"St. Catherine of Siena Invested" by di Paola‘Young Catherine’s Vision’ and Other Poetry by Mary Jane Myers The Society May 19, 2025 Beauty, Ekphrastic, Poetry 2 Comments . Young Catherine’s Vision —on St. Catherine of Siena Invested with the Dominican Habit by Giovanni di Paola A maiden kneels on gray da Torre stone. Save for a crucifix, the room is bare. Her thighs seem formed of otherworldly bone; her anorexic body drifts on air. As if in answer to her fervent prayer, three visitants materialize from somewhere in the bright celestial skies. Augustine, Dominic and Francis: each extends to her his order’s vestment cloth. A holy path is now within her reach. From Dominic she takes a fabric swath, avows to Christ her everlasting troth. Not pledged to any convent’s cloistered schools, she’s free to act outside of rigid rules. A sainted figure, kindly yet austere. She fed the poor, gave succor to the sick, Siena streets, her modest early sphere. Her reputation spread. Now in the thick of church and state disputes, her bailiwick was vestal holiness; untaught, she knew how best to bring the quarrelers to Christ’s view. She said: Inside your mind, construct a cell from which your mind and soul can never flee. Giovanni limns her mystic citadel. His paintings soar to heaven’s apogee, a gold-flecked craft enabling us to see medieval scenes suffused with saving grace, where God’s light permeates the commonplace. . . Cross Country, 1964 Our family set out Westwood Ho! that summer, from sleepy Naperville to California, our Rambler station wagon overstuffed with camping gear, suitcases, coolers, books. Dad stopped to study each historic marker. We three bored youngsters scrambled out to read, puzzling over sundry random facts. Buffalo roamed the plains, in countless millions; pioneers died from fevers, froze in blizzards; Lewis and Clark recorded unknown species; American settlers warred with Indian tribes. Somewhere in eastern Colorado’s desert, Dad turned onto an unpaved country road. Course gravel pelted, gritty sand kicked up, scorching air shimmered, tumbleweeds cavorted, dust funnels spun against the flat horizon, beyond the ken of humans. Then we saw, uncharted on our dog-eared Esso map: a jagged row of desolate board shanties, a small ramshackle store, encrusted windows hung with sticky paper thick with bugs, a Mobil pump, its fire-red Pegasus bleached to anemic pink. Dad braked the Rambler. We all piled out except standoffish Mom. She slumped in the front seat, her eyes shut tight, fanning her face with a tatty Woman’s Day. I stood beneath a drooping, brown-leafed tree, flailing my arms to ward off buzzing horseflies. Dad gestured vaguely toward the barren waste. __See kids, this here’s the spot where I grew up, __five miles out there, a windmill pumped our water __out of a well. You had to keep an eye out, __horses would trip and fall and break their legs __from stepping into holes of prairie dogs. __The bad old days, tell it to the Marines! __We all got lost like birds in the wilderness. Dumbstruck, I stared at him. My face scrunched up. My cosy childish world was shattered. Dizzy, I leaned against the tree to right myself, clenching my lips, suppressing sobs of fear. My younger siblings hadn’t listened. Whooping, they crouched to hunt for Folsom arrowheads, provoked a giant beetle with a stick. __Let’s go, kids. This train’s now leaving the station! That place must be the source of all my poems. . . Mary Jane Myers resides in Springfield, Illinois. She is a retired JD/CPA tax specialist. Her debut short story collection Curious Affairs was published by Paul Dry Books in 2018. NOTE TO READERS: If you enjoyed this poem or other content, please consider making a donation to the Society of Classical Poets. The Society of Classical Poets does not endorse any views expressed in individual poems or commentary. ***Read Our Comments Policy Here*** 2 Responses Julian D. Woodruff May 19, 2025 Thank you for introducing me to an obviously important painter-illuminator. It will take me a while to see how this particular work fits into his oeuvre as a whole. Your 2nd is a striking narrative recollection. I hope you are gathering a number of these to present together for an engrossing, intense read. Reply Joseph S. Salemi May 19, 2025 These are two excellent poems, each of a very different nature and approach. “Young Catherine’s Vision” is an ekphrastic piece, linked to the di Paola painting not just with description but also with a detailed understanding of the painting’s subject and meaning. It also has historical narrative of Catherine’s life and work, and the closing stanza makes an adept connection between the painting itself, and Catherine’s statement about creating a cell within one’s mind. “Cross Country, 1964” is in an altogether different style and mode. Rather than fictive mimesis it is diegesis (extended narrative with limited figurative language). But the narrative details are so interesting that one never loses interest. I personally was delighted with the mention of so many things that I remember from that time period: the Rambler station wagon, the Esso map, the Mobil gas pump with the red Pegasus figure, Woman’s Day magazine. Even the expression “Tell it to the Marines!” was a blast from the past. If a poet can handle both of these approaches, that is a sign of mature skill. Notice that rhyme is appropriate for the first poem, while the second needs the latitude of blank verse. Also, the second is filled with vivid diction that gives the reader an almost photographic sense of the time and place: the belongings packed into the car, the details of the road, the insects, the ramshackle store and shanties, the father’s words about prairie dog holes and horses breaking their legs, the Folsom arrowheads. The first poem is otherworldly and mystical. The second is closely linked to the earth. Many poets can only work in one particular mode. Some can work in both, but with a marked preference for one. A very few can achieve that higher level where a single poem will partake of both atmospheres, and even in those cases the achievement will not be a frequent occurrence. My one criticism is the deviation from meter that occurs in both poems. I can see that in the second piece “Dad braked the Rambler” completes the iambic pentameter that started with “bleached to anemic pink” in the immediately previous line, but the line spacing annoys me. It would have been easy to complete both of these lines separately without any harm to the metrical contract. In the first poem, “three visitants materialize” simply doesn’t work as iambic pentameter, at least not to my ear. Reply Leave a Reply Cancel ReplyYour email address will not be published.CommentName* Email* Website Δ This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Julian D. Woodruff May 19, 2025 Thank you for introducing me to an obviously important painter-illuminator. It will take me a while to see how this particular work fits into his oeuvre as a whole. Your 2nd is a striking narrative recollection. I hope you are gathering a number of these to present together for an engrossing, intense read. Reply
Joseph S. Salemi May 19, 2025 These are two excellent poems, each of a very different nature and approach. “Young Catherine’s Vision” is an ekphrastic piece, linked to the di Paola painting not just with description but also with a detailed understanding of the painting’s subject and meaning. It also has historical narrative of Catherine’s life and work, and the closing stanza makes an adept connection between the painting itself, and Catherine’s statement about creating a cell within one’s mind. “Cross Country, 1964” is in an altogether different style and mode. Rather than fictive mimesis it is diegesis (extended narrative with limited figurative language). But the narrative details are so interesting that one never loses interest. I personally was delighted with the mention of so many things that I remember from that time period: the Rambler station wagon, the Esso map, the Mobil gas pump with the red Pegasus figure, Woman’s Day magazine. Even the expression “Tell it to the Marines!” was a blast from the past. If a poet can handle both of these approaches, that is a sign of mature skill. Notice that rhyme is appropriate for the first poem, while the second needs the latitude of blank verse. Also, the second is filled with vivid diction that gives the reader an almost photographic sense of the time and place: the belongings packed into the car, the details of the road, the insects, the ramshackle store and shanties, the father’s words about prairie dog holes and horses breaking their legs, the Folsom arrowheads. The first poem is otherworldly and mystical. The second is closely linked to the earth. Many poets can only work in one particular mode. Some can work in both, but with a marked preference for one. A very few can achieve that higher level where a single poem will partake of both atmospheres, and even in those cases the achievement will not be a frequent occurrence. My one criticism is the deviation from meter that occurs in both poems. I can see that in the second piece “Dad braked the Rambler” completes the iambic pentameter that started with “bleached to anemic pink” in the immediately previous line, but the line spacing annoys me. It would have been easy to complete both of these lines separately without any harm to the metrical contract. In the first poem, “three visitants materialize” simply doesn’t work as iambic pentameter, at least not to my ear. Reply
