Poets sometimes look to nature for inspiration. Strong emotions or intense relationships can provide a spark as well. For poet Alex Mouw, he looks to his faith. The Samford University English professor published his first poetry collection earlier this year. It’s called The Unbelieving Yelp of Prey. The collection explores religion and place while playing with a variety of poetic forms.
Mouw spoke with WBHM’s faith and culture reporter Vahini Shori.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
Can you talk to me a little bit about your faith background?
Yeah. I grew up in a Calvinist denomination in West Michigan, a small, originally Dutch Calvinist denomination. And that theological education was really, important to me and has, I think, remains audible in a lot of the poems that I write.
An unexpected thing that the theologian John Calvin said is that we ourselves contain miracles enough to occupy our minds if only we are not irked at paying attention to them. That sort of attentive, humanist outlook, the idea that people just are miraculous and deserve attention on that basis, that sort of wonder or awestruck posture, I think, is pretty central to the way that I write and think about the value of writing.
And what inspired you to explore your faith in this way? Or is it an exploration of your faith?
I think it is, and I don't think I had any choice. Lots of poets write about where they came from, the kinds of early formations that they experienced. So that's sort of natural. But for me, the language of faith, the experience of faith is so integral to who I am that there's really no way to write a book, at least a first book, and not have it use that idiom, explore those things.
When I was writing this, a friend introduced me to a spiritual practice called Examen, which is named in one of the poems. And in that practice, you sort of take a day or an experience, and you, in your mind, hold it up, and you twist it around and look at it from different angles and examine its facets. And you just try to name the things about that day or that experience that moved you closer to the divine and the things about it that moved you farther away from the divine. And all of that, for me, is supposed to channel wonder or even holiness in everyday experience, a kind of a manic reverence.
Manic reverence definitely comes through. I'm thinking now when you say that, the whole My Lord series.
My Lord I’ve failed again, gone a week
without your presence — no statues or old trees
coming alive before my eyes, no slap
of light and wonder as I lean over
the bridge to watch brown and oiled water.
Master of the photon, of gluons, can you
make a gleaming breakfast plate or coffee
mug the start of understanding?
Of course you can, but what am I? Your goon
who searches books, riffles the pages like
a thousand doors whipping open then shut.
Who turns his favorite record up, the one
where the drummer beats the crash cymbal like
a captive who swears he doesn’t know a thing.
How did you come up with the title, and how did you come up with this theme of prey?
The “unbelieving yelp of prey” is a line from the middle of the first poem. Both the fact that belief and prey are embedded in the words, while being changed into new forms evoked the sense that the believer is both a seeker and a prey of the divine, that consolation and desolation are close to one another, inseparable from one another. I think the book ended up exploring those things through especially these images of raptors, of hawks, things that I would see all the time.
Vahini Shori is a Report for America corps member covering faith and culture for WBHM.
This reporting is supported by WBHM’s Local Journalism Innovation Fund. Find out more about the fund and how to donate here.
