Cultivating Our Divine Energy
by Jim Richards

Two Sonnets, Then Two More
The muse must be very busy among Meridian readers-the poetry submissions continue to arrive! Thank you to all those who have sent poems to be considered for publication. I'm happy to offer this month's selection: four sonnets by Doug Talley. These sonnets are selected from his forty-sonnet sequence called "The Angel Voice of Irony." I hope you enjoy them.

Last month I confessed that a love for language draws me to poetry. Another aspect of poetry that keeps me coming back is its challenge. Poetry is difficult. It is difficult to write; it is difficult to read. In a world where so much of our pleasure comes from the ease of things, poetry remains to satisfy that often neglected part of us that finds pleasure in difficult things.

How many of us have groaned and griped through a challenge continually awaiting the day when it would finally end, but when the end came, we missed the strength-building satisfaction we felt while struggling to overcome the obstacle? Thankfully, there is no end to obstacles, and we can always anticipate another challenge. We might find that challenge by challenge we discover more and more pleasure in the process rather than in the end of our struggle. Often, the episodes in our life that we reflect on as the most meaningful are also the most challenging.

Poetry offers us a chance to challenge ourselves, to take a break from easy art and entertainment and find some satisfaction in struggle. William Meredith articulates it so well in his short poem, "A Major Work":

Poems are hard to read
Pictures are hard to see
Music is hard to hear
And people are hard to love

But whether from brute need
Or divine energy
At last mind eye and ear
And the great sloth heart will move.

Like challenging images, music, and people, poetry offers us the chance to cultivate the divine energy that makes us move, that makes us change. The best poetry offers the mind just the right amount of engagement and resistance to supply life-long challenge and enrichment. St. Augustine writes, "Things which are easily discovered seem frequently to become worthless." It is also true that things which are too difficult to discover frequently become worthless. But things that resist us and engage us, that satisfy us little by little and yet withhold just the right amount, offer a lifetime of edification.

God's great plan of happiness may be the ideal poem, available and accessible to all, from the simple to the wise, offering each a taste of truth and the knowledge that there is more. The gospel-God's eternal poem-gives us line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little, and if we keep coming back to it, if we read and reread, if we keep our sloth heart crawling, we will enjoy the narrow passage down the page until we reach the final royal couplet where mortality and eternity rhyme.

Here are two of Doug Talley's sonnets. Watch Meridian in the days to come for the next two.

"The truth appears unexpectedly, it seems"

The truth appears unexpectedly, it seems,
and often at a slant. Not face to face
directly do we witness of Thy grace,
but rather almost vaguely, as in our dreams.
A faint blue star will course the nighttime sky,
yet when we look for it, elude our glance
and stay concealed, until we look askance
and see it from the corner of the eye.
Just so, we often find our truths in passing,
and not the very moment, nor the place,
that we expect, and too, we find a trace
only, not Thy full glory everlasting,
to whisper us what measures fill Thy mind
with each red oak leaf loosened to the wind.

Doug Talley

"Lord, I have learned through my experience"

Lord, I have learned through my experience
a prayer is not a prayer until it's answered.
Till then it's but a flag of sentiments
tossed to the air with hope it might be heard.
Yet it pleases Thee to give a goodly thing
to those who ask-the prodigal no less-
a robe, or shoes, or for the hand a ring,
to prove Thy nature is to love and bless,
to prove there is a God who answers prayer,
not as a man might answer-eye for eye,
or tooth for tooth-responding only fair
and equal to the worth of each flawed sigh,
but Thou wilt measure pears to swine and beast
and bless us most when we deserve it least.

Doug Talley

About the Poet
Doug Talley received his bachelor's degree in fine arts (creative writing) from Bowling Green State University in 1976. He graduated also with an English minor and a minor equivalent in Latin and Greek, and studied Latin for seven years and Greek for three. He joined the Church in 1976 and served a mission in Rome, Italy from 1978 to 1980. He received a law degree from the University of Akron in 1984 and has practiced law since then in various capacities, working currently as the chief executive officer of Millennial Assurance Services. He has published poetry in various journals, including The American Scholar and Hellas. Mr. Talley has written two books of poetry, April in October and The Angel Voice of Irony, and a collection of hymns with the composer Lewis Phelps. He lives in Houston, Texas, with his wife and seven children.

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Jim Richards, Meridian Magazine's Poetry Editor, grew up in Salt Lake City as the fourth child in a family of ten. He spent each summer in Montana, where he developed a deep love for mountains, lakes, and forests and activities such as hiking, waterskiing, and riding motorcycles. He has enjoyed various experiences abroad, including a semester in Jerusalem, a mission to Costa Rica, an excursion through southern Europe, and a term studying theater in London. He completed his B.A. and M.A. in English at BYU, and is currently a doctoral Cambor Fellow in the creative writing program at the University of Houston. His poetry has appeared in Literature and Belief, BYU Studies, and elsewhere. He lives with his wife and two sons in Houston, where he serves as second counselor in the bishopric of the Spring Branch Ward.