brunwick.deviantart.com

By Bryce Peterson

I was nine years old when I became a hardened sinner. Grandpa wanted to teach me to fly fish, so we planned a weekend trip—just the two of us. I loved him, of course, but this particular grandparent was more intimidating than the meanest old-lady-substitute-Primary-teacher.

We rode up in Grandpa’s ancient diesel VW Vanagon—a vehicle never known for its stealth. Add the fact that, due to a childhood illness, Grandpa was deaf in his right ear, and it becomes clear why all our conversations sounded like shouting matches. But though these barriers to communication were high, they did not stop Grandpa from hollering a few jokes at me as we puttered north from Salt Lake. Jokes I would never repeat to my mother.

“What was the last thing to go through that bug’s brain?” he barked, pointing at a particularly large red-green splotch on his windshield.

“I don’t know,” I shouted. “What?”

“His anus.”

We got to the fishing hole before dark, time enough to pull in a few rainbows. Gramps did not have a pair of waders small enough for me. So I got to “Man up, kid.” Even in mid-summer, the water was icy and numbed my skinny legs quickly. Grandpa had attached a billy club to his waders. He used it to crush the fish’s head as he pulled it out of the water. As for billy-clubless me, I was just supposed to break the fish’s back with my bare hands.

Fishing was rapidly losing its allure.

Finally, the sun sank below the horizon, and I gratefully followed Grandpa to the van, shivering all the way. We drove to a parking lot, warmed up a nice dinner of pork and beans, and retired for the night. I knew that a full day of fishing awaited us tomorrow. A day full of fire and brimstone, damnation and hellfire, because God had me in his scope and was about to pull the trigger.

I woke as Gramps fried up some of the previous night’s catch. I still have no concept of his actual skill at cooking trout—I’ve never been able to bring myself to try trout again. I picked at my fish for some time while he worked at the stove, fiddling with a strange, tall pot with a transparent bubble on top. The clear bubble flashed brown occasionally. After a few minutes, Gramps finally poured me a mug of whatever it was.

Pushing the mug across the breakfast table, he muttered, “And here’s some sugar, if you want it.”

I was nine. Of course I wanted sugar! I wanted even more after I tried Grandpa’s new drink. Could he make nothing that tasted decent? A liberal dousing of sugar was the only thing that made the drink passable. I stopped pretending to eat the fish and nursed this new breakfast drink instead. I soon realized, however, that I had scrimped on the sugar. So I added more after every few sips and quickly found the sugar was not helping anymore. The drink became cold.

There I sat, longing for the pork and beans of the night before, picking at a mauled trout fillet, playing with a half cup of brown swill swimming over a bed of undissolved sugar, when Grandpa’s harsh voice scolded me:
“What, you’re gunna be a damn Mormon brat and not drink your coffee, either?”

Suddenly the reality of Grandpa’s bitter brown liquid became horribly clear. I sat dumbstruck, my mouth  glued shut. A flood of Primary lessons came rushing back to me. “The Lord has given us these bodies. They are holy temples. And cursed is he who defiles a temple of the Lord,” I could hear Sister X declaring, “How would you feel if someone spray-painted graffiti all over the Salt Lake Temple? Well, that’s how Heavenly Father feels when we don’t respect our bodies!”

And here I was pouring filth straight into my temple!

My mind was racing. “Coffee! How could you be so blind, Bryce? Maybe you wanted to be blind. You wanted to be led away in sin. You wanted to walk close to the edge. Well, you’ve done it now. You’ve walked up to the edge and jumped right off. I sure hope hell is nice this time of year. Hello, Brother Lucifer, long time no see.”

Plainly, I had become one of the vilest of sinners. However, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that my fallen, sinful, horrifying state should be kept from my family, especially my parents. The first few years of my deception turned out to be easier than I had feared. I wasn’t due for my next bishop’s interview until I was 12; and not having the priesthood meant no monthly PPI’s investigating my strict adherence to the Word of Wisdom.

The sacrament, however, was a challenge. My education in this area had been quite complete. You were not supposed to partake of the Sacrament if you were not worthy, unless you wanted to ensure your own damnation, of course. Woe unto him who eateth unworthily and whatnot. I knew that I had already bought my ticket to the underworld, but I didn’t need any more flight insurance.

So I developed a strategy to hide my shameful status as a sacrament non-partaker. When the bread was passed to me, I would pinch it between thumb and forefinger, bring it toward my mouth, and deftly palm the piece of bread. I could then slip it inconspicuously into a pocket while a bit of artful misdirection on my part—pretending to chew and swallow—completed the illusion. I was a David Copperfield in training. I could make anything disappear. That was the easy part. Smooth sailing to this point. The hard part came when the next tray arrived.

Water. It was just an ounce or so, but it was a liquid ounce. I could not simply palm and pocket this. Nor could I merely pass the tray untouched. The whole ward would obviously see that. Neither could I just press the cup to my lips, as Pops would surely notice. I had no choice but to allow the water to enter my mouth. Only then could I evade detection as the whited sepulcher that I had become. But once in my mouth, the water could not be allowed to proceed down my throat, lest it nourish the seed of damnation inside me.

I was a skinny, limber child who could easily double over on the pew. It seems only obvious that I would assume this reverent, contemplative pose after taking the water. Letting the water trickle out from my mouth onto my knee thus became child’s play. My father, who could detect whether or not water had been sipped from the small paper cup, would never notice the four-inch wet spot on my knee. Or, if all else failed, I could wait until the sacrament was over, go out into the foyer, run the drinking fountain, and place my lips into the stream of fresh, clean water. Only then would I allow the damning water to dribble out of my mouth and down the drain.

This continued for three years.

As I neared my twelfth birthday, I realized what would soon bring my house of cards crashing down around me: the required interview with the bishop prior to my ordination to the priesthood. I had the Articles of Faith down pat, but I had no idea what questions the bishop would ask me nor what the consequences would be for failing to answer one correctly. Public humiliation? Denial of the priesthood? I didn’t know, but my conscience was not completely seared by my wicked past. I resolved that I would not tell a lie to the bishop. I knew I was already in deep enough.

The bulk of the interview passed without note—my worries were for naught—until that last question. The one designed to catch sinners like me.

Yes, there were things in my life that would keep me from receiving the Priesthood.

Lower lip quivering, my mouth opened. And though the powers of hell conspired against me, making the walls close in around me, my throat dry up, and my stomach clench, I confessed.

I can still hear the bishop laughing.

(First published in issue 152 of Sunstone.)

Most people believe that they don’t enjoy poetry.   Perhaps they’ve been over-exposed to poetry that is inaccessible. Perhaps they can’t separate poetry from their high school or college experiences of being forced to write papers about poems that other people say are good.  Whatever it is, there are definitely some mental blocks out there when it comes to reading poetry. (Despite the number of people who WRITE it, which is the subject of another post I hope to write soon.) I see Segullah as being in a good position to broaden its readers’ exposure to poetry and show them that it can be enjoyable. 

Of course, this can’t happen if we don’t get enough quality submissions!  At Segullah we are hoping that with publicity and with our poetry contest we will gradually begin receiving more and more good stuff. And as poets realize there is a place for them to publish, they will be more willing to see themselves as poets and perhaps work harder. 

I can’t over-emphasize how important it is to a poet to know that there are places to publish.  I myself didn’t start writing poetry as an adult until I discovered Exponent II and Irreantum as potential places to publish. So I have a definite sense of mission for Segullah, both in terms of creating an audience for poetry and providing a forum for poets. 

But I have some mixed feelings when it comes to setting standards of quality for Segullah.  When I was first writing poetry, I wrote some stuff that was, well,  not really great. At that time, Harlow Clark was poetry editor at Irreantum and he accepted some of my (weak) stuff. He even wrote an article in Irreantum around that time called “Room to be Lousy” (which he insists wasn’t specifically about me, but hey, I’m not stupid) in which he spoke of the need for a place for growing poets to publish even when they are not very good yet. I can’t argue with him—probably if I hadn’t seen that success early on, I would have given up.

Which puts me in a difficult position as a poetry editor now. I want to foster the growth of new LDS poets. But if I publish lousy stuff, better poets, potential contributors, will read Segullah and think that it is not for them and so they won’t send me anything. I want to keep high standards so that we will receive high-quality submissions and so that the audience will learn what good poetry is. But I want to give “lousy” poets who show some potential a chance.  When I don’t feel we have much really great stuff to put in an issue, how far should I lower our standards in order to fill pages and in order to give new poets a chance?  Do you other editors struggle with this question?

At Segullah, when we (the poetry board) are deciding what to publish and when we have enough decent submissions that we can be picky, here are the criteria that we use:  Is it a quality piece?  Does it speak to a woman’s experience?  Does it speak to a Mormon’s experience?  Even better:  does it speak to a Mormon woman’s experience?  Does it address our issue’s theme?  Although we hope we haven’t published any bad poetry, we sometimes publish poetry that is less technically skilled because its theme is pertinent to our mission, or because it fits the issue’s theme so well.

For example, here’s a poem of mine that Segullah published a few years ago.

Angels of Mercy

by Darlene Young

 

The Seventh Ward Relief Society

presidency argued long and soft

whether Janie Goodmansen deserved

to have the sisters bring her family meals.

It seems that precedent was vague–

no one was sure if “boob job” qualified

as a legitimate call for aid.

Janie herself had never asked for help–

a fault they found it harder to forgive

even than the vanity behind

the worldliness of D-cup ambition.

But in the end charity did not fail.

The sisters marched on in grim duty

each evening clutching covered casseroles

(for, after all, it wasn’t the children’s fault).

More than once, though, by some oversight

the dessert came out a little short, as if

by some consensus they all knew

that Janie’s husband, Jim, could do

without a piece of pie that night.

Obviously, this is not a very technically accomplished poem. BUT it addressed the Mormon woman’s experience and it fit the issue theme (bodies) perfectly. We’re hoping that very skillful poets will not read this poem and decide that we do not prefer to publish technically accomplished poetry—and at the same time, we are hoping that people who think they do not like poetry (or can’t understand it) will read a poem like this and think, “Hey, that said something in a new way. That’s a poem, and I enjoyed it.”  Of course, we are often able to balance less-crafted poems like this one with other more-crafted poems within the same issue (but not always—we can dream, though, right?).

(And I do have to say here that I am not using terms like “crafted” and “technical skill” to mean “less accessible” and “requires a dictionary and a book of literary allusions in order to understand.” These terms are not equivalent, and the mistaken belief that they are has caused many an unfortunate situation for people who might otherwise like to read or write poetry. But that’s another topic for another post.)

How about you other editors?  What is your submission pool like?  Do you get enough quality submissions that you are able to pick poems that contribute to a certain flavor you wish to convey? Do you have a sense of mission? What do you hope for the future of poetry in your publication?

And what about you readers? Do you enjoy the poetry you’ve found in independent LDS pubs? What do you want to see more (or less) of?