Notes for a Postlude: Poems

by Jeremiah Webster, J P O'Connor (foreword)

Notes for a Postlude explores how to "keep faith" in our post-truth moment. Poems in this collection draw inspiration from the COVID pandemic, the rise of Trumpism / Christian Nationalism, the challenges of parenting, and the persistent witness and beauty of creation. Notes for a Postlude seeks to enchant the imagination back toward the beatitude economy of God's kingdom.

70 pages, Hardcover

Published September 29, 2023

Reviews

[Jeff Lochhead · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly grateful for poetry that can articulate the thoughts and experiences that resonate within me. From the humorous yet poignant “Middle Age” to the lament of the sirens wail of social technology found in themes of the “Witness” quartet and “July 4, 2023”. Lastly, and most notably, Webster’s critique and consternation of the American church fills a void lacking in critical thought from within.

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems meditate on questions that I think most of us have asked ourselves in the last seven years (if not even longer). How do we live in a world that both delights and grieves us daily? How does hope persist through the many fractures and brutalities—mass shootings, political tribalism, a deadly pandemic, the myriad and mundane ways we dehumanize each other—and what does it look like to “Get on with it. / Even if you choose / to stand”?

The cluster of poems that most resonated with me—“Trump Tongue™,” “Evangelical,” “Gospel,” and the titular “Notes for a Postlude”—grapple with the disorienting and painful experience of being an American Christian and seeing so many fellow Christians (and loved ones) embrace Christian Nationalism. This is the very experience that significantly damaged my relationship to the church for years, and it was gratifying to see the honesty and vulnerability with which Webster meditates on it. But I also love these poems because they don’t simply wag a finger in a posture of moral superiority (which would be very easy and tempting to do). Instead, they interrogate the very bedrock on which Christian Nationalism builds: an utterly disenchanted view of Christ, one poisoned by a beggared collective imagination. A collective imagination that dethrones God’s grace and imposes in its place a man-made idol, a “pale American Christ” for whom “power is the currency / of heaven’s beatitude” and who insists that we “revise the angel’s herald / from ‘all people’ to ‘our people’.” The language in these poems cuts with scalpel precision, revealing the terminal tumor, and asks us to interrogate ourselves—our own predilections for the idol—as it does so. I felt these lines from "Trump Tongue™" in my very bones: "As flames consume the house / friends and relatives envy-post / how the light looks like / success."

My mind also keeps circling around this passage from “Gospel,” I think because it exemplifies the heart of this disenchantment:

“Is the world content with a world
where the bones of nymphs, gnomes
preserved in enviable revelry, are never found,
where leviathan has no dominion,
where flowers are only caught,
crushed in the machinery,
where Leda receives no recompense,
where Frodo is left for dead?”

When our collective imagination becomes so limited—when wonder is replaced by cynicism, grace by conceited displays of power—how can we possibly end up anywhere other than here? And how do we authentically encounter God in the midst of this? These poems offer no easy answers, but I’m grateful for their meditation on these questions.

[Elder Gideon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jeremiah Webster's incisive poems in Notes for a Postlude penetrate the ironies of our climate. Its clarion call dares to stand on “the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith” as its speakers indict all nationalism, extremism, and ruination. These verses often take the reader into the heart of the middle of the night insomnia, where so many wrestle with conflicting images of the future for children, species, and planet. Like the prophet Isaiah and his own namesake, Webster's poetry demands honesty with oneself while calling the reader back to spiritual inwardness, where rest awaits.

[Anna Purkey · Rating 5 out of 5]

After graduating from college I felt a distinct lack in my life. I missed the conversations I got to have with my classmates and professors in my English classes, walking through campus discussing the nature of God and God's relationship with us. This anthology of poems brings me back into that conversation again. As I am reading these poems I am once again meditating on the deeper realities of nature and spirituality. It's a good second-place to actually being in a class with Dr. Jeremiah Webster again.

[Dave Greene · Rating 4 out of 5]

NOTES FOR A POSTLUDE is a compelling collection of short poems with prophetic clarity of a nearly lost and forgotten America that has now been marched to the crossroads of modern-day mythos and rejected reality. A wistful undercurrent of what once was runs beneath the look at present day American life distorted by self-serving theology, polarized opinion pieces, and a loss of natural wonder that leaves looming specters of synthetic virtuality for future generations. But gems of hope are there too, breaking through manufactured mendacities of modern life.

I got a lot out of this short book of poems, there was a lot of food for self-reflection: while resonating with the message can I avoid becoming part of what I reject? And working through the expressive language filled with allusions to past history and culture was like a seminar in the humanities. I liked the colorful descriptive language, particularly of nature; picking berries from the side of a logging road in the Cascades is something I have also done and shooting tin cans with a .22 in the wild acreage of a landscape shaped by glaciers too. These natural visions bring back innocent memories and a bit of longing... for something I can’t quite grasp.

[Kira Lemke · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a fantastic book of poetry!! It is a true reckoning of our present moment. What a privilege to read!