer Sewell (in interviews conducted by William Arnett, from Souls Grown Deep , vol. 2, pp. 178-191) and from René Char (from The Word as Archipelago , p.29 in Robert Baker’s English translation). Thanks to John Estes and to Spark and Echo Arts for commissioning this piece. Close Loading Video . . . And then their gifts looked up, in the shadow of the stranger. I beggared myself at the treasuries of wind. Download Full Written Work

Loading Video . . . This fast-paced sound and vocal collage by composer Jonathon Roberts sets Paul's urgent words, "The night is nearly over, the day is almost here." Romans 8:10 Romans 11:17–21 Romans 12:1 Romans 13:11–12 Romans 14:7 1 Corinthians 9:24 1 Corinthians 16:13 1 Corinthians 15:51–52 2 Corinthians 5:14 Galatians 5:7 The Day Is Almost Here By Jonathon Roberts Credits: Voice: Jonathon Roberts (Paul, Hans Ternes, Chorthip Peeraphatdit, Nora Hertel, Choyning Dorji, Ki-yong Min, Tasneem Mirza, Won Joon Kim, Bao Ha, Phyllis Odoom, Sandra Obeng, Tariq Engineer, Olia Shapel, Emily Clare Zempel // Additional text: Christy Bagasao // Image: Scott Baye Curated by: 2005 Primary Scripture Loading primary passage... Loading Passage Reference... Share This Art: Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy Link This sound and music collage sets the urgency with which Apostle Paul spoke to people about what lies ahead. The beats are made from chopped vocal sounds while voices join Paul in many languages from around the world saying "the day is almost here." The focus of this piece is Romans 13:12, "The night is nearly over, the day is almost here." Additionally, twenty-four other passages from Paul's letters related to this theme are incorporated in the piece. Additionally there is a brief line of poetry from Christy Bagasao: If the battle ends and your heart is still beating, it is because you have lost. If the battle ends because you have breathed your last, then you have won the race! We imagine Paul nearing the end of his life, racing forward while countless thoughts and phrases race through his head from years of traveling and preaching. This piece is part of the larger theater work, Project Paul . Spark Notes The Artist's Reflection J onathon Roberts is a composer and sound designer for games, film, theatre, and ensembles. His style grew out of classical and jazz training, and evolved through quality life adventures: touring the country in an RV with a one person theater piece on the Apostle Paul, living in Brooklyn with an improv music ensemble, performing in a downtown NYC absurdist comedy band, and a long stint writing music for the renowned slot machine company, High 5 Games. He has released four albums including the latest, Cities a song cycle personifying biblical cities. He created the popular podcast/web series ComposerDad Vs. Bible , in which ComposerDad accepts intense compositional challenges from a mysterious Bible while out with his kids. He frequently collaborates on music and theater projects with his wife, actor Emily Clare Zempel. They live in Beacon, NY, with their two boys and a tangled box of electrical cords. www.jonathonroberts.com Website Jonathon Roberts About the Artist Loving Arms I Make Tents The Sower Response There Is Room These are My Sons Consider Me a Partner Weakness Surrogate Babbler Remember Me Prayer How Beautiful I Am a Fool The Constant Ecclesiastes Cows Blessing Fools for Christ More Than Rubies Only a Few Years Will Pass Dear Friend Jonathon Roberts Other Works By Related Information View More Art Make More Art View Full Written Work Close Loading Video . . . Download Full Written Work

Loading Video . . . This video art work by artist and priest Regan O'Callaghan explores the edges of faith and the liminal space between the holy and the mundane in response to 2 Peter 2:18-21. 2 Peter 2:18-21 Fonisoun By Regan O'Callaghan Credits: Curated by: Spark+Echo Arts 2018 Site-specific Video Art Performance Primary Scripture Loading primary passage... Loading Passage Reference... Share This Art: Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy Link The scripture from 2 Peter is a reminder to be aware of false teachers. Their words are a façade. As a priest in the Church of England I am aware of the power of spoken words. They can build up or break down, enlighten or deceive or simply bore and fall onto stony ground. As an artist I am thankful there is another way to explore the indescribable mysteries of faith, a creative alternative to verbal expressions and proclamations. As an outward sign some priests wear the clerical collar, which is meant to denote their role and their responsibility in sharing the Word of God. But it is also just a strip of cheap plastic which when worn to tightly restricts and suffocates not only the wearer but also the listener. But wonderfully in the midst of religious grandstanding and performance, sometimes the living word can be seen, heard and experienced in the mundane, simple events of every day life. Spark Notes The Artist's Reflection Regan O’Callaghan is an artist who lives in London, England. Originally from New Zealand he moved to the United Kingdom in 1993 where he studied art and religious studies including the technique of icon painting. In 2001 Regan was ordained into the Church of England. He combines his religious ministry with art leading many art projects and workshops as well as painting a number of commissions including an icon for Saint Paul’s Cathedral London. He believes in a ministry of encouragement where art is the facilitator. Artist Statement "The nature of my practice is based on the application of contemporary and traditional techniques and the morphing of different religious themes and symbols in painting, installations and video. All my work explores ideas of ritual, the sacred and profane with the intention of drawing the viewer into challenging realms of order and chaos, apophatic and cataphatic, light and dark." www.reganocallaghan.com Website Regan O'Callaghan About the Artist Regan O'Callaghan Other Works By Related Information View More Art Make More Art View Full Written Work Close Loading Video . . . Download Full Written Work

Loading Video . . . Singer Ileana Santamaría wrote a poem that she then brought to musician Raffi Dimoian to produce this intimate spoken word piece imagining Eve's response to Adam from Genesis 2:21-24. Genesis 2:21-24 Eve's Song By Ileana Santamaría + Raffi Dimoian Credits: Written by Ileana Santamaría Composition and Piano by Raffi Dimoian Vocals: Ileana Santamaría Curated by: Jonathon Roberts 2017 Spoken Word Primary Scripture Loading primary passage... Loading Passage Reference... Share This Art: Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy Link This piece, “Adam! (Eve’s song)”, came about as a response to Genesis 2:21-24 and to the beautiful idea of a helpmeet* – Ezer in the Ancient Hebrew, a helper suitable for man, a companion on this Earth that was given first to him and then to her and their progeny. In a way, it was also a response to the deeply moving response to the same passage conceived by Spark and Echo in their first album. Titled “Flesh”, that work – in itself Adam’s response to this wondrous creature made from and for him, marked by an exuberant, childlike joy and excitement in showing her around the garden and declaring giddily, ‘I was waiting, I was waiting for you’, made quite an impression on me. Recently I was reminded of that fascination with the idea of Eve after reading a blurb from Christian author Gary Thomas’ book Cherish , in which he espouses the notion of Eve being the only woman on Earth as a guideline for men struggling with temptation, calling on them to cherish their wives (hence the title) as the sole woman on Earth, the precious gem crafted for and given especially to them. The seedling of an idea was thus born and lay dormant in me until recently, namely, that of responding to this Scripture by assuming Eve’s voice as she responds to Adam about her calling from and to his side and their calling together. Raffi has been a perfect collaborator for this piece, helping me flesh it out from its bare-bones poem form and suggesting verbal markings that brought out both the music in the recitation and the deeper meaning in the words themselves. After that initial interaction with and response to the piece, he then took to the piano and, with each new run-through, engaged my delivery, helping along the shift from monologue set to music to an interplay in the fullest sense — both interactive and playful, words responding to and bouncing off of notes and vice versa. It is our hope and prayer that “Adam! (Eve’s song)” will capture something that will speak to and, in keeping with the spirit and the objective of this wonderful Spark and Echo Arts project, illuminate some aspect of the person of Eve — who and what she was made to be before the Fall, beyond the infamous fruit of the tree she is perennially associated with. The piece aims to tie in that destiny “redeemed, restored”, as one line reads, into the redemption of our humanity in Jesus Christ, and in particular, of the aspect of woman as partner — a femininity that goes way beyond one-dimensional stereotypes back to its true roots in gentle yet fiercely loving strength and capacity to love and serve and to follow our Lord together with man through the hardships of this life. *help·mate ˈhelpˌmāt/Submit a helpful companion or partner, especially one’s husband or wife. Origin: late 17th century (as helpmeet ): from an erroneous reading of Gen. 2:18, 20, where Adam’s future wife is described as “an help meet for him” (i.e., a suitable helper for him). The variant helpmate came into use in the early 18th century. (From Google Dictionary ) Spark Notes The Artist's Reflection Ileana Santamaría began the performing artist life as an aspiring Latin singer over a decade ago, embarking on the long journey of fulfilling an aspiration rooted in an eclectic, music-filled childhood. After much meandering, following (mostly unwittingly) where the Lord led, she happened upon a voice teacher that opened up her voice and found beauty in it, a surprise to Ileana, who had long struggled with vocal technique and producing healthy, beautiful sound. While waiting for the surprise of getting to sing, her Heavenly Father bestowed upon her many other gracious gifts — a knack for foreign languages, work in an international organization, friends from many countries and walks of life, and a talent for and enjoyment of crafting spoken word poetry, which Ileana first dabbled in producing and performing in her college years. Today she is privileged and honored to collaborate on this piece with her dear friend Raffi Dimoian ( bio below ), French horn player, pianist, budding spoken word artist and fellow appreciator of wordsmithery and language. Raffi Dimoian set out on his journey to multifaceted, inventive music-making in early childhood; classical piano was his first port of call (and a home base he would return to often) before choosing the French horn as primary instrument in his teens. Drawn to jazz and world music, Raffi came to the United States, the first foreign student to attend the California Institute of the Arts on a full scholarship. The palette of sounds Raffi works with in composing and producing edgy, lyrical tracks is enriched by his fertile aural imagination and his eclectic musical influences, which span the sounds of his Armenian heritage and Bulgarian upbringing as well as his affinity for Middle Eastern microtonal melodies and African rhythms, to name but a few. Raffi is a lifelong language buff and has enjoyed the process of helping create music for a spoken word piece, finding himself inspired to write some of his own spoken word poetry as a result. Website Ileana Santamaría + Raffi Dimoian About the Artist Ileana Santamaría + Raffi Dimoian Other Works By Related Information View More Art Make More Art View Full Written Work Close Loading Video . . . Download Full Written Work

Loading Video . . . Brooklyn-based stop-motion animator and mixed media artist (painter, sculptor) Jessie Brugger chose Isaiah 59 for this fanciful and macabre exploration of Spark+Echo Arts' 2012 theme "Hands." Molding clay, Jessie inquires of the imagery in the passage, vividly animating the poetry of the ancient prophet's grim language. Isaiah 59 Webs By Jessie Brugger Credits: Curated by: Charis J Carmichael Braun 2012 Film, Stop Motion Animation Primary Scripture Loading primary passage... Loading Passage Reference... Share This Art: Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy Link Born into a Catholic family and having a father who was a Catholic priest, I am intrigued with religion and how it takes such a presence in society. There are a lot of unknown's when it comes to Religion; for me, and my work is an exploration into that unknown. The church has been a main influence on my life and work; as it is the first place I understood hierarchy, power struggles and gender injustice, at the same time experiencing beauty, light, and spirituality. I often use the "Carnivalesque" as a vehicle to portray my thoughts and stories. I was interested in the Bible project that Spark and Echo Arts is doing because there were no limits placed on my interpretation of any passage from the Bible. I chose hands as my theme because I believe the Bible is a mixture of Man's hands and spirituality. I chose Isaiah 59 because it was so visually dark and showed how evil man could be, yet somewhere in hands that can do evil, they can also do beauty and goodness too. Hands have always been my favorite thing to draw since I was a child. My hands are my tools. Creating my vision through clay maquettes that I build in order to tell a story, I use the maquettes as a world to draw from, and then animate. The sculptures are raw and imperfect. I am interested in video because of the time element, I am interested in stop-animation because of the freedom of imagination it allows for: each photo that is taken in the process of a stop animation video is a moment in time that is captured, and complete, yet it is part of a bigger picture. My maquettes, paintings, drawings and videos are all part of a bigger world, in which I am creating. Spark Notes The Artist's Reflection Jessie Brugger was born in Puyallup, Washington. She started her artistic studies of painting, drawing, and mixed media at Western Washington University in 1997. In 2000, she transferred to Concordia University, in Montreal Quebec, receiving her Bachelors of Fine arts in 2002. Jessie moved to Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn in 2005, and in 2010 she completed a Masters of Fine Arts at the New York Academy of Art. She started doing stop animation in 2010 with her drawings, clay, and other mixed materials. The videos that Jessie makes are colorful and whimsical, yet disquieting and socially political. In April 2011, she was awarded “Best in Animation” at the New York International Film Festival for her video, “The Stained Glass Window.” Jessie works on her animations, maquettes, paintings and drawings in Brooklyn, New York. Website Jessie Brugger About the Artist Jessie Brugger Other Works By Related Information View More Art Make More Art View Full Written Work Close Loading Video . . . Download Full Written Work

Img 1660 img_1660.jpg isaiah-43_3.jpg isaiah-43_4.jpg Loading Video . . . This visual work by theater artist Emily Clare Zempel explores the concept of "Beginnings" and Isaiah 43:18-19 which invites us to "Remember not the former things." Isaiah 43:18-19 Rivers in the Desert By Emily Clare Zempel Credits: Artist Location: New York City Curated by: Jonathon + Emily 2012 Digital photography collage Primary Scripture Loading primary passage... Loading Passage Reference... Share This Art: Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy Link I felt called to respond to this theme because I have been experiencing a period of beginnings in my life. Most tangibly, my husband Jonathon and I moved to a new apartment in the Bronx. We packed our things, said goodbye to the East Village: to restaurants on every corner, to a shower in our kitchen, and to the three tiny rooms that comprised the first home we shared together. We said hello to an unknown neighborhood in the Bronx, space, empty streets, room to breathe, and new possibilities. With the energy of a fresh start, I made my "New Years Resolutions" in February, a little later than usual. As my body began to unwind from that compact 300 square feet to a spacious 1,000, my mind began to clear, and I began to fill the time and space now given to me by searching for the next step in my professional and creative life. For me, this has involved a lot of theological exploration, discussion, and journalling in my new found subway time. I have also begun to develop new areas of my life, areas that I have always wanted to explore, but that have been put on the back burner due to restraints in time, space, and finances. Physically, I began training for a marathon. I have enjoyed running for several years now, but I am amazed at how the structure of a training program is allowing me to thrive. Combined with my proximity to Central Park, I am ready to be amazed by what the human body can do, and how we can challenge ourselves to use it more fully. Artistically, I am hoping to expand my interests into visual art (mostly drawing and painting) and dance. I know that growing in these areas will feed my artistic spirit and deepen the work I do in both music and theater. Last weekend I was told that there are two deep sources of pain that we as humans habitually cultivate; impatience with other people and everyday worry. Realizing that these two instinctual reactions are a choice that I make has been a powerful factor in this new chapter of my life. Highlighted in this realization is the fact that when I try to control my life, these two monsters are constantly looking over my shoulder. When, in some rare moments, I am able to trust and let go, those monsters lose their hold on me as well. The above pieces are an exploration of my visual sense of newness, creation and beginning. Compiled are photographic elements from a few series of photographs: a perfect witch hazel plant in full bloom, our new apartment stacked full of boxes, and New Years Resolutions scrawled on sticky notes. This series of four photographs explores the struggle between God and myself to create new beginnings. I cloud His purpose with my will, my busyness, and my frantic pace, trying to create my future and force it into submission. Meanwhile, God presents me with this "new thing", which I am only able to see if I let go of my cluttered mind. I found it fitting to explore these themes in a very unfamiliar medium, forcing me to relinquish my control and my ego, and to begin expanding my vision. Spark Notes The Artist's Reflection Emily Clare Zempel (Spark+Echo Arts Co-Founder) is an actor and musician based in Beacon, NY, who received her MFA from Brooklyn College. Favorite credits include Katherine in Love’s Labour’s Lost at Milwaukee Shakespeare, Ophelia in Hamlet at Baltimore Shakespeare Festival, and Wittenberg at Rep Stage, which was nominated for a Helen Hayes Award. She plays bassoon, ukulele, guitar, clarinet, and other assorted toys in Spark & Echo the Band, has co-created the original play Esther with Jonathon Roberts and Chris Cragin, and has a small obsession with running marathons. Website Emily Clare Zempel About the Artist Bitter Drink Emily Clare Zempel Other Works By Related Information View More Art Make More Art View Full Written Work Close Loading Video . . . Download Full Written Work

Jacob David Pettibone Loading Video . . . We are pleased to present the work of David Pettibone as he explores the theme of "Hands" from the story of Jacob and Esau from Genesis 27:1-17. Genesis 27:1-17 Jacob By David Pettibone Credits: Curated by: Charis J Carmichael Braun 2012 16 x 27 inches Oil on canvas Primary Scripture Loading primary passage... Loading Passage Reference... Share This Art: Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy Link I consider myself agnostic and initially had superficial reservations about taking on this project. Yet I have a deep respect for religion and immeasurable appreciation for the good that can come out of faith and tradition. I also have always felt an intense connection and fascination with the iconography of the Catholic Church and would never deny the effects of nearly two thousand years of christianity on an individual, growing up in a western society. My stance on religion, I feel, is important to mention as it hopefully gives the viewer insight into the approach I chose towards making my painting. I was initially drawn to the theme of hands for many reasons. As a painter, I create with my hands. The handcrafted, in the age of speed and overload, is almost a symbol of defiance. To create directly with the hands is to slow the world down and reconnect with all that is physical and sometimes primal. An unmatched level of craftsmanship and much beauty can come directly from the hand. And yet, at the same time, the hand is responsible for so much that is ugly and destructive. The human hand can nourish and save life and it can just as easily, sometimes with more ease, take life away. In Genesis, through his hands, Jacob deceives his own, blind father, Isaac, in order to obtain the birthright that was to be his elder brother's- to rule over his people. And it was those same hands, with which he later wrestled with an angel, thus becoming "Israel", a prince with God and a leader of the Jewish people. I chose the moment of deception as the subject for my painting as it is a moment that expresses the extreme contradictions that the human hand is capable of. Mores specifically, I chose to focus on the hands themselves. As it may look to a dying, elderly man, blinded by age, obscure hands come out from the shadow and are laid down on a blood-red table. Instead of goat skin, I chose lambskin to cover the backs of Jacob's hands. Traditionally, the Bible refers to believers as Lambs of God, and I felt that using lambskin would bridge the identity from Jacob to all people. As all of us are capable of using our hands towards both deception and graciousness. Spark Notes The Artist's Reflection David Pettibone is a New York based artist focusing extensively on the medium of oil paint and the portrayal of the contemporary figure. He was born in Phoenix, Arizona and received his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and MFA from the New York Academy of Art. Upon graduating, he stayed on at the New York Academy of Art for one more year as a Fellow. He has taught painting at Brooklyn College and currently teaches drawing and painting at Marymount Manhattan College, 3rd Ward in Brooklyn and Brooklyn Artist Gym. His work is included in various private collections with continuous growing support. Website David Pettibone About the Artist David Pettibone Other Works By Related Information View More Art Make More Art View Full Written Work Close Loading Video . . . Download Full Written Work

Loading Video . . . Author Lancelot Schaubert offers the final release from his inventive three-part mini-series, presented as a small newspaper in response to a collection of Scripture passages. This section focuses on the theme of "kings" as found in Judges 9:7-21 in addition to a summation of the series. Judges 9:7-21 Dragonsmaw Daily | 3 By Lancelot Schaubert Credits: Curated by: Spark+Echo Arts 2020 Creative Writing Primary Scripture Loading primary passage... Loading Passage Reference... Share This Art: Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy Link I wanted to literalize the story of the trees electing a king, so I featured some of the tree creatures of Gergia and their recent conclave to elect a new Woodward. I think you'll find that the sort of thing spoken of in Judges is quite literal in Gergia. The Dragonsmaw daily is a paper circulating on LOMEDAY of the month of BLAGUROEDD 47 in the year 1109 P.T. on Gergia, one of the Vale Universe ( short story series here ). It may seem like a high-shelf sort of entry for the average reader, something that takes a herculean effort to embrace in terms of the suspension of disbelief or secondary belief in my created world. However, I think it's quite easy: if you'll trust me, it'll read as a wonderfully foreign paper from a wonderfully foreign world. It's ephemera: something like an in-world artifact I happened to pick up from a newsboy who was hawking EXTRA EXTRA EXTRA copies in order to have enough ₮ to get his sister through the week on an onion (actually it's more like a leek) based soup. She beat the fever, in case you were wondering. But I brought it back from Gergia and gave it to my friends at Spark and Echo that it might supplement the stories I've written here and elsewhere about these fantastic worlds I travel so frequently. For those that have followed along in any capacity, this paper tells of events taking place prior to the events in the Moon Boys series from my artist residency and quite far in the past from the other commissions here at Spark and Echo. It occupies the region around the Imperial Crescent in Gergia (top left of the main land mass on that false map I drew of the world) . Each of the events recorded in this paper feature major workings in the region. All together I wanted to bind up the themes of extinction, of power dynamics, and of being lost and found into one piece. So I stitched together three commissions in a more unified form than normal. Of course some parts of the paper will remain out of reach for some time — like any foreign country, Gergian customs and economics and politics only make sense after you've lived there for quite some time. But one day the times, dates, seasons, and currency will make perfect sense to you. And then the dread realization of what the paper really reveals will come all too clear, as clear as a Bell Hammer. Spark Notes The Artist's Reflection Lancelot has sold work to The New Haven Review (The Institute Library), The Anglican Theological Review, TOR (MacMillan), McSweeney's, The Poet's Market, Writer's Digest, and many, many similar markets. (His favorite, a rather risqué piece, illuminated bankroll management by prison inmates in the World Series Edition of Poker Pro). Publisher's Weekly called his debut novel BELL HAMMERS "a hoot." He has lectured on these at academic conferences, graduate classes, and nerd conventions in Nashville, Portland, Baltimore, Tarrytown, NYC, Joplin, and elsewhere. The Missouri Tourism Bureau, WRKR, Flying Treasure, 9art, The Brooklyn Film Festival, NYC Indie Film Fest, Spiva Center for the Arts, The Institute of the North in Alaska, and the Chicago Museum of Photography have all worked with him as a film producer and director in various capacities. Website Lancelot Schaubert About the Artist Artist in Residence 2019: Lancelot Schaubert - Part 3 Artist in Residence 2019: Lancelot Schaubert - Part 2 Artist in Residence 2019: Lancelot Schaubert - Part 1 Posh Girls As Waters Cover Artist in Residence 2019: Lancelot Schaubert Dragonsmaw Daily | 1 Dragonsmaw Daily | 2 Watchtower Stripped to the Bonemeal Metaphysical Insurance Claim 0075A: The Delphic Oracle Philadelphia Bloodlines Lancelot Schaubert Other Works By As with most shared newspapers, some of the pages have been pulled out and are out of order, so you will have to piece them together as the project is released. You may find the other parts of the project at Dragonsmaw Daily | 1 and Dragonsmaw Daily | 2 . You may also view the entirety of the project, here — as a brand new newspaper. Related Information View More Art Make More Art FANCY FEAST has returned to Dragonsmaw! View Full Written Work Close Loading Video . . . FANCY FEAST has returned to Dragonsmaw! Download Full Written Work

He is Good; His Love Endures Forever (11x17, Paper Collage on Strathmore Drawing Paper) They Burned the House of God (11x17", Paper Collage on Strathmore Drawing Paper with Conte Crayon) Loading Video . . . In this project, collectively entitled "A Body without the Spirit," visual artist Nicora Gangi explores a contrast between two passages from the same book: 2 Chronicles 7:3-4 and 2 Chronicles 36:19. 2 Chronicles 36:19 2 Chronicles 7:3-4 The Body without the Spirit | 1 By Nicora Gangi Credits: Curated by: Spark+Echo Arts, April Knighton 2021 Various Sizes Mixed Media Collage Primary Scripture Loading primary passage... Loading Passage Reference... Share This Art: Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy Link About "He is good; His love endures forever" (from II Chronicles 7:3-4) This collage was created to give the viewer a sense of looking up at the perfect glory light of God's presence. This account in II Chronicles shows us the reverence of His people before Him, adoring Him, expressing their awful dread of the Divine Majesty, along with their cheerful submission to the Divine Authority. They—with thankfulness—acknowledge the goodness of God. Even when the fire of the Lord came down they praised him, saying: "He is good, for his mercy endureth forever. It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, but the sacrifice is consumed instead, for which we are bound to be very thankful" (NASB). About "They burned the house of God" (from II Chronicles 36:19) In this image I have begun to create a scene of the havoc and destruction of the temple. The previous verses ( vv. 14-18 ) describe the desolation itself. Multitudes were put to the sword, even in the house of their sanctuary. They fled for refuge there, hoping that the holiness of the place would be their protection. But how could they expect to find it so when they themselves had polluted it with their abominations? They forsook God, who had compassion on them, but they still would have none of Him. All the remaining vessels of the temple (great and small), all the sacred treasures of God's house, and all the secular treasures of the king and his princes were seized and brought to Babylon. The temple was burnt, the walls of Jerusalem were demolished, the houses and all the furniture were destroyed and laid in ashes: A significant indicator for us all to be diligent and to watch over the temple of our body and soul, rooting out the worm that creates havoc and causes the sin that leads to destruction. Spark Notes The Artist's Reflection Nicora Gangi was educated at Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, USA (BFA 1974 and MFA 1976). She was a Professor of Art at Syracuse University for 29 years. Gangi has been awarded many Grand Prize and First Place awards and grants. She has been and continues to be published in numerous artist’s books on pastel paintings. She has lectured regionally and nationally as a visiting artist at universities and artist’s guilds. She is represented by: Edgewood Gallery (Syracuse, NY), and Gangi Studio (Winter Garden, FL ). Website Nicora Gangi About the Artist The Mountain of the House of The Lord I See Him but Not Now So Shall Your Descendants Be This One The Body without the Spirit | 2 The Body without the Spirit | 3 The Sealed Ones Peace with God The Everlasting Protective Love of God Our Father When the Lord Gives Us The Land I See Him but Not Now The Mountain of the House of The Lord Paneled and Ruins Series The Harvest Spirit of God-The Spirit Hovering Memories Lies Fool Dance Your Truth from the Great Congregation Psalm 18 Sound of Their Wings Psalm 16 Kiss the Son EAST, WEST, NORTH & SOUTH AT HIS TABLE Nicora Gangi Other Works By View the other two posts in this collection at: The Body without the Spirit | 2 The Body without the Spirit | 3 Related Information View More Art Make More Art View Full Written Work Close Loading Video . . . Download Full Written Work

mandy-bankson_strangers_se.jpg Loading Video . . . California artist Mandy Bankson responds to the theme of "Strangers" and Hebrews 13:2. Hebrews 13:2 Strangers By Mandy Bankson Credits: Curated by: Spark+Echo Arts 2014 40" x 30" Acrylic Primary Scripture Loading primary passage... Loading Passage Reference... Share This Art: Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy Link I chose this passage, on the theme of Strangers, because of an experience I had many years ago. Coming out of anesthesia after a major surgery, there were several nurses around my gurney, looking down at me. When I saw them, I saw each person as an individual gift. Their skin was like wrapping paper holding an extremely precious and unique treasure inside. I believe I was given a glimpse of what God sees when he looks at us with Love. God sees first not our faults and weaknesses, but our beauty, our creation in His image. This theme and this verse in particular, allowed me to honor the spiritual experience I had 20 years ago that continues to affect the way I see people around me. So much of each of us is hidden. And in what is hidden there is often a treasure to be discovered. We are called as God's friends, to be hospitable to that stranger, no matter who they are. Sometimes that is not easy; sometimes it is. But we are reminded in this verse of the mystery that is lurking when we allow ourselves to enter into God's kingdom and see as God sees. Spark Notes The Artist's Reflection Mandy Bankson was born in rural Indiana. Her mother was an artist and Mandy began drawing and painting as a young girl, attracted to patterns and design.. Although art was always on the periphery, she taught Special Education in the San Francisco bay area for many years. After marrying a widower with two young daughters and moving to Santa Rosa, CA , she began to paint more seriously. Mandy paints abstractly inspired by patterns of the natural world. However her most recent body of work is an abstract series based on Jacob’s Ladder (Genesis 28:10-18). She started and continues to curate the Gallery at First, a ministry of First Presbyterian Church of Santa Rosa. She is also involved in the gallery at The Journey Center, a Christ centered community. Mandy is an ARTrails Open Studio artist, and shows in Marin and Sonoma counties: her works are collected locally and internationally. More of her work can be viewed on her website www.mandybankson.net . Website Mandy Bankson About the Artist Mandy Bankson Other Works By Related Information View More Art Make More Art View Full Written Work Close Loading Video . . . Download Full Written Work

Loading Video . . . Poet Kent Shaw creative this challenging work exploring conviction, the theme of destruction, and 2 Timothy 2:3. 2 Timothy 2:3 Why God Keeps Making Conviction So Easy By Kent Shaw Credits: Artist Location: West Virginia Curated by: Hayan Charara 2014 Poetry Primary Scripture Loading primary passage... Loading Passage Reference... Share This Art: Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy Link I have always been fascinated at the role of God's will in human lives, especially from the human perspective. How many times does a person sense a certain inclination and attribute it to God's will? How complicated, unnerving and angular would God's will be as it runs through the human heart? Conviction is such a potent word, and it wields such authority over a person's actions. But what is the source of conviction? So much of this poem positions God in ways that are more suitable to human views of God. He's here. He did this. He told me to listen to Him. People have a remarkable way of attaching their certainties to God. But what makes anyone so certain the voice they hear is God's? During a reading for my first book, someone in the audience asked me if I thought I had the authority to write poems about God, or to recast a Biblical passage so that it appears in a new light. To this day, the answer I gave to that question dissatisfies me. Hers was a reading of the Bible that presumes to "know" it completely, as though the Bible were a text operating on a single dimension of right and wrong. But I believe the Bible is more complicated than that, because my faith is more complicated. Since that reading, I have tried writing poems that unsettle the condescension I hear in simplistic readings of the Bible. My personal faith life is full of self-interrogation. And the reward is a complex, unnerving and angular relationship with God. Spark Notes The Artist's Reflection Kent Shaw ‘s first book Calenture was published in 2008. His poems have since appeared in The Believer , Boston Review , Ploughshares , Witness and elsewhere. He is an Assistant Professor at West Virginia State University and a poetry editor at Better Magazine. Website Kent Shaw About the Artist Kent Shaw Other Works By Related Information View More Art Make More Art At first, God made conviction the size of a rabbit 's throat. Which was a matter of poor planning. In the suburbs, a rabbit is meandering and conspicuous. View Full Written Work WHY GOD KEEPS MAKING CONVICTION SO EASY by Kent Shaw At first, God made conviction the size of a rabbit’s throat. Which was a matter of poor planning. In the suburbs, a rabbit is meandering and conspicuous. A rabbit is running through the suburban neighborhoods and we’re starting to think that they’re pests. Maybe there was a time when they were precious and vulnerable. That’s when we were children. Conviction, Lord. The kind like boys after school chasing a rabbit and pinning it to the driveway. Does a rabbit hear the inside of a rabbit? Does it have a productive dialogue with absolutely terrified or petrified or inconvenienced or provoked or angry but not angry enough because look, it’s just boys. But the rabbit can’t move. The rabbit is helpless. And the boys found something heavy to hold over the rabbit’s head. It’s bigger than the rabbit’s head! Are you all seeing all this? Maybe the Lord started explaining conviction but we weren’t paying attention. Maybe conviction changed to the size of the heaviest thing in the picture. Maybe it’s the boy who can’t let go of what he used to think of rabbits, but that was before this rabbit. The other boys are laughing at this rabbit. Which is definitely easier. Lord, conviction runs deep. Conviction is plentiful. The shape of young animals running at evening. The shape of evening. The shape of God being boys, whatever a boy is or the inside of a boy or the inside of many boys when they’re laughing, so that one boy feels like it’s OK now. It’s a fucking rabbit, already. Don’t make it so hard. Close Loading Video . . . At first, God made conviction the size of a rabbit 's throat. Which was a matter of poor planning. In the suburbs, a rabbit is meandering and conspicuous. Download Full Written Work

Loading Video . . . Composer Sidney Marquez Boquiren explores the theme of healing through passages from Ecclesiastes, John, and Revelation in his work folia ligni. Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 folia ligni By Sidney Marquez Boquiren Credits: Composed and Performed by Sidney Marquez Boquiren Artist Location: New York City Curated by: Jonathon Roberts 2014 Primary Scripture Loading primary passage... Loading Passage Reference... Share This Art: Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy Link folia ligni takes as its inspiration three sets of Biblical verses: Ecclesiastes 3:1-8; John 14:27; and Revelation 22:2. The work itself is a diptych that consists of meditations on the verses from Ecclesiastes and the Gospel of St. John, written for piano, with the title ("leaves of the tree") taken from Revelation 22:2 which is the verse that undergirds folia ligni : "The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations." It is this healing of nations and (by extension) of peoples that I tried to get at, not in the sense of a direct depiction of some process of healing but more as a sort of struggle to achieve this healing, a striving to reach "a time of peace." Et in terra pax. Spark Notes The Artist's Reflection Sidney Marquez Boquiren is a composer-performer who grew up in the Philippines and Saudi Arabia but has spent most of his life in the United States. He collaborates with artists on various projects that include opera ( Independence Eve with Daniel Neer); Biblical illumination ( folia ligni for Spark and Echo Arts); and multi-media ( The Gretel Project with Lauren K. Alleyne, Catherine Chung, and Tomiko Jones). As a pianist, he performs regularly with Rhymes With Opera and pulsoptional. A MacDowell Fellow, Sidney is currently the Chair of the Department of Music at Adelphi University in Garden City, New York, where he teaches music theory and composition. He is also a cantor and sings in the choir of The Church of St. Francis Xavier in Manhattan, New York. Website Sidney Marquez Boquiren About the Artist Sidney Marquez Boquiren Other Works By Related Information View More Art Make More Art View Full Written Work Close Loading Video . . . Download Full Written Work