Intimate Disclosures: Religion, Poetry, Sexuality, Illusion, Reality, and Pervading Nostalgia

By Lawrence W. Manglitz

This book contains selections of poetry and prose from the work of an aging Midwestern manlooking back at people, events, sexual experiences and cultures, and the church that has formed him.

The content draws on his childhood, family, World War I and II, and summers in Spain. The Villa in the Algarve, Portugal, teaching in Turkey, two gay poets,, and his revisioning of the myths, history, rituals, and the incarnation of his Catholic faith as he lives and approaches his death. He embraces the gift of life and the wonder of consciousness.

Written with vivid imagery and unusual events in free verse, this will give you a fresh vision, sometimes startling, always disclosing the intimacy and consciousness of personal life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 10, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524565725

Lawrence W. Manglitz

Lawrence W. Manglitz was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, November 24, 1938. When he was a small boy, his parents moved to Bridgeman, then to Holland, Michigan. Despite the conservative nature of that community and his family church, his childhood was a time of great imagination and wanderings on his bike and adventures in Dunn’s woods. In his youth, his life became more complex as he became aware of his homosexuality. He didn’t publically come out until he was twenty-eight. In 1961, he graduated from Goshen College. Later, he earned an MA from the University of Michigan and a PhD from Michigan State University. In 1961, he began teaching at Talas American School, near Kayseri and later at Tarsus College in Southern Turkey. Between 1961 and 1965, he traveled in the Middle East and in southern Europe, spending his summers in Ibiza, Spain. Later, after returning to America, he visited Turkey, Spain, England, and the Czech Republic many times. After returning to America in 1965, he taught at South High School; in 1968, he taught at the community college until his retirement in 2002. During much of the time after his return, he was active in the Episcopal Church. Presently, he lives in Michigan with his three cats: James-Jacob, Cecilia , and Zachariah. He has published poetry in Matrix and The James White Review.

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Copyright © 2017 by Lawrence W. Manglitz.

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Rev. date: 01/06/2017

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Contents

Introduction

I Childhood and Family Sacredness

Sweet Boy Alone, Spinning with Pegasus and the Holy Ghost: 1945 Bridgeman, Michigan

How the Baptist Church Almost Wrecked My Family: My Mother Dancing in the Movies: Selected Images from 1954

Christmas in 1947

Thanksgiving Dinner in 1978

Great Aunt Bess in Soft Colors

Two Remembrances of My Father

Dying in the Morning Scent of Huckleberries

A Christmas Vision in 1953

811 Major Place Court SE

Avoiding the Empty Bed on a Rainy Night in January

II. Nature and Incarnation

The Red Geranium, Seen from My Study Desk

Christmas Eve Morning and the Moon

A Breath

For Becky Bosckey: The Iris Bed

A Spring Migration and Death

From My Study Window: Lorca and the Vanishing Duck Pond

The Summer Sounds of Winter Water

Madonna Lilies for the Feast of the Epiphany

Alpha In the Shadow of the Rock

One Easter Lily Blossoms on November 3, 2015, in This Cold Place

III. Moments of Being

Waiting for the End in My Father’s Bleached Hospital Room

Sitting with Old Dorothy Stephens on the East Porch at Murray Lake on June 20, 1967

The Enigmatic Loveliness of Three Butterflies in Summer

A Keeping Place for Photographs and Old Notes

Tone: Lines on Hands

IV. Epiphanies

The Villa in the Algarve

Morning Consciousness in June

Wind in High Trees: Changing Voices

Chen from Shanghai

The Girl in the Pink Coat Skating on Turner Street

Sitting by My Window, Looking at a Photograph of Talas

A Slide from Ibiza

To Darryl: Splintered Ice

Jeremy’s Irises, Roses, Plums, and Orange-Pink Peaches on Black Porcelain

Perspectives: My Grandfather William’s Green Boat and the Purple Dragon Flies in March 12, 2006

A Childhood Memory from the Cottage on Peacock Lake: Age Seven

V. The Erotic Incarnation

Commentary

The First Night in Prague

A Gold Icon in the City of Prague: To Jakub the Dancer in the Paradise Night Club

For the Young Man from Mumbai Who Worked at Dunkin Donuts

Bucharest in the Afternoon

The Ohio Songbird Sings and Dances Online: Dedicated to All Real Women

The Chicago Guy at XXX Match.Com:

Holy Week Meditation 2010: Corpus Christi and the Washing of Feet

My Lips Are Beggars on Your Lips

Three Voices: Men 4 Rent, Sweet Anthony

Byzantine Prince: Koray

The Dark Gardener

The Hustler’s Love: A Perfection of Sacred Lust to Stillness Quieting

The Desired Boys of Summer and the Innocence of My Childhood Gazing

Image: Vision of a Soul

VI. Two Poets

Little Ashes of Lorca in the Wind

Deep Song for Lorca

Looking at a Photograph of Constantine Cavafy at Seventeen Years of Age in 1880

VII. Turkey

Reflections on Istanbul Rising from the Sea, A Half Century Later

The Anadoğlu Express

Looking at a Photograph of Ali in 1981

Ten Minarets at Night: Last Visit

VIII. Spain

The Slide from Ibiza in the Balearic Islands of Spain

I Gazed upon You in Your Holy Place: Dalt Villa, Ibiza, Spain

Rocks and High Seas

IX. War

From a Photograph in A Corner of a Foreign Field: Illustrated Poetry of the First World War: Musing on the Hands of Flanders Fields

The Bizarre Stationary Shop

From a Great Distance Falling

The Victory of the Handsome Iraqi Man: The News Online

Death in Iraq: A Rushing in of Spring

Looking at a Postcard of Jews Lined Against a Fence in 1944

The Importance of Linear Perspective in Photography

Shiloh

The Battle of Malvern Hill

X. Random Writings

Lovers in My Tabernacle Dwell

A Vestry Devotion on a Stained Glass Window, Christ the King: St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1981

Song of a Man Who Has Come Through

Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me!

A fine wind is blowing the new direction of time.

If only I let it bear me, carry me, if only it carry me!

If only I am sensitive, subtle, oh, delicate, a winged gift!

If only, most lovely of all, I yield myself and am borrowed

By the fine, fine wind that takes its course through the chaos of the world

Like a fine, exquisite chisel, a wedge-blade inserted;

If only I am keen and hard like the sheer tip of a wedge

Driven by invisible blows,

The rock will split, we shall come at the wonder, we shall find the Hesperides.*

Oh, for the wonder that bubbles into my soul,

I would be a good fountain, a good well-head,

Would blur no whisper, spoil no expression.

What is the knocking?

What is the knocking at the door at night?

It is somebody wants to do us harm

No, no, it is the three strange angels.**

Admit them, admit them.

D. H. Lawrence

Introduction

The challenge for me writing this narrative poetry and prose is that much of it comes from a long time ago, about an even earlier time—a web of nostalgia. I have strived to be truthful in my remembrance of those single moments. As I put these remembrances, each of the small pieces in an order, I wanted to be attentive to what vision I was trying to construct. Sometimes I was very conscious of doing this; but most of the time, it seemed a flowing subconsciousness. Each detail made and altered the remembrance. The original event, person, geography, and the creative imagination shaped the final piece. And at the conclusion of the writing, the poem seemed to establish itself, with many attentive revisions.

Henri Bergson, the French philosopher, writes that we do not have the same impression of a person or event in our immediate time that we had in the original perception. Many years have passed, which are filled with thousands of new events and people, and those give a new perspective to the vision of the past.

The day I perceived them originally—plowing, sleeping in my bed, talking with me on a porch, in one photograph with them, one remembrance of drinking gin with them on their veranda in the Algarve, one glance at a young man the first day of my teaching in Turkey, one swim near Mersin, one moment on the SS AKdeniz—is one time in their lives. And of course, these were all different times in my life, now echoing seventy-seven years of time. The attempt to record this echo has sometimes seemed dangerous and tragic—the evolution and honest revelation of a private life. These are important impressions, quite accurate, from important moments of intense being, apart from ordinary consciousness of daily life—quiet epiphanies. I suppose that I have written about them because I wanted to remember them, to understand them. I would admit that a part of me would return to them.

There is not a great sense of vulnerability for me in sharing these memories. But they have sometimes wounded me in recollection. It is a part of memory and life itself. They return or are summoned to enrich an evolving consciousness.

My journey within an oppressive religion, especially during my childhood and youth, destroyed any freedom for me to be who I understood myself to be and to express my sexual desire. That time generated so much fear and shame, walking in the shadows, keeping my secrets, and missing great opportunities for love and the sensual joy of my body.

I have reckoned with the oppression of my childhood religion in part through the freedom given to me in the Episcopal tradition; all has given me a definite awareness of that person who I am. Christianity has always been with me. I resolve all dualities and an ultimate mystery into him I call cosmic Christ, far from the fearful, destructive, conservative understanding of my youth. Christianity has, as new understandings have emerged, remained, and become a refreshed part of my knowledge. I cannot escape God, and the manifestation in the incarnation of that deity in Christ, in the Christian religion—the bond which makes meaning of my life. Many would take issue with this resolution and peace of mind, considering that I am a gay man. It is my restructuring of the meanings of that incarnation that seem urgently needed to keep Christianity relevant to the enlightenment of current contemporary theology and the new knowledge of Western culture.

* * *

Without the encouragement and comments of many friends, straight and gay, the wise and compassionate Episcopal clergy who have shared their spirituality and listened with care to my journey, and the help I received formatting this book, this work would not exist. I express deep gratitude to all of them. And I give my thanks to all my students who have taught me. To the men I have loved and been loved by I would acknowledge that their intimacy with me has sustained the currents of my life and brought much joy and a sense of godliness, and the mysterious wonder and struggle of creation. This work would celebrate this.

I have a great sense of the support of my family and the knowledge, wisdom, and questions of my many teachers and professors who have been important in shaping my vision. I am grateful that I have escaped the oppression and hypocrisy in the history of the church and embraced the great teachings, icons, and rituals of religion, not because they are not of literal significance, but because they lead to the epiphanies that speak of our yearnings and a hope of fulfilling them: of granting equality to all and attempting to bring the joy of abundant life to all. But still in the name of Deity, we slaughter and bring to many more than those killed, a suffering and twisting of their created being and deprivation of existence that they endure all their lives.

Lawrence William Manglitz

January 5, 2016, Grand Rapids, Michigan

I

CHILDHOOD AND FAMILY SACREDNESS

Sweet Boy Alone, Spinning with Pegasus and the Holy Ghost: 1945 Bridgeman, Michigan

Far from his house, with collected birds’ eggs, seed pods, and the blue feather;

in a field of tall dry grass, burned yellow, brittle, scratching,

was the merry-go-round: large, dangerous, a wild stallion to the boy.

In the distance, it stood idle, high above the earth,

an octagon of weathering wood and rusting metal,

brought all to a pleasure of new birth.

Inside the wood planks, a smooth iron bar, curved round,

a strong handle to hold, clutch hard against a force to throw a boy outward,

up to the air, and down to pounded ground;

a wide path circled the apocalyptic horse, a hundred children’s feet, beating,

had run full speed pushing, then leaping onto the wood,

each grasped strong.

On two sides were the large pumping handles;

the wooden planks aged with splitting,

but no splinters existed; they had no chance to form;

the children’s bodies and blood filled hands had worn all to shine:

gray wood and rusted iron.

At last, in