Begun during Lent of 2019, the first series of poems were written based on Edward Sri’s podcast series on the seven last words of Christ (All Things Catholic, 74 - 78) and Bishop Robert Barron’s Tre Ore homily delivered in 2012 at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. I wrote seven poems but didn’t do anything with them until I listened to Barron’s homily again during Lent of 2020, and wrote a new set.

Deciding to edit these new poems prompted me to go back and rework the old as well. In editing, both sets have strayed from their initial inspirations and, it is hoped, come to be able to stand on their own. While many topics are touched on in these poems, there remains to me, a primary thrust in theme throughout, which is exploring the paradox of freedom through submission (Romans 6:20–23) and the unavoidable necessity of hierarchical worship — best navigated through right praise.

In essence, I am trying to make sense of and direct myself toward the space that rests between freedom from the slavery of 1984 and the freedom to be a slave to the passions of Brave New World. That space described by Bishop Barron when he said that “[t]here’s an older, Biblical sense of freedom, which isn’t freedom as choice primarily but rather freedom as the disciplining of desire so as to make the achievement of the good first possible, then effortless.” I am using these seven last words of Christ to try to chart a course to plant my flag of worship upon this liberatory bedrock.

-----------

To press the issue:
Bedrock as an island in sinking sand and rising tides, a barrier against sharp teeth that cut through soft flesh and a jumping-off point to exploring the sacred, tracing the rough outlines of millennium blues. Hanging on by the throat, I remain the canary still singing from mountain tops of overburden: buyer beware, apocalypse sells! These last words once refused expose new bedrock, inexhaustible in depth and breadth, a talisman against dead-ends. A cornerstone to anchor Antler’s playing kite, unravelling freedom’s thread, no longer blind to the spars that form its spine: the frame, the crux.

----------

Chapbook description:

8 ½’’ x 11’’, 36 half-size pages printed on Strathmore Natural White 28 lb. wove stock, 3-hole sewn into recycled black linen 80 lb. cardstock with red flyleaf and letterpress printed butcher’s paper dust jacket.

Hand-numbered first edition of 12 copies released in 2020.