Read a poem from this book, set to be released in January…
Touch the Earth: Poems on The Way
Drew Jackson
Paperback: IVP, 2023
Pre-order now: [ IVP Books ] [ Amazon ] [ Kindle ]
Book Description:
Gather it from memory.
Let it touch the earth.
In Touch the Earth, Drew Jackson continues the project he began in God Speaks Through Wombs, reflecting on the Gospel of Luke through poetry. Touch the Earth picks up in chapter nine and continues through the end of Luke’s Gospel. Part protest poetry, part biblical commentary, Jackson presents the gospel story in all its liberative power. Here the gospel is the “fresh words / that speak of / things impossible.”
From the feeding of the multitude (“The best hosts always provide / take home containers”) to the resurrection of Jesus (“the belly of mother Earth / is, indeed, a womb . . . the humus of life is where we become fully human”), this collection helps us hear the hum of deliverance―against all hope―that’s been in the gospel all along.
READ a poem from this upcoming book…
Emmaus
Luke 24:13‑35
Making sense of tragedy is
an impossible task.
How do you shape meaning
out of the absurd?
There is a certain kind of hurt
that can only be comprehended
in the context of friendship,
over bread broken.
Those hours after the funeral
at the repast I replay often:
Jadie playing on the keys
as the house erupted in singing
“Down by the Riverside.”
And in the subsequent days
after Mom flew away,
we sat around that table
on Grand Magnolia Dr.
We would sit into the night,
warming up plates made
from meals prepared and delivered
to us by all our other mothers.
So many that we had to keep
more than a handful frozen.
We would flow in and out of
laughter and silence.
Bouncing between questions
and the hesitancy of thinking
about what had taken place.
And yet there in that space
nothing made more sense.
Something of heaven opened up
and then left us as quickly
as it had come.
—-
Taken from Touch the Earth by Drew Jackson. ©2022 by Drew Edward Jackson. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press. www.ivpress.com.
C. Christopher Smith is the founding editor of The Englewood Review of Books. He is also author of a number of books, including most recently How the Body of Christ Talks: Recovering the Practice of Conversation in the Church (Brazos Press, 2019). Connect with him online at: C-Christopher-Smith.com
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