My eldest daughter is on spring break, and today we drove out to a neighboring town for midday adventure. A new-to-us public library, lunch in a converted Victorian house, a community garden out back, and an art gallery. When I entered the room in the video below, I knew that this was the place to read this poem for you. I love when that happens: unexpected conversions of time and meaning.
Note: I don’t ordinarily talk about faith in this space—at least not directly. The experience is at once so close and so mysterious that I can hardly put it into words; that isn’t the work “assigned to my brush” (as Czeslaw Milosz says). But as this week is Holy Week in my church tradition, I’m drawing in this Annunciation poem. It’s a feat of complex poetic wordplay and meaning and can be appreciated simply in terms of choice and form—but it is also one of the religious poems (and there are many) that has struck me most deeply over the years. (Additionally, I’m posting several days early, as Thursday through Sunday of this week will not be for Substack, but for walking very intentionally through sorrow into joy.)
Listen to my reading of “Annunciation” by Scott Cairns in the video above.
Read along to the poem here.
Thinking about the poem:
The sounds, the alliteration! “the kindled kindred of a King”
The interjections: “do you feel the pulse?” and “Oh my people” That Oh my people at the end of the first line may be my favorite moment in any poem; the impulse behind the words is so deeply felt, so connective with others.
The surprising phrases like “within the wholly earthen / compound of our kind”
The images: “dew lights gently, / suffusing the pure fleece” and also all the sparks, fire, and flame.
. . . And good heavens, this line: “lately banked noetic fire.” Not one word of that phrase is wasted. If you take the time to work out the meaning, I promise the poem will begin to unfold meaning upon meaning for you, sense upon sense.
Some context: the event of the Annunciation is often bundled into Christmas readings, when it makes sense to remember the angel Gabriel announcing to Mary that she will give birth to Christ. But remember, that announcement happened nine months before Jesus was born! So the church’s Feast of the Annunciation falls on March 25th, which this year is during Holy Week (the week leading up to Easter Sunday).
For more on the Annunciation:
at Hearthstone Fables has curated lovely images and insights on the significance of Annunciation arriving during Holy Week, on the heels of the equinox and the cusp of spring: “St. Gabriel to Mary flies / this is the end of snow & ice”“Being placed within the context of Lent allows the Annunciation to encompass the arch of Jesus in one potent day - the alpha and the omega, birth and death and resurrection, all culminate in this single vernal breath of conception. Anchored to the Spring Equinox, the Annunciation points across the year to Christ’s birth, celebrated near the Winter Solstice.”
What do you think about Cairns’s poem?
Are there any images, phrases, sounds, or insights that stand out to you?
Do you have a favorite poem that fits into the church season of Lent or the observation of Holy Week?
Blessings to you if you observe, appreciation of your patience if you don’t, and I will see you back here a week from Saturday with some fresh writing or new poetry reading.
so beautiful
thank you
I like Cairns' poem even better after hearing you read it.
And I used the Annunciation links to help me rework a poem that needed a little repair. Thank you.
The words "O my people" -- tomorrow, in the Good Friday service, we the choir will sing a song with that title, based on The Reproaches. Here's a choir I found doing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD6Evk0LMUQ