That Word

By Jamie Parsley

“Jamie Parsley’s new poems tread the path of grief within the liturgical map of holy days, feasts, and spiritual acts. These poems offer a voice ‘forever altered’ by loss, a keening we sense in each moment depicted until we understand ‘We are what we hold / and let go.’ Through a careful, even subdued study of a year beyond the death of a loved one, we begin to understand ‘perfect mourning’ that is both curse and grace as Parsley’s fine poem ‘These Men’ shows us.” ~Heid Erdrich, author of Cell Traffic: New and Selected Poems

• Language: English
• Publisher: North Star Press of St. Cloud
• Release date: Mar 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9780878399857

Jamie Parsley

JAMIE PARSLEY is a poet and an Episcopal priest. He is the author of eleven books of poems, Paper Doves, Falling and Other Poems (1992), The Loneliness of Blizzards (1995), Cloud: a poem in 2 acts (1997), The Wounded Table (1999), earth into earth, water into water (2000), no stars, no moon (2004), Ikon (2005), Just Once (2007), This Grass (2009) Fargo, 1957 (2010) and Crow (2012). He received his MFA from Vermont College and a Master’s Degree from Nashotah House Seminary. He serves as Priest in Charge of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Fargo. In 2004, he was designated Associate Poet Laureate of North Dakota. His website is www.jamieparsley.com.

Book preview

Also by Jamie Parsley

Paper Doves, Falling and Other Poems (1992)

The Loneliness of Blizzards (1995)

Cloud: a poem in 2 acts (1997)

The Wounded Table (1999)

earth into earth, water into water (2000)

no stars, no moon (2004)

Ikon (2005)

Just Once (2007)

This Grass (with paintings by Gin Templeton) (2009)

Fargo, 1957: an elegy (2010)

Crow (2012)

That Word

poems by

JAMIE PARSLEY

North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc.

St. Cloud, Minnesota

Copyright © 2014 Jamie Parsley

All rights reserved.

Print ISBN 978-0-87839-755-6

eBook ISBN: 978-0-87839-985-7

Published by

North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc.

P.O. Box 451

St. Cloud, Minnesota 56302

northstarpress.com

Acknowledgments

Special gratitude to my mother, Joyce Parsley; to the congre­gation of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Fargo, North Dakota; and, as always, to Greg Bachmeier.

I am grateful to the many people who have listened to these poems and given their feedback on them.

I am also grateful to the editors of the following publica­tions in which several of these poems were originally published (some in slightly different form):

The Anglican: Kyrie and Absolution

The Ambassador: The Gathering

Albatross: We Are

Avenues: Trees

Burning Light: Psalm

Brighidsphyre: St. Hildegard’s Day"

The Caller: That Boy

Enso: Epiclesis, Commendation

The Fargo Forum: Fragment from 3 poems by Yehuda Amichai

Immaculata: Salve

The Journey: Fraction

The Living Church: Agnes Dei

Mending Wall: Job Knew

Sangha: Credo

The Sheaf: That Word

Sidewalks: Troubled

Contents

Also by Jamie Parsley

Acknowledgments

I. The Feast of the Holy Cross

The Feast of the Holy Cross

Wailing

Gray

Salve

First Frost

St. Hildegard’s Day

Earth

We are

This Boy

Others

That Word

These Men

Resurrection

The Gathering

Wire

II. Requiem

Vigil