When Jeff Munroe asked me if I would be interested in editing poetry for Reformed Journal I balked a bit.

I am not Reformed. Though I married someone raised and rooted in the Reformed tradition and count many Reformed folks among family, friends, and neighbors, I myself am, at best, a neighbor to Reformed. This is true both figuratively and literally.

I live next door to a church in the Reformed tradition. Last year they pried the metal letters “Christian Reformed” from their sign, having left the denomination (I know many RJ readers are closer to this story than I am. Once again, it’s not my story, but my neighbors’). I can see the sign from my front porch. The faint, ghostly outline of the metal letters is still visible on the bricks.

Regardless, Jeff assured me that being a neighbor was an okay relationship to the Reformed part of the journal. At least for poems, he said. He just wanted the poems to be good. I told him I could help with that. 

I have some experience here. I’ve served as an editor, volunteer reader, contest judge for a number of magazines and literary journals over the years—Indiana Review and The Other Journal as poetry editor, specifically. There are almost as many opinions about what makes a good poem as there are poets in America. That is to say, not many by volume, but enough to create a decent amount of noise. 

I freely admit my editorial taste: I look for poems with clear language and vivid imagery. I enjoy poems that indicate their writer paid close attention to their words for both meaning and sound. I love poems grounded in a strong sense of place and time. I also like poems that illuminate something about our world. Something that feels true. 

I am less interested in poems that pile on religious references or recite theological statements, or slap on a reference to Jesus at the poem’s end like a spiritual Band-Aid. If a poem’s material is taken from the life of faith and the spirit, I feel it needs to remain grounded in the real world—all its complexities and uncertainties—to feel true to life. We see these complexities in the poetry found in Scripture, which is why the Psalms remain capacious enough to hold worshippers for so many generations. 

We host poetry readings in our home and invite friends, friends of friends, and neighbors. Reformed pastors tend to show up among the recurring attendees. I think both Reformed people and poets—at least some of us—share a hunger for truth—and for words that we hope will illuminate truths that are shrouded in mystery.

One more thing about the church next door: during the peak years of denominational strife, church members took the empty lot next to our house that had formerly been the parsonage and planted a garden. Working with local conservation organization Plaster Creek Stewards and with a grant from the National Wildlife Federation, they planted dozens of native perennials and trees. Now, at the end of summer, the garden is an explosion of life and color, bustling with goldfinches, rabbits, bees, butterflies, and neighbors of all ages who stop by to check out the little free library or sit at the picnic table. An empty lot has become a hospitable space for so many creatures, more and more each year.

There is no fence around the garden, and plants take root where they will. Wild petunia seeds carried from my yard have germinated in the church garden, and wild senna from their garden is popping up in my yard. 

As a poet, I can’t help but see the metaphor: life blooms at the edges, when cross-pollination is permitted. The poet Marianne Moore famously called poems “Imaginary gardens with real toads in them,” which I think about often as I watch—and weed—my garden and the one next door. 

If poetry can be a neighbor to the Reformed community, what life will bloom at the edges, if we wait and watch? Maybe we’ll even find a toad there.

Header photo by Richard Burlton on Unsplash