Watch/listen to Kevin read “New Deacon”
New Deacon It is our son’s first trip down the chapel aisle steering a silver tray of broken bread. Repentant faces lift his way and smile: our flock, dear villagers who raised this child to bear their burdens, keep their spirits fed beginning with this trip down the chapel aisle. He follows solemnly the loping file of taller boys, and his too-inclined head makes us turn to each other, shrug, and smile. This earnestness, and shoes that for a while will still be much too big, seem to have led to his hopefully only trip down the chapel aisle: with scuff, then cry and clatter, clang and sprawl, the ordinance’s dignity has fled. Startled faces crane his way, then smile at us. We nod. What better place to fall than here, where all things rise? Hands rugburn-red, he picks tray, bread, and self up from the aisle, too sheepish and too shepherded not to smile.
See a sample of the book
Intro, TOC, and 10 of the 40+ poems
Notes on “New Deacon”
Backstory
I was happy when my kids got baptized, but Tyler being ordained a deacon was different. He was older and had a better idea of what he was doing - not just what was happening to him - and second, he would immediately begin to institute the privileges of his priesthood ordination in the service of his fellow beings. I felt such gratitude and joy seeing him pass the sacrament for the first time, and those strong emotions can sometimes make decent poems. But any attempt at expressing them straightforwardly would ironically obfuscate them with sentimentality, so I wrote a humorous poem with just a couple hints of my appreciation for the ward family, the priesthood, redemption—emphasizing these exalted concepts through contrast with the tumble the poor deacon takes. I obviously had fun with the “trip” pun.
Form & Techniques
This poem is a loose narrative villanelle - a tricky but rewarding form to work in. In a strict villanelle, the first and third lines of the first stanza are meant to be repeated in their entirety throughout the poem - Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” is probably the most famous example - but mine is more similar to Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art.”
Explanations
Line 17: “where all things rise” - there’s a short story by the Catholic author Flannery O’ Connor titled “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” a haunting phrase which she in turn borrowed from the French theologian Pierre Tielhard de Chardin. In my poem, its key words refer to both my son picking himself up off the ground, and of course repentance and salvation as metaphorically uplifting experiences.
Here’s one of my favorite pics of Tyler being raised by the ward family. I was in Scouts for years, and our ward was one of those in Utah County that put flags on people’s lawns for patriotic holidays. Tyler’s the little kid with the hammer, and Kyle is the young man holding the stake, trusting him with his hands.
Buy the Book
Available from Greg Kofford Books on their website and Amazon. $9.95
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