This issue of Irreantum gathers poems about Jesus from across the range—in some ways still a frontier—of Latter-day Saint experience. Many of them involve themes we share with the wider Christian world: mangers, parables, and miracles, a Lord found in the everyday delight that mortality was designed, at times, to be.
Then there are the uniquely Latter-day Saint pieces. Jesus gently advises some premortal siblings just before they leave home. A rustic ballad chronicles his appearance with the Father to a farmboy. The New World’s advent sign astonishes some as-yet unbelieving Nephites. A Primary teacher calms her class of storm-tossed little disciples. In baptisms for the dead and Covid-quarantine home church, Jesus salts and leavens religious rite and family ritual.
Verily I say unto you, Latter-day scripture and practice provide remarkable avenues for seeking this Jesus. What is it like to have him as a literal spirit brother? What does it mean that he used his own heart, might, mind and strength—not just the spiritual understanding available to him—to experience all our misery? How did it feel to see him smile (an event recorded only in the Book of Mormon)? And this question at the very heart of atonement, which hopefully a few disciples asked him after the resurrection: What was all that suffering like for you? It is his brief and breathtakingly personal reflection, recorded 1800 years later in the Doctrine and Covenants, that modern disciple and Latter-day Saint author Darlene Young offers in her poem “Gethsemane”:
Forever after,
he would say very little about it.
Only: shrink.
Only: nevertheless.
One gift of continuous revelation is such glimpses into the Savior’s soul. Another is his practical advice. In the Doctrine and Covenants, the Lord details plans for cities and dimensions of temples, and one Sunday before church he offers Joseph Smith the sound counsel to make his own grape juice for the sacrament, or just use water, instead of buying wine—thus the title of this magazine issue. In these works of biblical water into wine and restoration wine into water, in the miraculous and the mundane, Latter-day poets witness a voice that calls sheep by name and encircles the world in his fold.
Kevin Klein
February 2022
Poets
