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Dante Micheaux — Theologies for Korah
00:18:28
Dante Micheaux’s rich and rollicking poem “Theologies for Korah” is written on the occasion of an infant’s baptism, but it’s anything but baby talk or bland instruction. Religious figures, rites, and symbols are proffered, not as liturgy or lore to be swallowed whole, eyes shut, but as people, stories, and ideas that cry out to be seen, played with, and engaged with. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.
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My name is Padre Go Toma and I love it when friends of mine have babies. I always find myself talking in Irish to babies regularly with a newborn in my arms. I'm from a big family too, so there was always lots of babies around. I've heard myself almost without meaning to saying something like false. Die on down. Morris Storr welcome to the Big world, darling. Wanting to say something of great love, wanting to say something that holds excitement, and wanting to say something that also knows everything we don't know, or knows that we don't know things. The Big World all the ways within which the world can unfold in a day, in a year, in a lifetime. Welcome to the big World. Theologies for Korah by Dante Michaud 1. From Locusts and Wild honey on a lesser diet than that of the wretched rests a prophecy some of us come to prepare. I stood before my God at a foreign altar and promised to guide you me with my heretic theology. I practiced the ways passed to me by descendants of followers of a wild man, Followers in the desert downwind of his musk, listening to him confess himself unfit to loose latchets on shoes. They believed his words holy, ignored bits of insect wing in his beard. And then he told them of a dove that no one else could see. I have learned to retain my head while speaking truth. 2. Rite of the baptism of children Do I reject the glamour of evil? I do. You are creation, the same after water and after the Holy Spirit. Only now you see the door to life and unto the kingdom of God. Do not feel the need of any claimant to royal priesthood. Some ancient calling himself Peter must have been in his cups when he wrote that. Ish. The nerve. You were cleansed with water by power of the word. Sign of the cross. Phooey. There is no miracle in an instrument of death. See Martin Luther theses 5, 16, 28 and 95. God made no symbols people did, etc. 3. Some thoughts on Katerina Bininkasa. Not much older than you when she first saw the Christ seated in glory with few of his disciples, who gave her many gifts, a consummate marriage by way of his foreskin, the blessed stigmata, and her head as a bag of rose petals to build a cell inside your mind, a cell of self. Knowledge is good advice, my child. The Christ commanded her to open the eye of her intellect and gaze into him. This made her secularly gifted, a power broker. Read her correspondence. Yes, the letters of a lunatic diplomat. But heated. Virtuous, sweet, amorous word of honor. God. This poem of Dante Michaud could be considered an occasional poem, or which is not occasional in the sense of something you write from time to time, but a poem that's written for a singular occasion. And in this instance, it seems like Dante has written a poem for a child. Cora, I'm guessing, is the name or the standing name in this poem for the child. And it seems to be at the baptism, the dedication of that child in a church, a Christian liturgical church. And it seems like he's been invited to be the godfather of that child, which is a role that people take on as godparents to guide the child. And he's kind of laughing him with his heretic theology. It's a religious occasion, a deeply religious occasion. But he uses religious language and religious character to push through religion or to look together with religion at the wide world and the world that this child is going to be inhabiting. He doesn't ignore religion. He looks at and with and through it, speaking to the child about the life of the world and the life of the mind. I only read three parts of what is a five part poem. It would have been a little long to have read all five parts. I know Dante Michaud, and I wrote to him and he said to me to choose the three that were my favorite, and they're all my favorites. So I'll try to squeeze a few quotes from different parts of it that I didn't get to recite in. It's a conundrum to be put in, to be asked by a poet to choose favorite parts of their poem when so much of the poem is a full favorite. But I'll find a way to include some quotes throughout the rest of the reflection. I first read this poem when it came out in Poetry magazine in the spring of 2016. I was in New York. It was before I had moved to New York. I just happened to be in New York for meetings. And I was meeting the poet Marie Howe for lunch and I was a little bit early and I had Poetry magazine and I was reading it, and in that edition this poem was included. And I burst out laughing as I was reading it. And people looked at me and that's a pretty ordinary happening for me, unfortunately. And then Marie came and we read the poem together and we both laughed out loud. Dante Michaud is quite involved in the practice of religion. He is involved in a parish in England where he lives some of the time. He also lives in the United States, other parts of the time. He's from the US Originally. He'd need to be the one to say for himself what the heretic theologies that he holds are. What his interest does demonstrate, though, is that his independence of thought and intellect is alive and well as he practices religion. And there's an assertion in that that I think is worthwhile listening to and getting freedom within. Because so often my fear and my distance from religion is because I fear that it's going to try to take over my mind. And here he's demonstrating the wild capacity for how it is that your mind can be alive and electric and in the world, while also engaging with religious metaphor. The religious imagery in this poem, and this is a poem addressed to a baby. It's anything but baby talk. And somehow this occasional poem reaches beyond the occasion and I think is relevant. The three parts that I chose. The first part, he is taking the character of John the Baptist, who was a wild prophet of man in the Christian Gospels, who was living in the wilderness, the cousin of Jesus of Nazareth. And John the Baptist ate locusts and wild honey, and he dressed strangely in animal skins, but people were strangely attracted to him and went into the wilderness to find him. The second part uses the language from the ritual, the rite, the liturgy of baptism. And the third part, I read, is about the life of Catherine of Siena, another peculiar, fascinating medieval character from religion. And each of the three parts are a provocation. He's saying that he has stood before God and that he has promised to guide a child, him, the heretic, or with heretic theology. And he looks to the peculiar figure of John the Baptist with wild locusts, bits of wings sticking out of his beard. And because John the Baptist told the truth to the Herod, he was beheaded. And the Herod was a despot of a vain man who wanted those around him only to tell him what it was that he wanted to hear, not the truth. Dante Michaud finishes off this section of the poem by saying to this child, I have learned to retain my head while speaking truth. What a way to usher in a life to a child, and for all of us, powerful, necessary. Then the second part, the rite of baptism, reflection. It builds really on the idea of renouncing the devil and using the sign of the cross, which is a torture instrument. And he says, there is no miracle in an instrument of death. That was the part that made me laugh out loud in the cafe while I was waiting for Marie. And I think it's entirely true that in the last nine years since I heard that poem, I've repeated that line to myself daily. Maybe Sometimes only a few times a week. But over and over again it has become something like a protection for me. There is no miracle in an instrument of death. The third part, the reference to Caterina Benincasa. She was a powerful Italian, medieval character. She was a mystic, a seer, and she was definitely strange. And she's considered a doctor of the church because of the power and truth in her writings. So each of these sections are speaking to a bit baby and addressing language to a baby about what it might mean to speak the truth, to understand the truth, to provoke the truth, to find a way to hold your head while continuing to speak the truth in the world that's about to unfold before this child. What I think of whenever I read this poem, and the full thing is free and available on the Poetry foundation website, what I think of is that the poet loved this child and took such responsibility on himself of being asked to be some kind of guide or godfather or a kind adult in the life of this child, that he took this very seriously and seriously enough to think that this child needed something like courage and warnings about the world and deep respect for something intuitive in her that she would nonetheless need to hone and focus. In one of the other parts of the poem, Dante Michaud takes a miracle from the Gospel tradition, where somebody's eyes are opened and they can see. It's a metaphor for some kind of enlightenment, this miracle story in the Gospels, I suppose. But Dante Michaud takes that miracle story and speaks it to the child with again, anything other than baby talk. Not telling her to open her eyes, he rejects that metaphor, but telling her to open her mind. And here's part of that section. All power in heaven and earth is no questions, be opened. Hold fast to my teachings, not those of stewards, but my words. Seek you, first girl, the kingdom of my love with all your mind, all your mind, do not forget your mind, you are mine. Be opened, power, suffer it to be so now, for thus it becomes us to fulfill all righteousness. All power in heaven and in earth is given me and be opened. I love this poem so much. I want to have been at that baptism, that ritual, that naming dedication of the child. I love that even though it takes place in a religious setting, its orientation has got such rich dignity and thinking and acting and rebellion and heresy and integrity and power at the heart of it. I read this full poem over and over again for years, and eventually I thought I should get in touch with Dante Michaud, wrote to him and told him how much I loved the poem. I'd read his other books too in the meantime, and I am such a fan, and it's been a great thing to develop a connection and a correspondence over the years since then. Theologies for Korah by Dante Michaud 1. From Locusts and Wild honey on a lesser diet than that of the wretched, rests a prophecy some of us come to prepare. I stood before my God at a foreign altar and promised to guide you me with my heretic theology. I practiced the ways passed to me by descendants of followers of a wild man, followers in the desert downwind of his musk, listening to him confess himself unfit to loose latchets on shoes. They believed his words holy, ignored bits of insect wing in his beard, and then he told them of a dove that no one else could see. I have learned to retain my head while speaking truth. 2. Write of the baptism of children. Do I reject the glamour of evil? I do. You are creation the same after water and after the Holy Spirit. Only now you see the door to life and unto the kingdom of God. Do not feel the need of any claimant to royal priesthood. Some ancient calling himself. Peter must have been in his cups when he wrote that. Ish. The nerve. You were cleansed with water by power of the word. Sign of the cross. Phooey. There is no miracle in an instrument of death. See Martin Luther theses 5, 16, 28 and 95. God made no symbols, people did, etc. 3. Some thoughts on Katerina Binincasa not much older than you when she first saw the Christ seated in glory with few of his disciples, who gave her many gifts, a consummate marriage by way of his foreskin, the blessed stigmata, and her head as a bag of rose petals to build a cell inside your mind, a cell of self. Knowledge is good advice, my child. The Christ commanded her to open the eye of her intellect and gaze into Him. This made her secularly gifted, a power broker. Read her correspondence. Yes, the letter. Lunatic diplomat but heated, virtuous, sweet, amorous word of God.
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A special thanks to Dante Michaud for permitting Poetry Unbound to use and share his poem theologies for Korah. You can read our excerpts of the poem on OnBeing.org and the full poem by searching Dante Michaux on PoetryFoundation.org. Poetry Unbound is Andrea Prevot, Carla Zanoni, Daryl Chen, Sparrow Murray, Chris Heagle, Bill Sigmund and me, Padre Go Tuma. Our music is composed and provided by Gautam Srikishan and blued out sessions. These episodes were made in New York City on unceded Lenape land. Special thanks to Will Salwin, Nave Yan and Adam Morell at Digital Island Studios in Manhattan. Thanks as well to Frederick Courtright of the Permissions Company. Poetry Unbound is an independent non profit production of the On Being project founded, founded and led by Krista Tippett. This season of Poetry Unbound is made possible by a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation. Our other funding partners include the Liana foundation, the Bidale foundation, and Engaging the Census Foundation. Poetry Unbound would be nothing without the listening community. Thanks to all who listen, who read and give through our weekly Poetry Unbound substack or directly to On Being.
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