The Poet of The Poet The choice of poem from Sophia’s work to be set “in conversation” with Todd Turner’s Wondrous Lessons can only be the one which Todd has threaded into the sequence. The Poet comes from Sophia’s first collection, Antiquity. The image accompanying the text of the poem is a photo of Sophia taken at the age at which she wrote The Poet: at age 13. You will forgive the title, The Poet
“Out of the Underworld of Loss”… Todd Turner’s poem sequence, Wondrous Lessons, written for Sophia’s Notebook, is indeed both wonderful and full of rich insight. Reflecting the conversation with time (capital-T Time) which Sophia thought so necessary to both art and society, Todd draws on the life and work of Keats as the frame for the text. Keats, like Sophia, died very young (at 25 to Sophia’s 22), but he also (as did Sophia) achieved
There is a burning in the garden… Two of Sophia’s poems were printed in the journal of creative and spiritual exploration, Jesus the Imagination, published by the US Center for Sophiological Studies, Angelico Press (Vol Vl: MMXXll, pp 92-93). Sophiology is premised on the idea of divine wisdom. Usually conceptualised in female terms, divine wisdom has links to the concept in Jewish mysticism of the Shekhinah or dwelling place. In a sense, to search for wisdom is
Remembering John Keats... Window, Keats' House “Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man…” It’s February 23rd today. On Friday, February 23rd 1821, John Keats died in Rome in the narrow rooms of a little apartment tucked beside the Spanish Steps. Sophia visited it as a small child. It had quite an effect on her. This was the house of a writer, and 4-year-old Sophie—pint-sized lover of words, maker
Keats: Forever Young Keats died today. February 23rd, 1821. He was 25 years old. It is a select group, the band of poets who died young. The admission price is steep. I wish Sophia had not had to pay it. I wish she was not now, like Keats, “forever young.” Yet she is. She will always be 22, as he is 25. “Bury me in garlands/ Of burning paper/ With all my pollen sparks of steel,”