The State of the Faith

Friends, neighbors, dreamers and the damned;

I come to you today, not as a dispassionate observer of the landscape that is the literature of modern poetry, but as a man who has lashed himself to the faith, bound hand and foot and heart and soul, and caring deeply about the trail it takes and the progress it makes in this world.

There are those who would say that poetry has been diluted by the modern schools and the proliferation of poetry in the mass media such that it is not longer poetry, no longer of the faith and flesh that it once was.

I see their point and respectfully disagree.

There have always been those who profess to the faith of poets when they are not poets, just as there are millions of people every Sunday sitting in pews who do not practice even the most rudimentary tenets of the Christian faith. Hypocrisy abounds, and even a diminution of that, a sort of sorcerer's apprentice mindset where everyone who sits down on Sunday calls themselves a Christian and everyone who write a poem calls themselves a poet, as if the single act were enough to transform the individual spiritually or intellectually.

I have met hundreds, if not thousands, of people who have written or write poetry. I have met a handful of poets. And no, I am not blasphemous enough to claim that the dividing line is whether one makes a living or is published as a poet, indeed, the correlation between artist and marketplace has always been murky.

The poet lives by and in the faith, recognizing that in their words they are speaking to and of the divine and reaching out to meet halfway their Creator. Be they authors of poetry about great rivers or humble moments, mighty passions or gentle questionings, historical epics or subtle meanderings of a creative mind, the poets are those who live their faith.

And, just as with those of Christian, Islamic, Jewish, Hindu or any other great religion that calls for more than a calling-card commitment, the world and the faith would be better off with more earnest disciples.

The State of the Faith is strong, but much remains to be done, not to complete a journey, but to keep the eternal journey oriented to the proper paths.

In my time as a poet, for I am one who has walked the path this mad faith has demanded of him as best I can, I have been called heretic and high priest, father and fool, Anti-Christ and apostle.

I leave it to the judges of history to define my role when civilization has evolved and my words are read by those unborn when I had long last breathed my last and judge the resonance of the words that I tore from my own flesh to share as nourishment to those willing to put aside their pettiness and perverse ignorance to embrace the notion that "In the Beginning was the Word".

And even though it was made flesh, so it remains, this Word, and it is to those who accept the burden of the poets to protect and promote, invoke and provoke, and to ultimately share the truth revealed only to those with eyes of stained glass and fire. Let the poets dream and share their dreams, and let the faith be served.

Thank you.