CATHOLIC POET IN OLD AGE

 

Summer is the time of reading, so there are always lists of books to read- even children have programs and contests to get them to read more books in their vacation time. I thought it would be a good time to highlight some future saints who were writers.

 The first is a poet, who is an inspiration to us all. that one is never too old to be creative, and never too old to be holy.

 ANNE CHANNING PORTER was born in Sherborn, near Boston in 1911 into a prominent, wealthy family. Her great-great uncle was the famous preacher and author William Ellery Channing (the foremost Unitarian preacher in the United States in the early nineteenth century).

 She made poems even before she could write, having an uncle write them down for her.

She was educated at Bryn Mawr and Harvard preceding her marriage to the painter Fairfield Porter in 1932.  In spite of a marriage that was at times difficult, she was a dutiful wife and mother of five, finding time to write poems on the side, some of which were published.

She decided to write more after her husband died in 1975. Yet her first book, An Altogether Different Language, came out when she was 83 years old. It was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1994. In 2006, she added 44 new poems to the book and renamed it “Living Things.”

The sense of her own spirituality was enhanced by the discovery of the writing of St. Francis of Assisi  from an early age.  She was also moved by the daily prayer of the family servants, many of whom were Irish. She was encouraged by Dorothy Day  to meet with Father Joseph McSorley, an old Paulist priest and in 1954 she came into the Catholic Church, much to the chagrin of her atheist family, though her husband supported her in this move. 

Her poems were largely spiritual in nature, almost meditations on Bible verses, hymns and prayers. It seemed her upbringing in Sherborn instilled in her an attentiveness to nature and to the beauty of the world around her. Her poems call upon the natural world to express a deep love and appreciation for life. Poet David Shapiro called her “an American religious poet of stature who reminds us that the idea of the holy is still possible for us.”

"Her poems are uncomplicated and accessible free verse, expressing exquisite  descriptions of natural and human life illuminated by the power and grace and the redeeming love of Jesus Christ." (John Janaro in Magnificat Magazine)

Continuing to write throughout her later years, Anne moved to Hampton Bays to live with her daughter. She died just before her 100th birthday in 2011. For Anne Porter, her poetry was her prayer.

My favorite is “The First of May”, where she integrates pain, suffering and the deteriorations of old age, although on first reading it seems to be about only new life..

 

Now the smallest creatures, who do not know they have names
In fields of pure sunshine open themselves and sing.
All over the marshes and in the wet meadows,
Wherever there is water, the companies of peepers
Who cannot count their members, gather with sweet shouting.
And the flowers of the woods who cannot see each other
Appear in perfect likeness of one another
Among the weak new shadows on the mossy places.
Now the smallest creatures, who know themselves by heart,
With all their tender might and roundness of delight
Spending their colors, their myriads and their voices
Praise the moist ground and every winking leaf
And the new sun that smells of the new streams.

.

Paintings: Anne often posed for her husband’s paintings, usually in the setting of their kitchen, living room or backyard.