Welcome to Off the Page, it's great to be with
you. This episode features the poet and Fordham
University professor, Dr. Angela Alimo O'Donnell.
This conversation was such a joy and covers so
much ground from the episode's focus, which is
the Catholic imagination, to mortality and the
afterlife, to Bruce Springsteen and Flannery
O 'Connor, to creativity and the imagination's
role on our spiritual journeys, as well as her
new poetry book, Dear Dante with Paraclete Press.
It is a book that is an imagined conversation
with the great Catholic poet, and as she says,
the embodiment of the Catholic imagination. Dante,
written in response to the 700th anniversary
of Dante's death. Angela and I talked for almost
two hours, so I have edited this down, but I
wanted to include as much as possible from our
conversation. So much of what she said is ridiculously
profound, so there are no reflection segments
in this episode. But I do invite you to pause
throughout the episode whenever you hear something
that stirs your heart or invites you inward into
contemplation. conversation focuses on the Catholic
imagination. Angela also has a really great story
about an experience that she had with Pope Francis.
She wrote about it in America Magazine shortly
after Pope Francis's death, and you can hear
her tell that story in episode 15 of Off the
Page, so I encourage you to check that out. A
few brief words about Angela. Dr. Angela Lima
O'Donnell teaches English, creative writing,
and courses in American Catholic Studies at Fordham
University in New York City. She also serves
as Associate Director of Fordham's Curran Center
for American Catholic Studies. She's been nominated
for or received numerous prizes in poetry, and
she also writes essays and reviews of contemporary
poetry and literature, which have appeared in
publications. like Commonweal, Christianity and
Literature, as well as America. You're in for
a treat with this episode, so let's dive into
the conversation. Enjoy. Dr. Angela Elima O'Donnell,
welcome to the Off the Page podcast. Thanks for
joining us. Thank you so much for having me,
Stephen. I'm delighted to be here. So I'm really
looking forward to this conversation, which I'm
guessing one of the big themes is going to be
the Catholic imagination. But to begin, can you
tell listeners a little bit about your background
and your own passions as an educator and an artist
as well? Absolutely. I'm a professor at Fordham
University in New York City. I've been at Fordham
for 20 years. I just celebrated my 20th anniversary.
And I teach courses in American Catholic studies,
and my field is literature. So we look at literature
through the lens of Catholicism and Catholic
tradition. And I particularly like to teach courses
in the Catholic imagination. I also am the associate
director of our Kern Center for American Catholic
Studies, which is a center that sponsors a lot
of events and writers. and scholars and artists
who come to perform and read and speak to our
students. And in addition to that, I have my
scholarly life. I write about a lot of American
Catholic writers, but my favorite writer of recent
years, I've written a number of books on Flannery
O 'Connor. So she's kind of been my focus, my
scholarly focus. And in addition, I'm a poet.
I just published my 11th book of poems last spring
called Dear Dante, which is a conversation with
the great Catholic poet Dante. So I, you know,
all of these kinds of interests mesh in various
ways. And yeah, and I'm delighted to be able
to talk about them today. Wonderful. Well, congratulations
on your 20 years at Fordham and then on your
11th book of poetry as well, Dear Dante. I've
been diving into it. It's a really wonderful
book, and I'm sure we'll get into that as well.
Can you describe the Catholic imagination to
someone perhaps unfamiliar with the term, and
then what makes it distinct from other spiritual
or creative worldviews? Yeah, that's a great
question. As Catholics, Sometimes, since we can't
get outside of ourselves and we can't get outside
of our own tradition, we don't realize the degree
to which we are imprinted by a Catholic formation.
But when you do kind of take a step outside and
think about what we have in common as a result
of a Catholic formation, and some of this is
generational. I have three sons. Their formation
was different than mine was years ago, but nonetheless,
there are certain things that still hold true.
a common language. We're seven years old when
we learn words like transubstantiation and concepts
like transubstantiation. We learn about mortal
and venial sin. We learn about, well, another
aspect of the Catholic formation is children
exposed to the reality of death very early. We
go to church and there's a cross and there's
a body on the cross. And it's not something to
shy away from. It's a reality of life. that young
children are not protected from in the way that
many American children are. There's a sense of
mortality that we get from a very early age and
trying to see your life, not just what's going
to happen here, but what happens beyond because
this is not all there is. So Catholics have this
long view of, you know, how do we fit into the
universe and into eternity rather than thinking,
as a lot of secular Americans do, well, this
is it and there's nothing after this. Then we
also have this amazing repository of stories
that we grow up listening to. week after week
or if you go to daily mass day after day you
hear these bible stories that are just we're
imprinted with, and they're so deep within us,
and they're such goads to the imagination. Jesus'
parables are just so rich and full of possibility,
and we've heard hundreds and thousands of homilies
over our lifetime as to how do we read these
passages. And then, of course, as a little kid,
I remember sitting in church and not having a
clue as to what they were talking about, and
you're looking around and like, oh, there are
these beautiful stained glass windows in which...
Bible stories are being acted out. And then there
are statues of the saints up there that you learn
about and you have affection for. I come from
an Italian -American family and we're all about
St. Anthony. Like St. Anthony was the go -to
saint and Mary, you know. So, you know, our formation
is very much based around this imagery, these
stories, this language. The music, of course,
that we grew up with also was very important.
I still remember those songs. Nobody sings them
anymore, but I still remember those songs that
I sang standing next to my mom when I was a little
girl that informed my own sense of, you know,
of, you know, come Holy Ghost, creator blessed.
Like, of course, we always sang that on Pentecost.
And I still think of that song on Pentecost,
even though no one sings it anymore. or very
few people do anyway. So it gives us this gift
of music as well. All of this, by the way, is
art, interestingly. That is, you know, goading
the imagination, provoking us into imagining
God, because let's face it, we can't see God.
We can't taste, touch, feel God. The closest
we can come is these artistic representations,
these stories, this language that has been given
to us. So when a Catholic, I mean, I think as
Catholics, Like, we just have this incredibly
rich inheritance. And so as a Catholic artist,
then, you have that to draw on. And you may not
even realize that you're drawing on it, you know,
when you're writing poetry or when you're storytelling
because it's just so much a part of your vocabulary
and so much a part of your history. And so the
Catholic imagination emerges in writers and in
artists without them trying. As Flannery O 'Connor
says, we bring our whole self, our whole person.
into play when we create something. And good
luck trying to screen that out. It's just so
deeply embedded in us that we really can't. So
the Catholic imagination then manifests itself.
I'm really interested to see the ways in which
it manifests itself in people who are conscious
of it. You know, there are plenty of writers.
We were just talking about the great Murray Bodo.
Obviously, he's very conscious of his Catholic
imagination. But then there are writers who may
not be. But it's still very much a part of who
they are. So I'll use a very popular example
that I like to use with my students as Bruce
Springsteen. Grew up in Freehold, New Jersey.
He went to Catholic school. St. Rose of Lima
Church was his church. They called it Lima. He
was an altar boy. He went to Catholic school.
He was not a good kid. misbehaved very badly
got thrown off the altar boys um nonetheless
he was imprinted by this experience of growing
up in the catholic church of being at all the
weddings and all the funerals and um understanding
this kind of liturgical life that his whole family
and his whole town really was invested in uh
and for a long time he didn't acknowledge that
but in recent years he wrote a memoir a few years
ago called born to run in which he talks about
like the first it was really my first experience
of beauty. It was a dark beauty. This was pre
-Vatican II Catholicism, right? It was a dark
beauty. It was a mystery I didn't understand.
And that's something at the core of me as an
artist. And then when you take a look at Springsteen's
lyrics, I mean, his favorite word, I think, is
redemption. not one song that he does that he
writes that is not in some way about redemption.
He writes about sin. He writes about loss. He
writes about this search, this search for something
beyond himself that sometimes can't get named.
His songs are songs, often anthems of social
justice, which are very much in keeping, especially
with my younger students. That's their passion.
And, you know, it's again, it's he's not conscious
of it, but that's part of who he is because of
that Catholic formation that he had. So I think.
once we start looking in our culture we see that
there's a lot of of the catholic imagination
there we just may not you know may not recognize
it until we are know what to look for yeah yeah
i'm a big springsteen fan um i've especially
last year i just had um Born to Run and Born
in the USA, those two albums just on constantly
in our household. And do you have a favorite
song or a song that lyrically of his to you that
really kind of captures the Catholic imagination,
the paradox, the, you mentioned the darkness,
the beauty, the mystery. Does anything come to
mind for you? Yeah, there are actually a number
of them. And now, of course, now that you're
asking me, they're like all fleeing out of my
head. It always happens. I'm thinking of the
song, though, in which it's a mantra, really,
in the song, where the... The chorus is, this
train has saints and sinners. This train has
bulls and gamblers. This train has lost souls.
This train. It's the idea of, it's the glory
train. It's the train to heaven. And it's very
Catholic. Here comes everybody, you know. We're
all saints and sinners. This is a train that
does not exclude people. Quite the contrary.
It includes people. And I can't remember the
name of that, but it will come to me. The other
one that I always think of. of his most poignant
songs. It's a poem in many ways. Springsteen
is another thing. He's a great lyricist. He's
one of the great lyricists. And Bob Dylan won
a Nobel Prize, but I think Bruce could also win
one if they wanted to give it to another lyricist.
But he has a song that he wrote. It's called
American Skin, and it is about a young man who
was killed by the police in the late 1990s. Might
have been 1998, 1999. He was an immigrant named
Amadou Diallo. And this happened right here in
the Bronx. He went to reach for his wallet and
the police thought he was trying to go for a
gun and he was killed. He was shot 31 times.
And it was one of the first instances, it wasn't
a first, but it was one of the first instances
that the news paid attention to of this sort
of... overkill you know on the part of the police
towards this young african -american man um and
he wrote this beautiful anthem called american
skin and the and the uh subtitle is 41 shots
and it's just this um it is this melodic almost
lullaby uh telling the story of this young man
uh and it keeps on repeating 41 shots 41 shots
just just to remind us so we don't forget you
know that crucifixion, basically. It's a crucifixion
of an innocent. And it's just so touching and
so moving. And again, all of the lyrics, they're
about, you know, we're baptized in this water,
these waters, and we're baptized in each other's
blood. The sense of our own complicity in these
kinds of injustices when they happen. And, you
know, Springsteen was doing this in the late
1990s. This is before the Black Lives Matter
movement. He was using his art to be prophetic,
basically, to look and see what is happening
in our culture, what is happening in our society
that needs to be paid attention to. So it's kind
of like an open wound. Interestingly, the New
York Police Department... did not like this,
as you might imagine. When he did a concert a
couple of years later at Madison Square Garden,
they did not want to provide security for him
if he sang the song. And he sang the song anyway,
because it's something that needed to be heard.
He's the boss. He has to. So I think that, I
mean, one of my... categories that we use when
I talk about the Catholic imagination with my
students is like almost all of these people have
this prophetic quality to them you know this
this need to speak out and when they see injustice
uh they they have to I mean they they can't not
use their art for that um and so you know so
Springsteen is up there with Dorothy Day and
Thomas Merton and Chesla Milos and a number of
the other writers that we're reading who uh who
do that and um Yeah, so he's one of lots of examples
that we can point to. Yeah, and I'm out of my
depth here, but I thought I read somewhere that
isn't born in the USA, isn't that actually anti
-war? anthem. I mean, we always play that on
the 4th of July and, you know, you crack open
your beer and you celebrate America. But it's
a critique of America's involvement in Vietnam,
isn't it? Am I on track there? Yeah, absolutely.
Bruce had run across the book that was written
by Ron Kovic, who was a Vietnam vet who came
back. And then he happened to meet Kovic and
he said, you know, I need to write about this.
This is, again, the prophetic. This is so...
Springsteen also was of age, he was actually
drafted. And he was terrified, along with all
the other kids his age, you know, in his town.
And I can't remember, there was some sort of
technicality that he did not actually have to
go. And he talks about this in his Broadway show
on Netflix, which is really worth watching. It's
a beautiful, beautiful tribute to the Catholic
imagination. But he talks about the guilt that
he has had all of his life because somebody else
went in his place. And he's, of course, happy
to be alive and happy to be here and happy to
have children and um have a productive life but
he knows people that died um and so the book
really struck him personally you know because
it tells the story of somebody who you know went
off and just disappeared you know and never came
back and um and his brother you know trying to
deal with it and but but the interesting thing
about this song is when we hear it is that it's
that hard driving like uh bruce anthem you know
uh over the top and if you don't listen to the
words you don't realize the story that's being
told so my favorite performance of that you can
find it on youtube is the one that he did at
the madison squared garden concert in 2001 he
slows it way down he plays it alone with his
12 -string guitar and it is this haunting haunting
song and then hear you hear the story so um so
yeah he's um that's so interesting to me the
way that he sort of uses the music to mask what
it is that's being said yes in that i mean would
you say that that's um not not to oversimplify
it, but that's part of the paradox of the Catholic
imagination, right? I mean, a song like that,
I mean, it gets you going. Like, it gets you
really excited. Like you said, it feels like
a classic Springsteen anthem. However, there's
these darker undertones that really invite you
into contemplation and action and considering
the real pain that people at that time were going
through. Yeah, do you have any thoughts there?
Yeah, I mean, one of the things, the other things
that I think makes a Catholic person with a Catholic
imagination is there really is this need to look
into the darkness. I mentioned earlier this early
familiarity that we develop with death, as if
we're raised Catholic. And it's something that...
Again, if you're going to do what Flannery tells
us we have to do and live hotly in pursuit of
the real, that's hotly in pursuit of the darkness.
And so a lot of Catholic writers, I keep using
Flannery as an example, so I'll just mention
her stories. There are some people who find her
stories really, they're very, very troubling
because terrible things happen in them. You know,
serial killers show up. People have all sorts
of painful disabilities. People get, you know,
there are murders. things get stolen. I mean,
they're just all of these stories about pain
and suffering. And again, O 'Connor, first of
all, she was writing about the world she knew.
She's writing about the South, the 50s and the
60s. A lot of the stories she writes, she actually
would read the newspaper and find, oh, that happened.
I'm going to now put this into a story. And O
'Connor's way of thinking about darkness and
violence was that it was... everybody's in need
of grace. We're all in need of grace. We're all
in need of forgiveness. But most of us are not
willing to, A, recognize that it's being offered
to us, and we don't think we need it because
we think we're all right by ourselves, right?
And so all of her characters, as she said, their
heads are so hard that... It's got to be something
really shocking to get through to them. So she
uses violence as a means to wake her characters
up to the reality of their life and their grace.
But some readers really have a hard time with
her because she does take you to dark places
in the stories. And she also has a wicked sense
of humor. So interwoven in these almost tragic,
seemingly tragic stories is this like very, very
wry southern humor. So, yeah, I think that there
is this quality in a lot of Catholic writers,
you know, of needing to look into the darkness.
How do we make it bearable? How do we, you know,
one way to make it bearable is to write a song
with a sound that people are going to find compelling
because they'll listen to the song and then,
oh, oh, oh, what's going on in this song? Or
they'll be... sucked into the story by the humor
in the first few paragraphs and, you know, the
quirkiness of these people. And then, oh my gosh,
like, where is it that we've been taken to? So,
and I don't think it's a sleight of hand. I think
it's a sense of a worldview in which all of these
things are of a piece. And you, I mean, the greatest
artist is Shakespeare. Shakespeare's, you know,
tragedies are full of humor and his comedies
are full of tragedy because that's life. And
Shakespeare, I think, also was a closet Catholic.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One of my favorite novelists
is Kurt Vonnegut. And I mean, he doesn't have
a Catholic background, I don't think. But he
similarly, I mean, he uses the absurd and science
fiction to, I mean. the humor is what carries
you into this confrontation with the real, because
then he gets incredibly dark. Um, and, but the,
but the humor makes it bearable, uh, at least
for me, uh, in a, in, you know, it's, he'll have
a line that just like, Oh my goodness, that is,
um, but, but I mean, he has, he had a very dark
past too. I mean, he was a prisoner of war in
Dresden, I think in world war two. Um, he, uh,
His what was it? I think his sister passed away.
And he took he took her kids in and raised them.
His mom committed suicide. I mean, so. I guess
I'm just piggybacking off of what you said, is
that he's using art as a way to cope with his
own trauma. It feels like that to me, at least.
And it makes life bearable to him. And it helps
make life bearable to me, too. Yeah, absolutely.
And, you know, sort of a Catholic version of
Vonnegut is, I think he's very much influenced
by Vonnegut, is Walker Percy. Also had a kind
of scientific bent the way that and also has
this like he likes to write satire. So one of
my favorite books by him is a very Vonnegut -esque
book called Love in the Ruins. And it's a it's
a sort of a science fiction imagining like what
the end of the world is going to look like. And
it's funny. It's crazy. It's out, you know, and
it's it's witty. It's satiric. But at the end
of it, I mean, and I guess. this is one of the
things that distinguishes Percy from Vonnegut,
is like there really is this desire for God.
You know, there's this Christian vision, this
Catholic vision that Percy is trying to get at
the center of. No matter how broken and how flawed
all of these people are, the only thing that
makes sense is the Eucharist. The only thing.
makes sense is God, because we are so messed
up that obviously we cannot handle it. So there's
this, again, this sense of redemption that comes
in despite all of the madness. There's a reason
for suffering. It's not just a mad, mad world.
It is a mad, mad world, but there's also a kind
of sanity that you can find in it. Yeah, you
said something earlier that I'd never thought
about before. I grew up Catholic, and I don't
think I've ever really thought about how the
art and the reverence of the Mass, and then,
like you said, the crucifix there, front and
center. I mean, I don't think I've ever thought
about how this real confrontation with mortality
at a young age has shaped my life as an artist.
That is very interesting. I mean, I remember,
I remember, I guess I was born to love theology
or something because I remember in kindergarten,
my parents were watching Touched by an Angel.
You remember that show? Yes, I do. I do. Yeah.
And I was just like, I think seeing that and
then the experiences at mass and then learning
at Catholic grade school, like I was just haunted
by the afterlife and angels and demons and, you
know, all these supernatural forces. And eventually
I remember my parents just being like. I think
you need to talk to your teacher about this like
he's not letting this go like you need to talk
to your teacher but I remember that I remember
that like it was yesterday like it was a very
um It feels so real and vivid to me still that
already at a young age, you're confronting these
really dark elements about what it means to be
alive. I mean, do you think that's a good thing?
Do you think that's a necessary or important
thing? Or what would you say to someone who critiques
that and says, I don't know if kids should be
exposed to that at that age? It's a lot. And
I think that there are a couple of different
ways to answer that question. It is too much
in many ways. I had a similar experience two
years. You know, I was I think for very sensitive
children and children who have a lot of imagination,
it can be burden. It's like, oh, my gosh. And
then on top of that, my dad died when I was only
eight. And and so I was in my era like we were
taught hell. I mean, hell was a real thing, you
know, and not that it's not a real thing, but
it's not so much taught to young children anymore
as it used to be. And so I was just haunted by
this idea. My dad also part of this Italian American
community that we're in, like men didn't go to
church. Religion was like women's work. And so
I was taught in CCD classes that if you don't
go to church, that's a mortal sin. And if you
don't. Yeah, I remember that, too. You're done.
And so I was like searching and searching for
some. sort of way to get my father out of hell,
but I didn't think I could. And that was my hope
that he was in purgatory. So I would say all
of these prayers that would try to lessen his
time in purgatory. And that was a lot for an
eight -year -old. And my mom was so tied up in
her own grief, and I have four brothers and sisters,
that I wasn't able to tell anybody about this.
I really just suffered with it. So am I thinking
that that's a good thing? Not necessarily, but
I don't also know that it's a bad thing. Yeah.
I feel as though, I mean, all of us walk our
journeys. And I feel as though I was imprinted
at eight years old. I feel like I grew up when
I was eight. I feel like that was kind of the
end of my childhood. I probably would not have
become a writer. I think writing was one of the
refuges that I took as a way of trying to deal
with this complexity. And then, of course, as
I got older, I found ways to deal with and think
my way through some of these things that were
hard to deal with. So, yeah, it's not an easy
childhood, I would say, necessarily. Childhood,
in most times and places, has never been easy.
As Americans, we have this desire to protect
our children and to keep them from being too
bothered by anything. But I teach a lot of young
people, like between the ages of 18 to 22. They're
troubled. A lot of them are very troubled. And,
you know, I don't know that. And again, this
is across the board. This is people who have
been raised with faith and those who have not.
I just think it's part of the human condition
that we eventually have to deal with, you know,
with what it is to be a human being. And one
of the things that Catholicism gives us is, first
of all, hope. Like, so when your father dies,
at least, you know. There's eternal life. You're
going to see him again, you know, if you can
find your way to thinking that he's in heaven
or purgatory rather than in hell. And this is
not all there is. And there's more to this world
than is dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio,
you know. And so that kind of humility before
the largeness of the universe, I think. helps
you to deal with mystery, helps you to deal with
all of the mystery you're going to be encountering
for the rest of your life. Yeah, so I, you know,
when my own children were, you know, born, of
course, baptized them, you know, they went to
Catholic school. And, you know, I wanted them
to have that same sense of the world meaning
something that I was able to grow up with. And
I believe myself, you know, and that's the best
gift that you can have, do as a parent, is to
pass on the faith, whatever your faith might
happen to be, to your children. And of course,
it's up to them to believe, to follow and not
to follow. You have no control over that as a
parent. But it's, you know, it's a framework.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And then like on the
flip side, when I think about it, I mean, it
was the art that I mentioned and the reverence,
like I said, as well. And even like the visceral
like smells of like the incense and then the
cadence of like Holy Week and Stations of the
Cross every Friday. I mean, the rhythm of that
in this. in this continual confrontation with
mystery like you said i mean you learn the word
transubstantiation when you're like a second
grader like i think i learned it when i was in
second grade and that's mystery you know it made
no sense to my mind then um but it's mystery
like you're it's a invitation into um a magical
world in a sense magic in the best term um and
So I'm like the worst Catholic ever. Like a year
after I was confirmed, I got baptized Protestant
and kind of went the evangelical route and really
had a good experience. I'm thankful for that
part of my spiritual journey. But now kind of
full circle, I mean, as I reflect on that, and
I learned a lot about Catholicism. in my breaking
down of some Protestant theology that wasn't
very helpful for me. But the thing that I missed
in this kind of evangelical phase of my life,
one of the things I missed was the art. And the
evangelicals, they do some really incredible
art too, like with music and their real emotive
kind of preaching. There are some positive aspects
of that too, but it was so... incredibly refreshing
to step into mass again and the reverence the
art the um yeah you're you've got my mind spinning
right now because there is so much there to experience
that as a child um yeah it has to do something
subconsciously to your imagination i would think
yeah absolutely um there's a Speaking of the
Catholic imagination and like people who theorize
about it, there's a theologian whose name is
David Tracy. And he talks about these kind of
two poles of ways of being in the world. There's
the analogical imagination and then there's the
dialectical imagination. And the analogical imagination
is the Catholic imagination or the sacramental
imagination. And that's the imagination that
sees meaning in everything, that sees God in
hearing in the world, all around us, any other,
the imago dei. And there's this trust. in the
imagination, right? There's this trust that God
is there. As the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins
writes, the world is charged with the grandeur
of God. It will come out like shining from shook
foil. It gathers to a greatness like the ooze
of oil crushed. So there's this absolute conviction,
God in all things. And then there's the dialectical
side, which is associated with Protestantism,
which is a distrust. imagination, and also a
distrust of things, a distrust of statues and
like, do you worship Mary? Of scapulars and rosaries
and all of these things. And so it's... a kind
of foreign way to thinking, I think, to a Catholic
to think that way, but also, I think, to a Protestant,
a Catholic way of thinking is definitely. In
fact, I'd love to read you a little paragraph
from this book that I teach all the time by Andrew
Greeley. Yeah, please. That'd be great. Yeah.
Sorry, say the book again. It's called The Catholic
Imagination, and it's by Andrew Greeley, who
was a lovely man. He was a priest, a sociologist
at the University of Chicago for many years,
and also a novelist. But this book is a, you
know, it's a lovely exploration of the ways of
the enchanted imagination, the ways in which
Catholics see the world. But I really just love
the opening paragraph where he says, Catholics
live in an enchanted world, a world of statues
and holy water, stained glass and votive candles,
saints and religious medals, rosary beads and
holy pictures. But these Catholic paraphernalia
are mere hints of a deeper and more pervasive
religious sensibility, which inclines Catholics
to see the holy lurking in creation. As Catholics,
we find our houses and our world haunted by a
sense that the objects, events, and persons of
daily life are revelations of grace. And I just
think this is such a synced and beautiful description
of the analogical imagination, the sacramental
imagination, the Catholic imagination. Yeah,
it's so true. I mean, even in my evangelical
days, I don't want to paint that experience like
it was bad, you know, because it really brought
me it brought me to Merton, it brought me to
Henry now, and it brought me to the mystics,
you know, because I had to break some stuff down.
But even in my evangelical days, I mean, we were
even we're even taught to like distrust your
own emotions. You know, like there was this really
big disconnect between anything that's embodied,
anything sacramental around you in this object
being God who can really only be accessed through
church or scripture, you know? So yeah, but I
didn't realize that growing up Catholic that.
it is a sacramental reality that you're walking
into. All the statues, all the prayers, all the
holidays, all the, like I mentioned, the rhythm
cadence of Holy Week. I mean, it's a really beautiful
thing to think about your material reality being
so enchanted. And that has to be positive for
a child's psychology, I would think. Yeah, I
think so, too. Just this kind of sense in which
everything means something, you know, everything
is full of possibility. And even time, time is
enchanted, you know, liturgical time is holy
and blessed. There's nothing that isn't holy.
And so that wholeness of life, that fullness
of life, I think it's just a very rich, rich
life. And I don't think Catholics are the only
ones that have it. I think, for example, that
very... observant jews also have this because
of that sense of you know you have this shabbat
every every friday you know you set aside everything
and then you just do this ritual meal with your
family and you do no work you just devote yourself
to god you know for the next 24 hours and um
and of course all of the holy high holy days
throughout the jewish liturgical year very very
beautiful um and again that fullness of life
the wholeness of life in which all of this means
something, I think is very different from certainly
the saintless calendar of days that secular people
live, and entirely secular people live, and also
a lot of Protestantism. I too had a period where
I went over to the other side out of curiosity,
I think. And the thing that I really appreciated
from that is, you know, as Catholics, we're just
terrible with the Bible. Yeah. We hear the same
stories week after week. We don't read the Bible.
And I just, like, I loved the fact that Protestants
read the Bible. So I learned all books of the
Bible, and I read freely in it. And it was like,
this is, whereas to contrast this, I remember
being with my mom once. We were at her hairdresser's
house. And I picked up a Bible, and I said, what
is this mom and she said oh that's a protestant
bible put that down i was like don't touch that
don't touch that something bad might happen um
because the catholic attitude was like you don't
read that by yourself you just to what they read
in church, but you don't read the Bible. So that
was a real breakout for me to be able to like
read scripture and, you know, appreciate the
Bible in a way that I don't think I would have
if I just continued to, you know, be in the Catholic
church. And then of course, when I did go back,
I brought with me this wonderful revelation,
you know, that there's a big Bible out there
that a lot of us don't know anything about. Yeah,
no, that's a, I mean, that's a great point. I
mean, and then. One thing I'm really grateful
for from my kind of evangelical wanderings, as
well as the personal nature of prayer, you know,
which someone like Francis of Assisi really intuited.
But, I mean, I don't think I realized growing
up Catholic that I could pick up the Bible and
read it, or that I could just pray and tell God
what's on my heart or mind. you know, and talk
to God like God's a friend. And so, I mean, it's
very interesting because those are on ramps to
a sacramental reality too. They probably wouldn't
use that language, but it is. It's like God's
right here. God's here in the present moment,
and you can talk to God anytime you want, and
you can open and read sacred scripture anytime
you want. It's a dark side to it as well, because
I think the Bible itself becomes its own God
in theology and dogma and certainty, the drug
of certainty when people are interpreting. I
mean, I thought that I had all the answers when
I was going deep into it. But I had this renewed
love for Scripture, and it came alive in the
Mass when I returned. because of my knowledge
for the Bible that I learned in my evangelical
kind of journey. Very interesting. Yeah, yeah,
absolutely. One of the things that Flannery O
'Connor writes about in one of her essays, she
writes wonderful essays about her work as well
as the work itself. She grew up and lived most
of her life in the Protestant South. In Georgia,
where she lived, there were very few Catholics.
So she and her family were the exception to the
rule. But she loved living among evangelical
Protestants because they knew their Bible. And
then, of course, she knew the Bible. And so many
of her stories engage in very interesting ways,
Scripture, in a way that a lot of Catholic writers
don't, because her formation was both as a Catholic,
but also as a Southern Catholic in the evangelical
world. So she says, like, I have this whole vocabulary
and this whole set of stories that I can draw
on that, you know, most Catholic writers don't
have. Yeah, so I think that that's very interesting.
You know, in general, we don't do a great job
with education. So, like, growing up, like, I
didn't know anything about the way that St. Francis
prayed or the way that St. Ignatius prayed. I
had to wait to become an adult and an academic,
you know, to learn about these things. And I
think that's one of the things in the church
that we need to figure out how to do better.
You know, like we just have this amazing, rich
tradition. We have this Catholic intellectual
tradition. We have this Catholic artistic tradition,
aesthetic tradition. And it's so rich. But most
Catholics, many Catholics don't know anything
about it, which is one of the reasons that we
have. Like I teach at a Catholic university,
but we have a Catholic studies minor because.
You know, a lot of our Catholic students, they
come into our classes and it's like, wow, I never
knew any of this stuff. Only place that they
can find it, you know. So, yeah, so it would
be lovely to find a way to make more of this
available to Catholics because it's such a gift,
you know. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Going back to
the Catholic imagination here. You mentioned
your childhood, how you really felt like you
had to grow up at eight years old after the passing
of your father. And I was just curious, I mean,
how does the Catholic imagination show up in
your work? Or this, I mean, words are going to
fall short here of the trauma you and your siblings
experienced in your youth. this very, at a very
formative time going through something so dark.
I mean, I cannot begin to fathom. I mean, how
do all these paradoxes and mystery and darkness
and light, I mean, the Catholic imagination,
how does it show up in your work as a poet? Yeah,
that's a great question. It's actually one of
the reasons I got interested in this subject
of the Catholic imagination and the idea of like
reading Catholic writers is when I started to
examine my own work and think like, am i catholic
writer i mean i i just thought of myself as a
writer um but then it was like you know i'm reading
all these other catholic writers and i'm seeing
elements of their catholicism like it must be
in my work too somehow so so it was a you know
it was motivated in part by you know just self
-discovery you know what am i doing unconsciously
that makes my work catholic um and and one of
the things i think that's really important about
that early that that early um imprinting is,
you know, learning to deal with darkness, learning
to deal with sorrow and loss and death and figure
out where to put that is been like my first couple
of books. That's what those there are narratives,
their family narratives, their narratives about
growing up in the place that I grew up, northeastern
Pennsylvania, which at that time was coal mining
country. And it was it was very poor, very hardscrabble
place. There were accidents, mining accidents
all the time. My grandfather. from Sicily was
dead at the age of 33 from black lung and influenza.
You know, I mean, where we lived in Wyoming Valley,
I mean, it's kind of macabre. There were many
people, so many minors that had black lung that
when you went into a person's house, there would
be your uncle or your grandfather or your father
sitting in the corner on oxygen. And he kind
of moved in the living room with his oxygen because
he couldn't go up the stairs anymore. And we
didn't think anything of that. It's like, oh,
yeah, there's your uncle. Hi, how are you doing?
Because like we thought everybody lived that
way, but they didn't realize how dysfunctional
it was. So it was very interesting to me as I
got to be an adult and I got out of that world
and I realized, oh, that was that was exceptional.
That was an exceptional place with a lot of suffering.
Everybody was Catholic where I grew up because
you were either our diversity was you were Italian,
you were Irish or you were Polish, because those
are all the people who came to work in the mines.
did share, even though we had these different
cultures, different languages, is the fact that
we were all Catholic and we had this, even though
our churches were as different as could be also
the art in the churches. But it was still this
kind of, that was the backbone of our world.
And suffering was just a part of everybody's
vocabulary, a part of everybody's life. This
kind of brokenness that you had to learn to deal
with. And so I think poetry gave me one way to
deal with that brokenness. Like, I'm going to
tell these stories. I'm going to, and in some
sense, it's like, you know, you're a reporter.
Like, I'm going to tell about it. But you're
also a myth maker in many ways because you're
trying to. see meaning in what it is that has
happened to you and has happened to the people
that you love and has happened to this place.
So a lot of my early poems sort of will put...
coal mining region into the context of other
places like, you know, ancient Greece or, you
know, other places and other times where there
have been other families that disaster has befallen.
So it's, you know, it is a way for us, you know,
those people who like to write and like to recreate
art to see our own personal suffering as part
of this larger universe of suffering and of what
it is to be a human. So I think in the early
poems, that's the ways in which my Catholic imagination
manifests itself. And also it's just... I remember
saying to somebody after my first book came out,
so like, do you think this feels like a Catholic
book? And it's like, oh, yes. So much imagery,
you know, the statues, the crucifixes everywhere,
even the language, you know. And again, I didn't
deliberately say, well, I'm going to insert my
Catholic imagination here. It was just, that's
the milieu I grew up in, and it's going to come
out in the work. Yeah, so, but it keeps on changing.
Every book is different over the last however
many years I've been writing. And it comes out
in other ways in other books. So, for example,
I went into the Holy Land a few years ago in
2019, right before COVID. And that was fascinating
because I got to go to all of these places that
were so storied in my imagination. I had heard
about the Sea of Galilee. I had heard about the
Dead Sea. I had heard about Bethlehem. And here
I was, here I was, like standing on the ground,
you know, the very ground where Jesus walked.
And it was so powerful because I began to feel
like, I was seeing him in the landscape. And
so I wrote a series of poems that are called
Christ Sightings, which are like places where
I felt the presence, the presence, the ongoing
presence of Christ there and was like reimagining
classic stories and seeing them from different
perspectives. So that's, again, a way in which
my Catholic imagination was, you know. operating
without my wanting it to this is just what it
did and so i i just felt like i was the scribe
you know i was writing down some cases i didn't
pencil with me i'm like typing myself email poems
so that um yeah and so that was another that's
another manifestation of of you know the way
the catholic imagination emerged has emerged
in my work absolutely yeah how has How has poetry
helped you to find healing in your own life or
to navigate the darkness of life? How has poetry
been a guide for you in that regard? Well, you
know, I think one of the things, one of the reasons
people, poets like to write, and I think everybody
should write poetry, by the way. I give my students
the choice at the end of the semester to write
a research paper or to write a series of 14 sonnets.
They've never written sonnets before. And a lot
of them take up the offer because they think,
well, that's a lot easier than writing a paper,
right? That's only 196 lines of poetry instead
of a 14 -page paper, right? And of course, they
very quickly... find out that it's not easier,
it's harder. But they also fall in love with
the process of writing. Because, you know, especially
writing in form, there's a lot of stuff in the
universe that we can't control. But I can control
what's going on in these 14 lines. I can control
the times. I can control the cadence. I can control
the story that I'm telling. And that is very
empowering. And it's also very healing. Because,
you know, obviously expression is a form of being
able to... People who do therapy know this. It's
a way of trying to heal from whatever suffering
and sorrow you might be having. I learned this
when my mother was dying, for example. There's
a book that I wrote which is called Waking My
Mother. And this is actually a picture of her
on the cover when she was... And we had a very
complicated relationship. She was a very, very
complicated mother. But when she was dying down
in Florida, I was here in New York and I could
not be with her. There were a couple of big snowstorms.
I couldn't get a flight out and she was undergoing
surgery and I didn't know what to do. My sisters
were down there with her, my brothers, but I
was here. And so I sat down, I thought, I'm just,
I'm going to write a poem. I'm going to write
a poem about my mother. And, you know, and then
that. that would that wasn't enough i wrote one
poem so then i i wrote a second poem i actually
took the line of the last sonnet the last line
of the sonnet and i started the next line next
on it with that line and then i wrote and then
i took the last line of that one and i wrote
another one and before i knew it i had a 15 sonnet
Crown, it's called The Crown, The Crown of Sonnets.
And I had no idea what I was going to say in
that. The story just sort of poured out of me
and gave me an opportunity to think about things
I had not thought about for a long time. And
it was pulled out of me by the form, by writing
these lines one after another, by finding the
right rhymes, by finding the right cadences.
and you know a sonnet i love sonnets uh the sonetti
means a little song uh and and these are actually
little pieces of music um they're meant to be
performed they're meant to be read out loud not
to be read silently um and so there's that relief
that we get from music when we write poetry as
well uh that i think is is again very healing
and um and very sacramental as saint augustine
says you know uh sing once pray twice uh there's
there's the quality of prayer that goes into
the um devotion that we show when we're working
hard on on making our art yeah yeah and i love
that um I mean, this is certainly true in memoir
and any storytelling as well, but particularly
with poetry, I love that as you're writing it,
you usually don't know where it's going. So there's
this element of surprise that is... you're you're
uncovering you're uncovering something potentially
that you had you had no idea was even there and
to me there's so much healing in that too you
know like you're you're you're certainly not
controlling the river you're not pushing the
river as you know Richard Rohr says like you
you're you're entering into the flow of it and
you're seeing where it takes you I mean that
certainly comes out in poetry I mean do you have
any thoughts on that I mean it It just always
seems to surprise me what comes up in the creative
process. My passion's memoir, and it's similar
there, too. It's like, gosh, I had no idea that
was there, but it's there, and I'm reading it.
Yeah, no, it's true. It's a process of discovery.
And it's an act of faith, really. You turn yourself
over to the process. And Czeslaw Milosz has a
wonderful poem, the great Nobel Prize winning
Polish Catholic poet called Ars Poetica, in which
he says, you know, sometimes when he says it
much better than this, but I'm paraphrasing.
Sometimes when you write, a tiger has sprung
out of you and it stands there in the light lashing
its tail. Where did that come from? So writing
poetry can be a terrifying experience because
you say things sometimes that you didn't know
that you thought, and you might not even want
other people to read it. But you have to have
faith in the process. As Pope Francis says in
his letter that he read to us, you have to have
faith in the imagination. He uses the word the
superabundance and overflowing, and you have
to be able to pursue that superabundance because
if you hold back you're you're you're missing
it you're missing the fire you're missing the
divine that is because the divine is super abundant
and the imagination is a channeling of the divine
um so i love milo's statement on this i also
love frost who's no catholic but he was a great
poet um who said you know no surprise in the
reader i'm sorry no surprise in the writer no
surprise in the reader no tears No tears in the
reader. So unless you're surprised, you cannot
expect your reader to be surprised by what comes
out. So again, you have to be just faithful to
this impulse that you have, this imaginative
impulse when you write. Yeah, yeah, I love it.
So you recently wrote a poetry book based on
Dante's Divine Comedy. Got it right here. Paraclete
Press. Where does this book fit into this conversation
about the Catholic imagination? Yeah, well, of
course, Dante is the great Catholic poet. And,
you know, most of us who are in the college or
studied literature, we've read Dante at various
times throughout our career. And I think most
people think, OK, he lived 700 years ago. Catholicism
was very different then. He has a medieval mind.
You know, he's just he's like another kind of
creature. Plus, he writes in Italian. Most of
us don't read Italian. So there are a lot of
barriers that might separate us from Dante. He's
like a star up in the heavens, like Shakespeare.
But I was rereading Dante for a couple of reasons.
For one thing, I run a Dante reading group on
campus at Fordham. So we've been slowly reading
Dante one canto at a time for 10 years. Oh, cool.
We just got finished with, we're just in the
third canto of Purgatorio. So this is how slow,
how slowly we're going. So I've been just rereading
Dante slowly with other professors and students.
And then it was Dante's, it was the 700th anniversary
of Dante's death a couple of years ago and the
anniversary of the Commedia. So I thought, you
know, I'm going to spend the summer just like
rereading the, you know, the Divine Comedy, one
canto a day, 100 cantos, 100 days in summer,
you know, it's going to work. And then I found
myself talking back to Dante. Time is my writing
time. And so if I started the day reading Dante,
then I'd start like a poem that would like jump
off of one of the events that happens in the
Inferno or in the Purgatorio or in the party.
I didn't intend to write a book. I really just
intended to, okay, I'm just going to engage Dante
in conversation and see in what ways we're alike
and in which ways we're different. And then,
again, before I knew it, I had this collection
of poems. And then I kind of deliberately shaped
it. There are 13 poems devoted to Inferno, 13
to Purgatorio, 13 to Paradiso, and then a couple
of poems at the beginning and the end. And, you
know, some of the poems are, you know, homage
to Dante. Some of them are asking Dante questions,
differing with Dante. And so it was a really
fun way to engage this and feel like I was establishing
some sort of friendship with Dante. Sure. I mean,
I hope one day when I meet him in eternity, he's
going to like think that this was okay. He'll
be like, before we meet, you have to go through
the three levels. Yeah. Yeah. So it was a labor
of love, and I really enjoyed doing it. It gave
me also a chance to do some interesting formal
things. Dante wrote in a number of forms, but
his favorite forms were the sonnet and then terza
rima, which he invented actually for the commedia.
So I thought, well, this is fun. I get to try
to write in terza rima, and I put my own stamp
on it. Dante's verse, it's different in each
of the cantos, but it tends to be more elegant.
elevated and refined, especially in Purgatorio
and in Paradiso. And there's a sort of, you know,
mellifluous quality to his Italian, certainly,
and also to the English translations. And I was
trying to write in language that was going to
feel very contemporary and maybe a little bit,
how shall I say, a little bit off the cuff, a
little bit, words are escaping me. you know a
little bit bratty at times a little bit brat
um in in terms of you know critiquing some of
the theology that that dante offers us because
obviously yeah we've changed a lot in 700 years
sure yeah a little bit but what did you what
did you learn about yourself as you wrote this
book or creatively as an artist? What opened
up for you as you wrote Dear Dante? Well, I learned
a lot about Dante. And one of the things I really
love about Dante is even though he's creating
this theological universe, which is all about
justice, it's also about mercy and it's also
about love. And so often in... in all three of
the levels, you know, Inferno, Purgatorio, and
Paradiso, Dante is like weeping. He weeps with
compassion for the sinners that he finds. So
I think Dante has a reputation for being like
very harsh because he puts all of these people
in hell. But the fact is he... First of all,
he believes that's his world. You have to grant
an artist his worldview. But his response to
Paolo and Francesca is to weep. He weeps at the
suicides. At times he can't even speak. He asks
Virgil, would you please speak for me? I can't
speak. Virgil is, of course, his guide through
Inferno and Purgatorio. So I just love the fact
that Dante was able to separate himself. You
know, Dante the pilgrim is different from Dante
the poet. And that to me is like just masterful
in terms of his ability to tell the story in
that way. And then, of course, the language is
just spectacular, you know. He's so inventive
and he's so alive. His language is so alive.
Any poet would kill to write like Dante. So to
just have the opportunity to spend time in the
presence of this master, it was just a joy. And
even though... And I felt a little embarrassed
putting my little poems next to Dante's great
big poem. But I thought I would ask for forgiveness
after I did that. But in the meantime, just go
ahead with the gesture. And, you know, mostly,
though, I enjoyed the process, you know, of being
able to engage in conversation with Dante, just
like I enjoy the process of being able to engage
in conversation with Pope Francis. You know,
like we meet greatness on the page or we meet
greatness in real life. And, you know, it's hopefully
some of Dante's. excellence has rubbed off on
me. I don't know. Yeah, yeah. So I'm a storyteller.
So like, I'm always making connections. So if
there's nothing here, you can just be like, shut
up next question. But I mean, I found it interesting.
I mean, you And thank you, by the way, for talking
about your childhood and opening up in our conversation.
We were talking about our Catholic backgrounds
and how you were really kind of tortured. Maybe
that's too strong of a word, but at least haunted
by this aspect of the afterlife. And then it's
interesting to me, you know, in Dear Dante, I
mean, Dante's Inferno, this is all about this.
journey, this traversing through the layers of
the afterlife. Is there any connection or healing
there? Or what are your thoughts? What rises
up within you as I ask that question? Yeah, that's
actually a wonderful question. To what extent
is this a personal sort of? Yeah, I think a couple
of the revelations for me was, I'd read Dante
previously, but this was a different kind of
way of reading him, kind of reading him like
I felt like I was a co -creator. I was looking
at Inferno as a person who was really trying
to figure out what it meant for me. And most
of the sinners in hell... You know, it's not
that they were sinners. It's just that they love
their sin and they don't want to give it up.
They really, they want to be there. And that
comes as a comfort, I think, to all of us because
we're all sinners. But recognizing it is the
first step towards being able to be redeemed,
right? And then purgatory is so much gentler
than any purgatory I had ever imagined as a child.
It's arduous. The souls have to work in order
and, you know, but they they have hope. And that's
what's so important. And the difference between
Inferno, you know, abandoned hope, all ye who
enter here is written over the over the gates
of Inferno. And like, well, what's worse than
living without hope? Like, that's just. eternity
of suffering, as opposed to the Purgatorio, which
is like, oh no, this is the land of hope. This
is a kinder, gentler sea that Dante finds his
boat heading towards. So then we see Dante, you
know, make this journey and you feel like, okay,
even if, who knows, if Purgatory is a reality.
It's going to be very different than any of us
imagines it's going to be. Right. And then, of
course, the Paradiso, which is this magnificent,
like almost like I use the expression, it's like
Lucy in the sky with diamonds. It's like this.
Yes. I love that in the introduction. Yeah, that's
a great description. It's crazy, you know, that
stuff that Dante is able to come up with, you
know, in terms of describing it. And my favorite
part of the Paradiso is there's a moment where
Beatrice takes Dante up into the Imperium and
he's able to look down at all the spheres and
he sees the whole complexity of the universe.
And well, actually, maybe I'll read that poem.
Would that be OK? That'd be great. Yeah. Yeah.
I was going to ask you to read a couple. So,
yeah. Yeah. It's a wonderful moment where, you
know, he really gets a vision of everything.
And then he sees Earth. And Earth is this tiny,
tiny little speck. And he talks about the fact
that, you know, there's the threshing floor in
which we are all so savage to each other. And
so it's just this moment of, you know, recognition
of this other way of looking at ourselves. Well,
you know, of course, we think we're at the center
of the universe and we think that all of our
loves and our hatreds and our politics and like,
oh, everything's just the worst. And Dante's
kind of like, do you realize how infinitesimal
you are? So this poem is called Dante's Smile.
And each of the poems begins with a, an epigraph
from whatever book of the, whatever book of the
Comedian. This comes from Paradiso 22. And Dante
says, my eyes returned through all the seven
spheres and saw this globe in such a way that
I smiled at its scrawny image. The little threshing
floor that so incites our savagery was all from
hills to riverbanks revealed to me. And this
is called Dante's Smile, and this is written
in Tercerima. The astronauts who saw the Earth
wept. Hanging in the black of space, it shone
like the prize they thought it was. A secret
kept from ordinary men. They saw our home in
all of its blue beauty and its charm. Truth they
guessed, but hadn't fully known. But Dante saw
it clearer. saw the harm we do ourselves and
to the ones we love, he was surprised, utterly
disarmed, to see from such a distance, so far
above, the pettiness and the violence of our
days, viciousness by even him undreamt of. And
from his perch in heaven, in his days, he smiled,
as the creator must smile too, to see our vanity,
the brazen ways we do the things we're not supposed
to do, and still think mercy's what we ought
to get. Though surely Dante's smile is full of
rue, a man who knows remorse and regret for his
own sins, perhaps that's why he turns his gaze
to Beatrice, though it's unmet, thus to let her
know what he has learned, that folly is the rule
among our kind, the gift of grace undeserved
and unearned, the only source of joy we'll ever
find. yeah so in that moment he looks to Beatrice
because of course she's his guide and his beloved
when he's in Paradiso and she's already looking
off somewhere else and this is another thing
I love about the the story Dante has this great
affection for Virgil, the poet, who is his leader
and guide. And, you know, he's his master. He
depends on him. And then Virgil disappears at
the end of Purgatorio because he can't go to
heaven because Virgil is a pagan. And Dante is
just like bereft. You know, he's weeping. He
can't lose Virgil. And Beatrice is there, his
beloved that he's been searching for all of his
life. And she's there like, Dante, quit it. There's
things to cry about. Like, I'm here. I'm here,
Dante, to help you. So again, these very human
moments. And then Dante has to get washed in
the river of forgetfulness. And that's what the
cover is. This is actually a sculpture done by
the wonderful poet, wonderful sculptor, Tim Smaltz,
Pope Francis's favorite sculptor. He made a hundred
sculptures of each of the cantos of the Divine
Comedy. So this is the one where... Wow. Yeah,
and they're amazing. They're all in clay. And
this is one where Mathilde, who's one of Beatrice's
companions, is bathing Dante in the River Lethe,
the River of Forgetfulness. It's a sort of a
baptism that's going to wash away all of his
sins. And so at that point, when Beatrice is
saying, stop crying, I'm here, that's when Beatrice
takes over and then takes him up to heaven and
to tour the Paradiso. But Dante's always like
two steps, three steps, four steps behind Beatrice.
not really able to figure out what it is she's
showing him and um so there's something just
so poignant about him like trying to understand
this great great mystery this vision that he
has been given but feeling like i don't have
the language for this i don't have a way to express
it um and and so he's like so humble in front
of this vision that he gets yeah yeah well mortality
has certainly been a theme in this conversation.
Um, and I mean, we began by talking about Pope
Francis passing away. And then, um, we, we shared
a little bit about our childhood spiritual journeys
and then your, your book, dear Dante, um, as
well, which is all about the afterlife. And I
stumbled upon one of your poems, Merton surprise.
And, um, I mean, gosh, any listeners to this
podcast, if they made a drinking game of every
time I quoted Merton, I mean, they would, they
would, they would spend every single episode
buzzed. But you have, you have a wonderful, you
have a wonderful line in that you write, you
saw in Merton, of course, a little background.
He died very suddenly at what age of 52. Yeah.
53 in bangkok thailand he was electrocuted and
and then some some may argue it's conspiratorial
but Some even say that his political activism
got him assassinated or executed. So the point
is that he died very young. And I mean, to think
that we could have 30, 40 more years of writings
from Merton with the spiritual direction he was
going into Eastern religions, it's incredible.
But so this is the line that comes in your poem,
Merton's Surprise. You saw what you were tumbling
toward and smiled. as you're describing his death.
And I just thought that that was a really beautiful
and hopeful summary of the afterlife. So yeah,
I would like for you to close with one poem from
Dear Dante, another one, if you don't mind. But
do you have anything to add there about mortality,
afterlife, or any other theme from this conversation?
Yeah, I mean, the reason I wrote the poem, by
the way, and mentioned the tumbling is I remember
one of Merton's brother monks seeing an interview
with him. And, you know, monks are wonderful.
They're just so serene. And the interviewer said,
well, you know, were you sad? Were you surprised
when you found out about Merton's death? And
they said, no, actually, Tom was really clumsy.
He was always falling. It amazed us that he made
it as far as he did. And so there was just something.
And he laughed. There was something so humanizing
about that. When I heard that line, I mean, I.
I heard it on my run earlier today and I thought
of Pope Francis. I thought of my mom who passed
away real suddenly four years ago. And yeah,
I mean, you saw what you were tumbling toward
and smiled. I mean, tumbling is such a beautiful
word because I mean, it kind of points toward
the clumsiness of Merton, like you said, but
then. In this theological exploration, in this
creative exploration with the Catholic imagination,
I mean, there's a tumbling aspect to it. I mean,
it's not linear, you know, it can feel kind of
chaotic or out of control as this river kind
of opens up to you. But would you mind reading
one more poem from Dear Dante and sending us
out? Well, the last poem actually is, it's called
The Price of Paradise. And this is, again, that
theme that Dante had where he felt as though
he has seen so much and there's no way he could
find the language to be able to say it, which
is kind of hilarious when you think about the
fact that we've just read a 14 ,000 word poem,
line poem. You seem to have found a lot of language,
but he still felt like there's really, I can't
tell you what it is that I've seen. This is just
the merest shadow of it. So that really struck
me. And so this is the last poem in the book
before the epilogues. And it's quotes from Paradiso
33, where he says, what little I recall is to
be told from this point on in words more weak
than those of one whose infant tongue still bathes
at the breast. And then there's another epigraph
from Matthew 18. Truly, I tell you, unless you
change and become like little children, you will
never enter the kingdom of heaven. Look at you
knowing your Bible. Thanks to the Francis. So
the price of paradise. The power of speech, the
price Dante paid for a brief fleeting vision
of God. Words, his instruments, tools of his
trade simply vanished. The stunned poet saw deep
mysteries his tongue could not tell. The fires
of purgation, the horrors of hell did not rob
him as high heaven did. Lost to himself, he became
otherwise, was rendered young and dumb again.
This is what happens in paradise. When the soul
encounters the Holy One, there is no longer need
for a poem. All you have written becomes mere
straw. and eternity looms of languageless awe.
Beautiful. Yeah. Well, thank you for coming on
the podcast, Dr. Angela. Thank you so much, Stephen.
This was a great pleasure. Once again, that was
Dr. Angela Alima O'Donnell. You can find all
her books on Amazon or visit Paraclete Press'
website to order her two most recent poetry books,
Dear Dante and Holy Land. You can follow her
on Twitter at the handle aodonnellangela or on
Instagram at angela .a .odonnell. I've linked
to her books, some of her recent magazine pieces,
as well as to her social media in the show notes
of this episode. So thanks for tuning in, and
thank you as always for your support. And lastly,
thank you to Father Cyprian Concilio for providing
the music for this episode. Peace and all good.
me and tenderly speak to your heart.