What do you think?
Rate this book
Madonna, Complex
What does it mean to say yes?--to God, to the Spirit, to art, to love, to motherhood, to the dazzling & tangible world? Mary's response to the angel, saying "Let it be to me as you have said," is an essential moment in the life of a disciple, a woman, and an artist. In Madonna, Complex, Mary's "yes" is a moment of opening, of allowing her very body to become a co-creator with God and a conduit for the coming of grace into the world. However, womanhood in all its fullness--sexuality, marriage, infertility, childbirth, nursing--inevitably complicates traditional Christian imagery of Mary. Madonna, Complex chronicles a feminine faith journey alongside saints like Joan of Arc and Saint Kateri, images of motherhood in visual art, through holy days of the Christian calendar--Ash Wednesday, Holy Saturday, All Saints Day--and sites of pilgrimage, cathedrals, wilderness, and other places holiness can be found. These poems explore the complexities of the messages we receive about what it means to say yes to God, or to something larger than ourselves that demands our attention and energy, whether it's bearing a child or participating in a political protest. "Jen Stewart Fueston's poems embody the audacious kind of sainthood we need right now--muddied, carnal, possessed with an astonishment to stay awake." --Dave Harrity, author of These Intricacies "Celebrating the mineral wonder of blood and miracle waters of birth, Fueston portrays the lives of women splayed by transfiguration, blinded by light 'as we are caught / and reeled, held taut in the sweetening air.' Hymns of quiet awe, Fueston's contemporary psalms sing in the cityscapes of Istanbul to the high desert of Taos, flaming with savage beauty and holy desire." --Karen An-hwei Lee, author of The Maze of Transparencies "This is a collection of poems that has the pull of flowing waters finding their way toward the sea, . . . Throughout the collection, the poet reminds us that 'love is not a fullness, it's an ache,' and in probing the endurances of that ache, helps us come to know ourselves as instances of a fragile but resilient beauty." --Mark S. Burrows, author of The Chance of Poems "In this stunning first collection, Jen Stewart Fueston invites us to join her pilgrimage as, turn after turn, she questions the structures we thought to be stable. . . . Together, these poems shake the foundations of belief to release it from the forms that have held it captive. So that we, too, might one day wander into 'formless air' and 'call it holy." --Kristin George Bagdanov, author of Diurne Jen Stewart Fueston is the author of two chapbooks, Visitations (2015) and Latch (2019). Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net and has appeared widely in publications such as Ruminate, Mom Egg Review, and The Christian Century. She has taught writing at the University of Colorado, Boulder, as well as internationally in Hungary, Turkey, and Lithuania. She lives in Longmont, Colorado with her husband and two young sons.
- GenresPoetry
Kindle Edition
Published April 21, 2020
2 people are currently reading
10 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 3, 2025
🦚🦚🦚
As with Mary, it was the sound of angel wings that broke the silence. My ears rang gold. I felt fire sprouting from the dun earth.
Her body a parentheses, she curves away from glory, like we all do.
Light catches as we are caught and reeled, held taut in the sweetening air.
What’s a garden for but feasting, or a throat for ruining with praise?
You had a body once, how you must have loved the rough crusts in your hands, the flake of the silver-skinned fish in your mortal mouth.
And when I think of seeing you again, I know that what I really want is not the city or satsumas or bridge lights pooling on the water, or the smell of fish and sooty charcoal fires warming hazelnuts, the blood in my chest at full flood, or the distant sound of tea spoons singing against glass. Or even you
The heart does not relinquish what it sometimes should.
In fall at least the world doesn’t lie to you about dying, might even convince you you can do it beautifully, become the blaze maple transcendent against blue.
Because one God I’ve known has loved me most when He took everything away. The stark tree stripped knows every name the wind goes by.
The egg that since became you stilled and waiting, lodged like a berry in the mouth of a blackbird, caught like a seed in my prayerless throat.
himself another masterpiece of bright, unsayable things.
What bears light best is broken.
But when I birthed a son, they pulled him out, I drew him close, and every minute since have held a searing image of his crumpled body—an accident—a fall—or mangled by a car, some lapse of my attention. I carry an expectant grief.
no ordinary woman ever tried to be a saint. Who would choose to be believed in when she’d rather be believed?
I think how misery and mercy sound the same.
Love is realest in journeying, indistinguishable from motion transporting us between our destinations.
If I would be a saint, let it be the patron saint of prisms, a face shaped for reflection. Be the body breaking everything else open, one that splits the burning day into its myriad beams. Let me be passed through.
[favs: Detail of a Peacock; To a Friend, Lonely in the Fall; Midlife Valentine]
As with Mary, it was the sound of angel wings that broke the silence. My ears rang gold. I felt fire sprouting from the dun earth.
Her body a parentheses, she curves away from glory, like we all do.
Light catches as we are caught and reeled, held taut in the sweetening air.
What’s a garden for but feasting, or a throat for ruining with praise?
You had a body once, how you must have loved the rough crusts in your hands, the flake of the silver-skinned fish in your mortal mouth.
And when I think of seeing you again, I know that what I really want is not the city or satsumas or bridge lights pooling on the water, or the smell of fish and sooty charcoal fires warming hazelnuts, the blood in my chest at full flood, or the distant sound of tea spoons singing against glass. Or even you
The heart does not relinquish what it sometimes should.
In fall at least the world doesn’t lie to you about dying, might even convince you you can do it beautifully, become the blaze maple transcendent against blue.
Because one God I’ve known has loved me most when He took everything away. The stark tree stripped knows every name the wind goes by.
The egg that since became you stilled and waiting, lodged like a berry in the mouth of a blackbird, caught like a seed in my prayerless throat.
himself another masterpiece of bright, unsayable things.
What bears light best is broken.
But when I birthed a son, they pulled him out, I drew him close, and every minute since have held a searing image of his crumpled body—an accident—a fall—or mangled by a car, some lapse of my attention. I carry an expectant grief.
no ordinary woman ever tried to be a saint. Who would choose to be believed in when she’d rather be believed?
I think how misery and mercy sound the same.
Love is realest in journeying, indistinguishable from motion transporting us between our destinations.
If I would be a saint, let it be the patron saint of prisms, a face shaped for reflection. Be the body breaking everything else open, one that splits the burning day into its myriad beams. Let me be passed through.
[favs: Detail of a Peacock; To a Friend, Lonely in the Fall; Midlife Valentine]
Displaying 1 of 1 review