ection>Rocking Like It’s All Intermezzo
Twenty-first-Century Psalm Responsorials
Maryanne Hannan
foreword by Sofia M. Starnes
Rocking Like It’s All Intermezzo
Twenty-first-Century Psalm Responsorials
Copyright © 2019 Maryanne Hannan. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
Resource Publications
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199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
Eugene, OR 97401
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paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-9193-5
hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-9194-2
ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-9195-9
Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Bible.
Manufactured in the U.S.A.
Foreword
Sofia M. Starnes
In Maryanne Hannan’s poem “Embodied,” wrought out of verse 2, Psalm 40, “He brought me up also out of a horrible pit . . . and set my feet upon a rock,” we find, encapsulated, the heart of this original and deeply moving collection of poetic responsorials to the Psalmody. The poem is worth quoting in full:
“Inner stitched,
chiseled with longing,
who knows if for heaven, earth,
either or neither,
I stand naked on that rock,
embracing now, denying later
the memory of clay, the muck
I’m made of,
clutching always
after the wind,
after—”
The poet’s response to the psalms starts with a recognition of a particular trait which distinguishes humans from all other creatures. That trait is “longing”; for we have been “chiseled with longing,” she avers. No other creature aspires beyond itself, experiences lack that exceeds physical lack, reaches forth between hope and despair, qualitatively, to the extent we humans do. But that is not all. There is more to the verse “chiseled with longing,” for it refers as well to the one who did the chiseling “with longing,” that is, with a lover’s desire to be one with the beloved. Thus do we learn in a nutshell, within this wisely succinct couplet, that the entirety of this work is to be a conversation initiated—undoubtedly—by the chiseler, the creator, who is now mostly silent, in order to allow his creature to respond through her own imperfect nature. It is not easy; it can never be easy, when the distance between one and the other is so vast, when only he can bridge it. How to rise out of “the muck / I’m made of,” the poet laments in this poem. This lament is a running thread through the book. With or without a given answer, the poet gives credence to her patent aspiration to clutch the wind—wind that is, breath, the pneuma of God—seemingly out of reach. Yet, how or why should we think it gone? “After the wind,” there is “after—”
Rocking—even without the rest of the verse—would itself be a perfect title for this inspired and inspiring collection. It evokes solidity and motion; the hard core, gravel and stone which is our human terrain and the motion of cradle, hither and there, evoking wonder, which can both unnerve and soothe us with possibility. Over and over, in Hannan’s work, we find this tension between place and destination, between acceptance and struggle, between knowing and unknowing. It is a push-and-pull whose radix must dig deep into a recognition of our ills, the wrongs we do, the errors we bear. We do not hear enough about this, I’m afraid, in today’s soft-pedaling of moral truths; we do not find, as we do in Hannan’s poems, a denouncement of sin for what it is: “betrayal of [our] core,” “putrefying journey” of those “bruised at birth.” The poet even wonders (concerned?) how “sin / [has] become outré.” It is all too much for modern sensibilities. Yet, it is only through this honest appraisal of who and where we are, that the poet can emerge as prophet, with courage to “taste my taint.” Only then is she able to bring forth credible poems, poems capable of stirring the reader out of a self-aggrandizing stupor, to embark on the difficult but necessary journey demanded by our divine calling.
Most of the poems in the collection are so deeply, radically personal, that one might fail to notice another natural motion occurring throughout the book. That is, a movement toward the communal. Poem after poem reveals the poet’s abiding experience of the mystical body, of which she believes we are all a part. This embrace of the other, as part of God’s whole, is latent almost everywhere, as in the poem “God’s Greatness,” which closes with the question, “who else has suffered?” We see it, too, in the ongoing oscillation between “I” (“May I be granted a knower’s knowing . . .”) and “We” (“And when we have found our enemy, help us in our treading”); between “my” (“this is the chalice of my stuff, filled with how human feels”) and “our” (our path is lowly . . .”); between “me” (“Catch me when I fall”) and “us” (“Tickle us with triumph.”) Even as the poet’s cry rises out of a deep personal well, we are reminded over and over that the well is fed by shared springs, that all rivers run into one ocean.
From what I’ve described thus far, it might appear that Maryanne Hannan’s collection unfolds entirely in the dark or penumbral areas of our life, and that these are the prevalent landscapes of our emotions. Many of the psalms do start out as laments, and Hannan’s responsorials are no different. But the lament, more often than not, transcends itself, and many of the psalms, as we know, turn into songs of praise and thanksgiving, of trust and even joy. None does so more notably than Psalm 22, Christ’s psalm on the cross: “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me,” which—though unspoken on that Good Friday—culminates with these verses: “A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation. They shall come, and shall declare his righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that he hath done this.”
Rocking like it’s all intermezzo follows a similar journey. As we approach the book’s closing, we are offered the consolation reserved for those who place their trust in the Lord, having come to him with grief, challenged him with doubt, yet ultimately surrendered to his name. In one poem, the poet, having shed her shackles (and her shyness), unabashedly, in obvious celebration, calls the heavens, the earth, the spirit, creation and the Creator, all Holy. Holy, the Whole. She rejoices in this communion with creation: “For the soul which magnifies the Lord . . . magnifies not itself alone”; her soul “perks up” at the prospect of forgiveness, and ensuing delight. There is an invitation to joy in such lines, as there is in “Interlude,” a short poem which I quote in full here:
“Let all who wonder watch
my soul’s sweet twirl,
her buzz of gladness,
how
