Book Review: A Lot of the Way Trees Were Walking: Poems from the Gospel of Mark

Abstract

A Lot of Way Trees Were Walking: Poems from Gospel of Mark. By Cynthia Briggs Kittredge. Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2015. xvi + 100 pp. $15.00 (paper).Dean, president, and professor of New Testament at Seminary of Southwest in Austin, Texas, as well as a New Testament scholar, Cynthia Briggs Kittredge leaves erudition behind to confront Mark's Gospel as a seeker aim baggage. In other words, as a complex woman. The result, and what I found most impressive, was a remarkable freedom of movement, evident in poet's willingness to range through Gospel: a cn de coeur here, a comment there, a koan elsewhere.Kittredge wrote these poems during a semester in which she was teaching Gospel of Mark. To enjoy book, readers either need Mark's Gospel open as a constant reference point or a more detailed knowledge of text than I have. Some poems stand alone, but many lose their nuance without specifics of Mark's text at hand. Every now and then, as a reader, I caught thrill of their evolution, but shifting points of view made access difficult at times. My breakthrough into understanding poems came when I realized spiritual and artistic freedom Kittredge was appropriating for herself and when I began to read poems with spiritual strategies of lectio divina in mind, or maybe I should say scriptio divina.A time-honored tool of Christian spiritual practice, lectio divina provides a method for deep engagement or reading of scripture through four stages: lectio (reading), meditatio (meditation), oratio (praying), and contemplate (contemplation). Yet, applying this process to a scriptural passage and reaping benefits of such profound immersion are not readily understood or imagined by most of us. In poems from Gospel of Mark, Kittredge shows us not the way, but her way to do so.The book is divided into eight sections, with each section identifying scriptural chapters and verses referenced by poems. There are no other citations. Some of poems draw on highly familiar material, so that this absence does not matter, as in wonderful poem Translate, which is easily recognizable.Eloi Eloi Lama Sabachthani?Does it need translation?.... . . you have heard thator you have made that sentence in your own gulletand know what it means, (p. S3)The Markan verses that some other poems reference are not as readily identified, such as in Abstract, Tear, Wisdom, and Amos Niven Wilder.The book's greatest delight for me was permission Kittredge gave herself to be honest, to engage with Mark wholeheartedly, with concomitant invitation to readers to do same. And so, in addition to reading parallel passages in Mark, I read book again, trying to enter it as deeply as possible by considering poems in terms of lectio divina. …