Viriditas: New and Selected Poems

By Kathleen Henderson Staudt

Drawing on the spirituality of St. Hildegard of Bingen, these poems tap into the energy of green-ness ("viriditas") as it pulses through nature and through the times of loss, disorientation, and fresh hope that we encounter in our lives. Sinking into the experience of sacred place, they lead us into woodlands and ocean beaches, local gardens and distant places of pilgrimage. Through celebration and elegy, biblical story and the natural world, these poems invite readers to experiences of meditation and even prayer, embracing all that is green and growing in our lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Apr 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666754711

Kathleen Henderson Staudt

Kathy Staudt is a poet, scholar and spiritual director rooted mainly in the Mid-Atlantic region. She has taught at the University of Maryland, Wesley Theological Seminary and Virginia Theological Seminary. She has published three books of poetry, most recently Good Places, as well as scholarly books and articles on the poet and artist David Jones. An interview featuring her commitment to creativity and the spiritual life, featuring thoughts on the spiritual writer Evelyn Underhill, can be found online here

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VIRIDITAS

New and Selected Poems

Kathleen Henderson Staudt

VIRIDITAS

New and Selected Poems

Copyright ©

2023

Kathleen Henderson Staudt. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,

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Resource Publications

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199

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8

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Eugene, OR

97401

www.wipfandstock.com

paperback isbn: 978-1-6667-5469-8

hardcover isbn: 978-1-6667-5470-4

ebook isbn: 978-1-6667-5471-1

03/20/20

Table of Contents

Title Page

Preface: About Viriditas

Acknowledgments

I: VIRIDITAS

Viriditas

Presences

Brood 10 Cicadas: 2004

Brood Ten Cicadas: 2021

Traveling God’s Green Earth

Valentine’s Day Down Under

Lugano

Patrishow, Wales

St. Deiniol’s Churchyard, Hawarden, Wales

Hot April

Autumn Pange Lingua

Elegy: The Tulip Poplar

The Volunteer

II: SHOWINGS AND PRESENCES

Wondering About Angels

Arriving

Epiphany Walk

Lenten Villanelle

Adelynrood: the Marsh at South Byfield

Adelynrood: The Great Cross

Adelynrood: On San Damiano Porch

Adelynrood: The Great Silence

Seed-time: An Oracle

This Grasshopper

The Marsh at South Byfield II

Theosis

The Healing

Holy Spirit

Icon Writer

Worship

The Names of God

Rumi’s Elephant

Reveling

III: A SOJOURN AT BETHANY

Jesus in the House of Martha and Mary

Bethany Walk (John 11:1–44)

Martha

Jesus and Lazarus

Lazarus

Critical Care

Life Support

Farewell Discourse I (John 14–16)

Resurrection Imagined

IV: ELEGIES AND EASTER

For Mom, Who Lived Until the Day after her Ninety-Second Birthday

Walking I

Coloring

Walking II

Dust to Dust

Pandemic Spring: Walking

Meanwhile

The Purple Hat

Passage

Walking III

Farewell Discourse II (John 14: 1–3)

A Corker of A Day

Easter Memory (Luke 24:5)

Pandemic Triduum: Holy Thursday 2020

Pandemic Triduum: Good Friday 2020

Pandemic Triduum: Holy Saturday 2020

While it is Still Dark (John 20:1)

Easter Mourning 2020

Pentecost 2020: Calling Their Names

Judgment Day

Ash Wednesday 2021

Restless

Pandemic Lent, 2021

Coventry: Two Tankas on the Cross of Nails

Denkmal

Emmaus Poems (Luke 24: 31–32)

V: BEACH WEEK

February Longing

Reality at the Beach

The Beach Will Always be Here

Power Loss: (Outer Banks, N.C., August 2001)

Waving Back

Oceanfront

Six Mornings on the Outer Banks

To Weather a Storm

Sunrise: Oceanfront

Notes on the Poems and Epigraphs

About the Author

"Kathleen Staudt’s Viriditas opens our eyes to a luminous world of colors, which then permeates our interior beyond our knowing. It is the ‘green of ordinary time,’ the ‘quick in the root of being,’ a vivacity we are blessed to experience, paradoxically, in moments of profound stillness. Staudt invites us into such moments, through poems of quiet love for the world in and around us—both the world and the words being God’s gift."

—Sofia M. Starnes, Virginia poet laureate emerita

"Kathleen Staudt’s Viriditas is a joyous tribute to nature, green in shoot and bough. In the tradition of Mary Oliver, her poems revel in the seasons closely observed, from the colors and shapes of leaves to the subtle hues of love. Like a wise bee, Staudt confects the honey of contemplation from all the changes and chances of this life."

—Barbara Newman, professor of English, classics, and history, Northwestern University

"Kathleen Staudt’s Viriditas is a ribbon of bright light, a gift that invites us to celebrate with her the greening energy of the sacred in poems that open to us like seeds in a soft spring rain. Her poems are an invitation to discover anew how the experiences of being human can daily point us toward the miracles to be found in each moment, ‘Breathing in. Breathing out.’"

—Michael Glaser, Maryland poet laureate,

2004

–

2009

"Whether writing about the changing seasons in her garden or the changing seasons of our lives, for Staudt, every moment is infused with the holy. She has