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What Will Soon Take Place: Poems
What Will Soon Take Place is an imaginative journey through the book of Revelation. It offers a poet’s view of the prophetic, not in the sense of seeking out clues to the “end times,” but a means of taking this strange, fantastic book of scripture and letting it read its way into personal lives. This is not prophecy as foretelling, but telling us the truths of our lives in the light of God’s light. But rather than escape into some safe, heavenly realm, the poems return to our homes and meet us in the form of our neighbors, persecuted believers, and in shopping malls with vivid, edged-up language and the authority to believe and doubt at once.
96 pages, Paperback
Published December 5, 2017
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About the author
Tania Runyan
14 books42 followersTania Runyan is the author of several poetry collections, including What Will Soon Take Place, Second Sky, and A Thousand Vessels. Her first book-length creative nonfiction title, Making Peace With Paradise: An Autobiography of a California Girl, was released in 2022. Tania’s instructional guides, How to Read a Poem, How to Write a Poem, and How to Write a Form Poem, are used in classrooms across the country, and her poems have appeared in publications such as Poetry, Image, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, and The Christian Century. Tania was awarded an NEA Literature Fellowship in 2011. She lives with her family in Illinois, where she teaches sixth grade language arts.
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
November 28, 2017
Reading Tania Runyan’s What Will Soon Take Place brought me back to the moment I discovered the Book of Revelation in my early 20s—I didn’t “believe” it in some literal way, so much as recognize in it a terrifying mirror of my own interior anxiety—a strange visitation, of course, but also an outward manifestation, in sacred language, of the personal apocalypse I’d experienced of panic, fear, and grief. Its images spoke to me, though I didn’t know what to do with their fearsome poetry, or how to make room for them within the context of my faith and world view.
Runyan’s poems know what to do with them. They make emotional and psychological room for John’s vision in the contemporary world we recognize—claiming voices that are at once otherworldly and wildly, terribly familiar, as when “The Antichrist at the Mall” says “your god took off awhile ago/ like a balloon through the skylights./I am available today only.” They vow to cleave to the world, like the speaker in “The First Horse of the Apocalypse,” who will “pull…out” the arrows from its shoulders, and “will stroke your heaving flanks,/…even if the book says I am too late.” Most of all, in their fierce lyric beauty, they ask formidable questions, questions that shake me and take my breath away—questions about theodicy and child abuse and the oncologist’s office and drones that kill children in schoolrooms and God’s love. In “The Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse,” Runyan writes, “why invent a cadaverous horse/ to instruct us, why sharpen more swords,/ why, bloodied lamb, even break the seal?” The questions haunt me; the images hold me; the poems do not preach, but sit close by and sing, and will stay with me. This is a powerful book.
Runyan’s poems know what to do with them. They make emotional and psychological room for John’s vision in the contemporary world we recognize—claiming voices that are at once otherworldly and wildly, terribly familiar, as when “The Antichrist at the Mall” says “your god took off awhile ago/ like a balloon through the skylights./I am available today only.” They vow to cleave to the world, like the speaker in “The First Horse of the Apocalypse,” who will “pull…out” the arrows from its shoulders, and “will stroke your heaving flanks,/…even if the book says I am too late.” Most of all, in their fierce lyric beauty, they ask formidable questions, questions that shake me and take my breath away—questions about theodicy and child abuse and the oncologist’s office and drones that kill children in schoolrooms and God’s love. In “The Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse,” Runyan writes, “why invent a cadaverous horse/ to instruct us, why sharpen more swords,/ why, bloodied lamb, even break the seal?” The questions haunt me; the images hold me; the poems do not preach, but sit close by and sing, and will stay with me. This is a powerful book.
December 27, 2018
Full disclosure: I adore Tania. I want to be like her when I grow up. So I am biased about how much I love this book. But also I love this book. The language and imagery and jokes are spectacular, and so is the heartwrench in some of the tougher poems. This is, after all, a book of poetry about Revelations. One of my favorite poems, which I read at an open mic night and which my students always request now, is the "Book of the Dead". But there's literally no poems that I don't love in this book. Just buy it already.
October 10, 2017
This is a really powerful book of poems. At their best, these poems are politically engaged, resonant works of lyric potency. Runyan takes the language and imagery of the Book of Revelations and weaves it with the everyday and mundane of modern life, creating startling juxtapositions. Occasionally, the poems are merely clever, and lack the depth I want from poetry; however, these poems are, for the most part, striking. Lovers of contemporary poetry will thoroughly enjoy this collection.
October 13, 2017
Should someone who barely ever reads poetry review this book? I admit, in the last couple years I have begun to meditate on more and more poetry, choosing to line more shelves with poets of all kinds.
I found I was blown away by the serious, and humorous words. I saw hunger, tormented souls, the will to survive, depravity of mankind, the violence of end times, love and grace.
Powerful-read-it-slowly book.
I was given a copy of this to review for publication Dec. 5, 2017.
I found I was blown away by the serious, and humorous words. I saw hunger, tormented souls, the will to survive, depravity of mankind, the violence of end times, love and grace.
Powerful-read-it-slowly book.
I was given a copy of this to review for publication Dec. 5, 2017.
December 21, 2017
Another great collection by one of our best Christian poets.
November 29, 2017
Tania Runyan has conjured up a strange school of apocalyptic fish with "What Will Soon Take Place" (Paraclete Press). Each of the poems in this collection, which explores the book of Revelation through a personal lens, wriggles with wit, catches light like so many shining rainbow scales, and sets ripples in motion in the reader’s mind. “What is the book of Revelation,” Runyan forces us to ask, “to me?”
The book opens with a poem called “Patmos” that immediately sets the tone for the whole thing:
“No cave, cleft, or ocean shattering bluffs / The only trumpet ‘Hot Cross Buns’ / blatting from my daughter’s open window.”
The reader who expects to find angels ushering in the End Times with the brassy blast of a bugle finds only Runyan’s offspring here. In this poem, we are squarely seated in the here and now, tethered to the present like the “whimpering beagle roped to a magnolia” that appears a few lines later. This is clearly not John the Revelator’s book.
That being said, readers who have brushed up on Revelation will reap untold rewards in "What Will Soon Take Place." I know it helped that, in writing a twelve-part series for In Touch magazine about my first journey through the Bible as a whole, I read a graphic novelization of Revelation twice in an attempt to see its images with greater clarity. When I picked up Runyan’s book, I brought this experience to the table with me.
I also brought a certain inexperience, too. While I wrote a regrettable body of insufferable poetry in high school, I have not read a surplus of poems by other people. I wanted to read this collection, however, because I could not escape one question: “What would a book of poems inspired by Revelation be like?”
As I read, I found myself imagining each poem as a tincture—a world distilled in word form on a page. One drop under the tongue, and Runyan’s visions sprang to life in my bloodstream and my brain alike. Like any good chef that manages to wield contrasting flavors to tantalizing effect, these poems marry a multitude of elements—some seemingly oppositional—to maximize their impact. Wit is counterbalanced by gravity. Modernity intermingles with the Iron Age. Reverence holds hands with irreverence—the sacred with the profane. Absurdity stands shoulder-to-shoulder with clear-eyed reason.
“You’ve got a jumbo rainbow / over your head and a sun / for a face like something / from My Little Pony,” Runyan writes at the beginning of a poem titled, “The Angel and the Little Scroll.” Here Revelation becomes a cartoon, with the titular scroll looking “like a golden Fruit Roll-Up.” Where many writers would read Revelation 10 and see something decidedly serious, Runyan sees a child’s sandbox instead, and sits down with her pale and plastic spade accordingly. I love how effortlessly she does this throughout the book.
As I said earlier, however, the playfulness in these poems is counterbalanced by more serious scenes. Sometimes these two impulses coexist. Consider the opening stanza of “Maybe an Idol,” which reads, “The hot rotten eggs of my destruction / locust stingers jouncing in my skin like arrow: fantasies of stasis.” Here Runyan writes of looking in the mirror and longing for eternal youth. (The hot rotten eggs of my destruction. I want to see this line on a movie theater marquee as the title of a new film by Werner Herzog. I want to hear him read this poem, too.) “Sometimes I catch a flash of fifteen in the mirror,” the poet continues. She wants to remain young forever, and this desire is the very thing that incubates and spoils and threatens to crack open and destroy her from the inside. Who can escape the End Times of the flesh, after all? Who can evade old age? Who can outrun wrinkles?
These are the sorts of scenes that unfold in "What Soon Will Take Place." For every time Runyan writes a line about childbirth like, “After the baby ripped a lightning bolt in her perineum,” she offers something equally whimsical elsewhere. In “New Jerusalem,” we find Jesus using—well, insofar as I can tell—a Bedazzler! “Pain and tears will pass away / but for now he bedazzles / your blisters and tissue, / saline and nerve.” Jesus manages to make something pretty out of our pain. I never knew such compact writing could hold so much. Each poem in this book is an overstuffed suitcase on the verge of bursting open and filling the Earth with the contents of Tania Runyan’s mind.
I will admit I do not understand all of the poems in this book, and suspect that living with them a little longer will crack them open a little more, allowing light to illuminate the darker interiors of each piece. But wrestling with a poem does not diminish the enjoyment of the reading experience. If anything, it enhances it. Art that resists easy interpretation requires more of us, challenges us to grow, and refuses to leave us unchanged.
Reading "What Will Soon Take Place"—surrounding myself with all of Tania Runyan’s slippery, poetic fish—I thought of those spas where doctor fish nibble at peoples’ toes, eating dead skin. There is something beautiful and surreal and grotesque and ticklish about it all. The same could be said of this book. Chew on my toes, little fish, and hasten the arrival of the New Jerusalem.
The book opens with a poem called “Patmos” that immediately sets the tone for the whole thing:
“No cave, cleft, or ocean shattering bluffs / The only trumpet ‘Hot Cross Buns’ / blatting from my daughter’s open window.”
The reader who expects to find angels ushering in the End Times with the brassy blast of a bugle finds only Runyan’s offspring here. In this poem, we are squarely seated in the here and now, tethered to the present like the “whimpering beagle roped to a magnolia” that appears a few lines later. This is clearly not John the Revelator’s book.
That being said, readers who have brushed up on Revelation will reap untold rewards in "What Will Soon Take Place." I know it helped that, in writing a twelve-part series for In Touch magazine about my first journey through the Bible as a whole, I read a graphic novelization of Revelation twice in an attempt to see its images with greater clarity. When I picked up Runyan’s book, I brought this experience to the table with me.
I also brought a certain inexperience, too. While I wrote a regrettable body of insufferable poetry in high school, I have not read a surplus of poems by other people. I wanted to read this collection, however, because I could not escape one question: “What would a book of poems inspired by Revelation be like?”
As I read, I found myself imagining each poem as a tincture—a world distilled in word form on a page. One drop under the tongue, and Runyan’s visions sprang to life in my bloodstream and my brain alike. Like any good chef that manages to wield contrasting flavors to tantalizing effect, these poems marry a multitude of elements—some seemingly oppositional—to maximize their impact. Wit is counterbalanced by gravity. Modernity intermingles with the Iron Age. Reverence holds hands with irreverence—the sacred with the profane. Absurdity stands shoulder-to-shoulder with clear-eyed reason.
“You’ve got a jumbo rainbow / over your head and a sun / for a face like something / from My Little Pony,” Runyan writes at the beginning of a poem titled, “The Angel and the Little Scroll.” Here Revelation becomes a cartoon, with the titular scroll looking “like a golden Fruit Roll-Up.” Where many writers would read Revelation 10 and see something decidedly serious, Runyan sees a child’s sandbox instead, and sits down with her pale and plastic spade accordingly. I love how effortlessly she does this throughout the book.
As I said earlier, however, the playfulness in these poems is counterbalanced by more serious scenes. Sometimes these two impulses coexist. Consider the opening stanza of “Maybe an Idol,” which reads, “The hot rotten eggs of my destruction / locust stingers jouncing in my skin like arrow: fantasies of stasis.” Here Runyan writes of looking in the mirror and longing for eternal youth. (The hot rotten eggs of my destruction. I want to see this line on a movie theater marquee as the title of a new film by Werner Herzog. I want to hear him read this poem, too.) “Sometimes I catch a flash of fifteen in the mirror,” the poet continues. She wants to remain young forever, and this desire is the very thing that incubates and spoils and threatens to crack open and destroy her from the inside. Who can escape the End Times of the flesh, after all? Who can evade old age? Who can outrun wrinkles?
These are the sorts of scenes that unfold in "What Soon Will Take Place." For every time Runyan writes a line about childbirth like, “After the baby ripped a lightning bolt in her perineum,” she offers something equally whimsical elsewhere. In “New Jerusalem,” we find Jesus using—well, insofar as I can tell—a Bedazzler! “Pain and tears will pass away / but for now he bedazzles / your blisters and tissue, / saline and nerve.” Jesus manages to make something pretty out of our pain. I never knew such compact writing could hold so much. Each poem in this book is an overstuffed suitcase on the verge of bursting open and filling the Earth with the contents of Tania Runyan’s mind.
I will admit I do not understand all of the poems in this book, and suspect that living with them a little longer will crack them open a little more, allowing light to illuminate the darker interiors of each piece. But wrestling with a poem does not diminish the enjoyment of the reading experience. If anything, it enhances it. Art that resists easy interpretation requires more of us, challenges us to grow, and refuses to leave us unchanged.
Reading "What Will Soon Take Place"—surrounding myself with all of Tania Runyan’s slippery, poetic fish—I thought of those spas where doctor fish nibble at peoples’ toes, eating dead skin. There is something beautiful and surreal and grotesque and ticklish about it all. The same could be said of this book. Chew on my toes, little fish, and hasten the arrival of the New Jerusalem.
March 1, 2025
This was an incredible collection. Some were uncomfortable to read through, intentionally so, but like the book it follows takes you on a journey into Gods glory.
November 26, 2025
revelation is often bewildering and gloomy but maybe it doesn’t have to be!
November 21, 2017
I received a complimentary copy of What Will Soon Take Place in exchange for an honest evaluation of its merits.
One of the things about the Book of Revelation is that it is a hard book to process no matter what translation you read or view of the End Times you hold. If John Calvin wasn’t willing to write a commentary on Revelation, what can us relatively religious neophytes be able to discern from the book. Is it a true account of the Apocalypse written that employs imagery to cover for the fact the apostle couldn’t process what he was seeing? Was it simply a metaphorical dream filled with symbolism lost to the ages?
Poet Tania Runyan tackles this weighty tome by barreling in from the back door, or the garage as she puts it in her first piece titled “Patmos”. As she further examines the vision of Paul in verse, she does not shy away from the complexities of the work itself.
Just as Revelation itself is hard to interpret, Runyan has no desire to lead the reader on an easy romp through this piece of apocalyptic literature. The real world intrudes into the story with jarring regularity.
The content is clearly Christian, but the work is not sanitized for your protection. The world we are shown is a broken one filled with profanity, sex, destruction and death. This is the TV-14 version of Revelation.
But the thing most people forget is that the Book of Revelation is an unsettling book whose sharp edges we have become inured to because of the complex imagery and archaic language.
The letters to the seven churches was given fascinating update, including everything from the gritty message to Thyatira to the bile-inducing counsel for Laodecia. And any interpretative work on Revelation that includes a Depeche Mode reference is a winner in my book.
The image of Jesus breaking a jar of mayonnaise in "Our Sins Under a Glass Sea" and then cursing (though doing so in total context) juxtaposed with the sound made when he "breathed YHWH" gives the reader a bit of mental whiplash. This is not a criticism, but a nod to the human condition which causes one to swing from one extreme to the other.
The power in "The Seventh Seal" and "Locusts on the Earth" stand out, displaying the fearless nature of Runyan's writing.
Provocative titles like "The Antichrist at the Mall" and "The Great Harlot Takes a Selfie and the salty language in "En Route, Tikrit" remind one of the boldness of Whitman in Song of Myself when he said, "I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,/
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world."
"The Book of the Dead" makes you think about what it would really be like to list all the sins of the world, while "New Jerusalem" is the most moving, perhaps because I found it to be the most poignant.
My thoughts on What Will Soon Take Place are a bit scattered. Some of it I love, some of it confuses me and some of it makes me downright uncomfortable. Then again, the same came be said of Revelation itself.
It would seem these two volumes are perfect bedfellows.
One of the things about the Book of Revelation is that it is a hard book to process no matter what translation you read or view of the End Times you hold. If John Calvin wasn’t willing to write a commentary on Revelation, what can us relatively religious neophytes be able to discern from the book. Is it a true account of the Apocalypse written that employs imagery to cover for the fact the apostle couldn’t process what he was seeing? Was it simply a metaphorical dream filled with symbolism lost to the ages?
Poet Tania Runyan tackles this weighty tome by barreling in from the back door, or the garage as she puts it in her first piece titled “Patmos”. As she further examines the vision of Paul in verse, she does not shy away from the complexities of the work itself.
Just as Revelation itself is hard to interpret, Runyan has no desire to lead the reader on an easy romp through this piece of apocalyptic literature. The real world intrudes into the story with jarring regularity.
The content is clearly Christian, but the work is not sanitized for your protection. The world we are shown is a broken one filled with profanity, sex, destruction and death. This is the TV-14 version of Revelation.
But the thing most people forget is that the Book of Revelation is an unsettling book whose sharp edges we have become inured to because of the complex imagery and archaic language.
The letters to the seven churches was given fascinating update, including everything from the gritty message to Thyatira to the bile-inducing counsel for Laodecia. And any interpretative work on Revelation that includes a Depeche Mode reference is a winner in my book.
The image of Jesus breaking a jar of mayonnaise in "Our Sins Under a Glass Sea" and then cursing (though doing so in total context) juxtaposed with the sound made when he "breathed YHWH" gives the reader a bit of mental whiplash. This is not a criticism, but a nod to the human condition which causes one to swing from one extreme to the other.
The power in "The Seventh Seal" and "Locusts on the Earth" stand out, displaying the fearless nature of Runyan's writing.
Provocative titles like "The Antichrist at the Mall" and "The Great Harlot Takes a Selfie and the salty language in "En Route, Tikrit" remind one of the boldness of Whitman in Song of Myself when he said, "I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,/
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world."
"The Book of the Dead" makes you think about what it would really be like to list all the sins of the world, while "New Jerusalem" is the most moving, perhaps because I found it to be the most poignant.
My thoughts on What Will Soon Take Place are a bit scattered. Some of it I love, some of it confuses me and some of it makes me downright uncomfortable. Then again, the same came be said of Revelation itself.
It would seem these two volumes are perfect bedfellows.
December 5, 2017
Tania Runyan’s WHAT WILL SOON TAKE PLACE is an edgy, vulnerable, prophetic work of very fine poetry. Runyan imagines what it might be like to be the writer of Revelation if he lived nowadays. In a poem called “Things that Will Soon Take Place,” she writes, “But you must steady yourself/on the purse hook, nauseated by the spirit/burying inside you like a tick. Soon you will see//seraph wings in the price tags/hear trumpets in the vents.” She captures how it might feel to slip between earth and heaven when the prophetic muse descends.
One of Runyan’s most powerful poems is “The Sun Shall Not Strike Them” about a girl who is being sexually abused, a sermon about Jesus’ telling us to forgive seventy-times-seven, and precise details that convey her dogged work to forgive despite being violated again and again and again. “She was nine, trying to count in her head:/470, 469 more…then I can get mad?//Stop crying, you hissed. But the floor’s cold. You’re smushing me.”
Runyan writes about the last judgment and captures how gigantic the crowd is, how laborious the process and frightening. “Imagine the longest open mic reading in the world/angels droning deeds and misdeeds/in—Lord have mercy!—poet voice.” But the next poem is short and ironic with Jesus “strolling up the mic” finally saying “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
These poems bring the apocalypse into everyday life, merging Revelation’s startling images with the mundane. “The Marriage Supper” is no glorious ecstasy but a newly married couple stopping at Taco Bell on their way to a honeymoon. “I was not radiant. Dressed in sweats/and Mexi-melt wrappers, I licked hot sauce//from the webs of my fingers, pinched shredded cheese and dozed off//from our salty consummation.” As an old married couple settling into the hotel room to celebrate, Runyan writes how they are in no hurry, the last line a magical, human twist, “I let a few grays fall over my negligee/and unseal a box of cheap chocolates. No hurry--//the chart shows plenty of caramels lef, and the bride has made herself ready.”
What Will Soon Take Place is Tania Runyan writing at her best, bringing our contemporary lives smack dab into the mystery that is that is that final book of the Bible.
One of Runyan’s most powerful poems is “The Sun Shall Not Strike Them” about a girl who is being sexually abused, a sermon about Jesus’ telling us to forgive seventy-times-seven, and precise details that convey her dogged work to forgive despite being violated again and again and again. “She was nine, trying to count in her head:/470, 469 more…then I can get mad?//Stop crying, you hissed. But the floor’s cold. You’re smushing me.”
Runyan writes about the last judgment and captures how gigantic the crowd is, how laborious the process and frightening. “Imagine the longest open mic reading in the world/angels droning deeds and misdeeds/in—Lord have mercy!—poet voice.” But the next poem is short and ironic with Jesus “strolling up the mic” finally saying “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
These poems bring the apocalypse into everyday life, merging Revelation’s startling images with the mundane. “The Marriage Supper” is no glorious ecstasy but a newly married couple stopping at Taco Bell on their way to a honeymoon. “I was not radiant. Dressed in sweats/and Mexi-melt wrappers, I licked hot sauce//from the webs of my fingers, pinched shredded cheese and dozed off//from our salty consummation.” As an old married couple settling into the hotel room to celebrate, Runyan writes how they are in no hurry, the last line a magical, human twist, “I let a few grays fall over my negligee/and unseal a box of cheap chocolates. No hurry--//the chart shows plenty of caramels lef, and the bride has made herself ready.”
What Will Soon Take Place is Tania Runyan writing at her best, bringing our contemporary lives smack dab into the mystery that is that is that final book of the Bible.
December 5, 2017
My Little Pony, Dunkin Donuts, Selfies, Jell-O, Revlon, Wonder bread, Thomas Kindade, The Mall. Tania Runyan sees the world through the lens of suburban America; the images of middle-class mundanity provide the touchstones on which she grounds What Will Soon Take Place, her exploration of the strangest book of the Christian Bible. In addition to following the always good advice to write what you know and to use imagery your audience is likely to know, the ass cracks, Nikes, ice creams, and "hours of the Weather Channel" lull you into a sense of safety and even amusement. "Oh," you think, "this is the new, seeker-friendly Revelation, streamed online straight from the local mega-church."
Then, just when you think you're safe, you run smack dab into "The Sun Shall Not Strike Them." Your legs are struck out from under you, and you collapse. Runyan does see the bright rainbows and fruit roll-ups, but she does not turn her eyes away from the child abuser next door or the consumerism feeding on the bodies of less fortunate victims across the globe. Poems like "En Route, Tikrit" swath the victims of massacre in Iraq--easily passed over and forgotten in suburban America--in flannel and silk. Runyan honors these dead like her own: she sees them; she mourns them; she weaves them into the vision of the world illuminated by the Revelation.
All is not shock and awe in What Will Soon Take Place. Runyan can tell a joke: "A Premillennialist, Amillennialist, and Postmillennialist Walk into a Bar." And she remembers the now-seems-silly concern parents of 1970s evangelicalism had for their kids: "don't let a creature put a mark on your head." She can also turn her pop-culture acumen into a fresh lens through which to filter to the Whore of Babylon. From beginning to end, you know you are in the capable hands of a poet keenly observing the world in which she lives and using that world to parse the most challenging aspects of one of the most challenging books in the New Testament.
Then, just when you think you're safe, you run smack dab into "The Sun Shall Not Strike Them." Your legs are struck out from under you, and you collapse. Runyan does see the bright rainbows and fruit roll-ups, but she does not turn her eyes away from the child abuser next door or the consumerism feeding on the bodies of less fortunate victims across the globe. Poems like "En Route, Tikrit" swath the victims of massacre in Iraq--easily passed over and forgotten in suburban America--in flannel and silk. Runyan honors these dead like her own: she sees them; she mourns them; she weaves them into the vision of the world illuminated by the Revelation.
All is not shock and awe in What Will Soon Take Place. Runyan can tell a joke: "A Premillennialist, Amillennialist, and Postmillennialist Walk into a Bar." And she remembers the now-seems-silly concern parents of 1970s evangelicalism had for their kids: "don't let a creature put a mark on your head." She can also turn her pop-culture acumen into a fresh lens through which to filter to the Whore of Babylon. From beginning to end, you know you are in the capable hands of a poet keenly observing the world in which she lives and using that world to parse the most challenging aspects of one of the most challenging books in the New Testament.
December 5, 2017
Don't be deceived by the apparent "accessibility" of these poems. Tania Runyan's poems are often deceptive. They're not "difficult" if by that you mean "hard to get" because the language tends to be familiar. Still, they are "difficult" if you mean "complex" and "challenging."
When you read them slowly, you will be struck with how honest and candid these poems are. She struggles openly with Revelation, she bares her rebellious soul. As always, she is good at perceiving the numinous within the profane—so much that you may start believing her doubt is minor, but in these poems show she encounters greater doubt the stronger her faith grows. It makes sense, since more is at stake.
As a result, these poems are prophetic, are little acts of incarnation. They are Jacob wrestling with the angel, demanding to be blessed. They are Job (or sometimes his wife) fronting the divine, daring. They are John Donne asking God to break through his defenses.
These poems will provide little comfort, but that's a good thing. They will instead shake up your soul and confront you with what it really means to be in a personal relationship to the creator of the universe.
When you read them slowly, you will be struck with how honest and candid these poems are. She struggles openly with Revelation, she bares her rebellious soul. As always, she is good at perceiving the numinous within the profane—so much that you may start believing her doubt is minor, but in these poems show she encounters greater doubt the stronger her faith grows. It makes sense, since more is at stake.
As a result, these poems are prophetic, are little acts of incarnation. They are Jacob wrestling with the angel, demanding to be blessed. They are Job (or sometimes his wife) fronting the divine, daring. They are John Donne asking God to break through his defenses.
These poems will provide little comfort, but that's a good thing. They will instead shake up your soul and confront you with what it really means to be in a personal relationship to the creator of the universe.
December 2, 2017
Few sacred texts have weathered so much controversy, endured so much misuse, and engendered such diverse interpretations as the last book of the New Testament. Filled with difficult passages and dangerous moments, the Book of Revelation is a place careful exegetes fear to tread.
Fortunately for us, Tania Runyan approaches it not as not as a text to be explicated but as a field of play for the faithful imagination. Runyan skillfully braids the apocalyptic with the mundane, humor with deadly seriousness, scriptural opacities with the familiar stuff of everyday life. Her verse is illuminating without being pedantic and her touch light without becoming frivolous. I’m tempted to subtitle the collection, “Apocalypse Now,” for the many ways she reminds us that judgment, mercy, and the presence of the Holy are never far, but here, now, and always.
Fortunately for us, Tania Runyan approaches it not as not as a text to be explicated but as a field of play for the faithful imagination. Runyan skillfully braids the apocalyptic with the mundane, humor with deadly seriousness, scriptural opacities with the familiar stuff of everyday life. Her verse is illuminating without being pedantic and her touch light without becoming frivolous. I’m tempted to subtitle the collection, “Apocalypse Now,” for the many ways she reminds us that judgment, mercy, and the presence of the Holy are never far, but here, now, and always.
December 5, 2017
I've enjoyed Tania Runyan's previous three excellent collections (Simple Weight, A Thousand Vessels, and Second Sky); however, the poems in What Will Soon Take Place show her ambition and skill at an even higher level. While her earlier books covered The Beatitudes, women of the Bible, and St. Paul, this new volume tackles The Book of Revelation, surely a brave undertaking. These poems take readers on a journey through this confounding and wonderful biblical text while mingling in contemporary life and all of its messiness. Few contemporary poets successfully tackle scripture in a way that avoids two primary evil attitudes: snobbery and preachiness. The haunting imagery and the bold hopefulness in these poems will stay with you long after you roll up this 21st-Century scroll. Highly recommended.
February 5, 2018
Tania Runyan makes an otherworldly, ancient letter modern and equally strange in this collection of poems in response to the book of Revelation. Tania leans into the difficult passages and breaks through to deliver surprising connections to the everyday, connections to her life, and connections to a very different looking Jesus. Her poems both deepen and challenge faith, inviting another journey through Revelation and another look at the world through its shattered kaleidoscope lens.
July 18, 2018
the book of revelation gets funny and freaky and poetic // irreverent, disquieting, heterogeneous // biblical violence, sexual abuse, god acting poorly // 3.7 to 4.4 // an essential companion to the book of revelation that makes me want to chuckle-run far from the book of revelation, even if rereading said book of revelation might enlighten me about some of these poems. i dug the poems i understood.
SUMMARY // 3 ADJECTIVES // WARNINGS FOR KIDS // ACTUAL RATING RANGE // OTHER WORDS
SUMMARY // 3 ADJECTIVES // WARNINGS FOR KIDS // ACTUAL RATING RANGE // OTHER WORDS
January 9, 2018
Religious faith has inspired poets for likely as long as faith and poetry have existed. About a third of the Old Testament is written in poetic form. The Greek and Roman poets were inspired by their pantheon of gods. In Christian times, a considerable amount of poetry made its way into church liturgy and popular culture as well; the Christmas carol “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” is only one of many songs and poems that come from what are called the “O Antiphons,” songs of appeal sung at the vespers service in the last week of Advent. And faith continues to inspire contemporary poets like Scott Cairns, Luci Shaw, Wendell Berry, Dana Gioia, Mark Jarman, Julia Kasdorf, and many more.
Tania Runyan is another contemporary poet inspired by faith, but her most recent collection demonstrates just how unusual and surprising that source of inspiration can be.
The 54 poems of Runyan’s "What Will Soon Take Place" spring from an unexpected source – the Book of Revelation in the New Testament, or what some faith traditions call “The Apocalypse of St. John.” This is the account of the end-times, and what John describes ranges from the heavenly and sublime to the grotesque and horrific. In her foreword, Runyan explains why she is using Revelation as a source and framework for these poems, and how she reads John’s account in the context of the past rather than the future, enabling her to “live” the book more fully in the present. That is the key to What Will Soon Take Place.
She begins with poems about Patmos, the island in the Aegean to which John was exiled and where he wrote Revelation. If you're not familiar with the book of Revelation, more formally known as "The Revelation of St. John" or "The Apocalypse of St. John," it is an account of the end-times, generally considered to have been written near the end of the first century A.D. The book is filled with mystery and metaphor, and Biblical scholars often disagree when trying to explain what all of the different elements in the book mean or stand for. Runyan's poems include some of the better-known images and accounts in the book – the letters to the seven churches, the scroll and the seven seals, the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, and the major characters of John's account -- the antichrist, the "great whore of Babylon," and the rider on the white horse. I almost laughed to see the title of two poems, both good examples of how she applies Revelation to the present – “The Great Harlot Takes a Selfie” and “The Antichrist at the Mall” – and then I considered what those titles and poems implied about all of us.
Consider “Ephesus,” a poem taken from the letter to the church at Ephesus, one of the seven churches cited by name in Revelation. The letter is a generally glowing account, until it says that the church has list its first love. Here’s how Runyan considers losing that first love.
Ephesus
I was in love with God for one afternoon.
Twenty, alone on a beach, I dropped rocks
by the edge and watched the ocean wash
gray into blue, brown into red. An hour
of my crunching steps, the clack of pebbles,
the water’s rippling response. Never mind
invisibility. We were the only ones, and I
so intoxicating—sand-blown hair,
denim cut-offs, no reason to believe
anyone’s faith could dissolve. My prayers
were as certain as the stones I threw,
the answers as sure as the cove’s blue floor.
Runyan has published three previous collections of poetry: "A Thousand Vessels" (2011); "Second Sky" (2013), and "Simple Weight" (2013). She’s also the author of three non-fiction works – "How to Read a Poem" (2014), "How to Write a Poem" (2015), and "How to Write a College Application Essay" (2017).
"What Will Soon Take Place" is arresting and often jarring. It will make you smile and often squirm. And it suggests that we should perhaps be living our lives as if each present day is the end-times.
Tania Runyan is another contemporary poet inspired by faith, but her most recent collection demonstrates just how unusual and surprising that source of inspiration can be.
The 54 poems of Runyan’s "What Will Soon Take Place" spring from an unexpected source – the Book of Revelation in the New Testament, or what some faith traditions call “The Apocalypse of St. John.” This is the account of the end-times, and what John describes ranges from the heavenly and sublime to the grotesque and horrific. In her foreword, Runyan explains why she is using Revelation as a source and framework for these poems, and how she reads John’s account in the context of the past rather than the future, enabling her to “live” the book more fully in the present. That is the key to What Will Soon Take Place.
She begins with poems about Patmos, the island in the Aegean to which John was exiled and where he wrote Revelation. If you're not familiar with the book of Revelation, more formally known as "The Revelation of St. John" or "The Apocalypse of St. John," it is an account of the end-times, generally considered to have been written near the end of the first century A.D. The book is filled with mystery and metaphor, and Biblical scholars often disagree when trying to explain what all of the different elements in the book mean or stand for. Runyan's poems include some of the better-known images and accounts in the book – the letters to the seven churches, the scroll and the seven seals, the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, and the major characters of John's account -- the antichrist, the "great whore of Babylon," and the rider on the white horse. I almost laughed to see the title of two poems, both good examples of how she applies Revelation to the present – “The Great Harlot Takes a Selfie” and “The Antichrist at the Mall” – and then I considered what those titles and poems implied about all of us.
Consider “Ephesus,” a poem taken from the letter to the church at Ephesus, one of the seven churches cited by name in Revelation. The letter is a generally glowing account, until it says that the church has list its first love. Here’s how Runyan considers losing that first love.
Ephesus
I was in love with God for one afternoon.
Twenty, alone on a beach, I dropped rocks
by the edge and watched the ocean wash
gray into blue, brown into red. An hour
of my crunching steps, the clack of pebbles,
the water’s rippling response. Never mind
invisibility. We were the only ones, and I
so intoxicating—sand-blown hair,
denim cut-offs, no reason to believe
anyone’s faith could dissolve. My prayers
were as certain as the stones I threw,
the answers as sure as the cove’s blue floor.
Runyan has published three previous collections of poetry: "A Thousand Vessels" (2011); "Second Sky" (2013), and "Simple Weight" (2013). She’s also the author of three non-fiction works – "How to Read a Poem" (2014), "How to Write a Poem" (2015), and "How to Write a College Application Essay" (2017).
"What Will Soon Take Place" is arresting and often jarring. It will make you smile and often squirm. And it suggests that we should perhaps be living our lives as if each present day is the end-times.
December 5, 2017
What happens when a poet contemplates a first century classic of Christian apocalyptic literature while taking out the garbage, snacking on a burrito on a road trip, or sitting on the couch watching the Weather Channel? When the poet is Tania Runyan, the result is a collection of poems that bears witness to the unspeakable pain and ineffable love that infuse the human experience—whether we live in the first century or the twenty-first.
I keep coming back to the final line of The Rider on a White Horse: "Pain, love, pain" It seems an apt description of What Will Soon Take Place because of the way Runyan’s poems hit that tender place where hope lives. Again and again, she invites readers into a sacred pause, opening up a moment with such choice words that longing and fear catch in our throats. It’s in this place that our senses are most in tune for the any sign of comfort or relief. Here, as Runyan says, we “listen for the knock.”
Mission accomplished, Tania Runion. I’m listening.
I keep coming back to the final line of The Rider on a White Horse: "Pain, love, pain" It seems an apt description of What Will Soon Take Place because of the way Runyan’s poems hit that tender place where hope lives. Again and again, she invites readers into a sacred pause, opening up a moment with such choice words that longing and fear catch in our throats. It’s in this place that our senses are most in tune for the any sign of comfort or relief. Here, as Runyan says, we “listen for the knock.”
In writing these poems, I’ve drawn closer to the
mysteries of Revelation rather than formulating
answers, predictions, or theories. I no longer want
to run from Revelation, but toward it, even when
it scares and offends me. In the middle of all those
beasts, gemstones, eyes, and swords, I listen for the
knock. I hope these poems might beckon you to a
deeper listening as well.
Mission accomplished, Tania Runion. I’m listening.
April 21, 2018
The book of Revelation is esoteric and strange and if you grew up evangelical you likely have at least some baggage about the books contents (think rapture, Russian and identifying the beasts). But it is also a book of evocative symbol and image. Tania Runyan's poems play in the land of Apocalypse. They enter into the imagery, turning it over, sometimes with tongue-in-cheek renderings (such as the poem entitled "The whore of Babylon takes a selfie"), but I hesitate to say irreverently. There is reverence and wonder here, and ultimately hope and a New Heaven and New Earth.
December 17, 2018
In terms of art/poetry, it was in turns powerful, beautiful, frustrating, and angering. So in that regard, a success.
Some of the pieces were amazing. Some of the pieces didn't do much for me. Some were weird (fitting, I suppose, given the collection is a response to Revelation). Some pushed boundaries that toed the lines of orthodoxy and propriety.
It's at least worth coming back to, especially for the ones I enjoyed the most.
Some of the pieces were amazing. Some of the pieces didn't do much for me. Some were weird (fitting, I suppose, given the collection is a response to Revelation). Some pushed boundaries that toed the lines of orthodoxy and propriety.
It's at least worth coming back to, especially for the ones I enjoyed the most.
April 23, 2018
This is my first time to read a collection of Tania Runyan’s poems and her ambitious work on Revelation did not disappoint. I appreciated how she looked at the “end of all things” not as the future but as something that is unfolding all around us: at the mall, on our phones, and certainly as Christians are being martyred around the world.
September 16, 2020
Raw, open, compelling walk through the Book of Revelation, linking its apocalyptic imagery to life here and now. The collection has renewed my love of poetry and its power to make sense of both the big and small.
January 28, 2025
I’m very new to poetry as a genre. This book is poetry inspired by the book of Revelation, which in itself is a book of dense poetry and metaphors… most of this book went over my head… a handful of poems were really nice, but I couldn’t understand most of them and almost DNFd this many times before just skimming through the remaining pages.
August 12, 2018
Modern poetry is so much more effective when delivered in the poet's voice than when read on the page.
June 8, 2021
I haven't read Revelation for a long time, and this gives me hope that the next time I read it, something new will happen. These poems are sharp, jangly, insistent.
October 20, 2019
“What Will Soon Take Place” is the perfect Christmas gift for those of us living in the now and not yet. Perfect, if at times the overstimulation of the holiday season has you “wanting nothing more than to pull a preshrunk T/over your head in peace.” The images and observations of the most complicated book of the Bible will lift your head with observations of the numinous and “nudge you like a dog in the street./a matted earthbound begging for your touch.” Skating through the sacred and the mundane, Tania Runyan presents a dizzying array of observations both profound and humorous. From a chance meeting with the beloved in heaven, to Jesus at an open-mic reading on The Book of Life — these poems provide a most unusual window for a glimpse of the Savior, revealing a new perspective, at times from the most unusual of places: “the fish of Galilee peer at your calloused feet/skimming the water like sunlight.”
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