(photo by Jim Garringer)

Author Commentary:

The poems “Wyclif Places Himself, His Room within the Ten Categories of Essential Being” and “A Visit to Lutterworth” come from a larger project that I started seven years ago and published, recently, as a collection of poems called Burning Wyclif (Texas Tech University Press, 2006).  The project involved a study of the life and times of the 14th century theologian John Wyclif, England’s only homegrown heretic.  Although Wyclif never suffered physical harm for his beliefs (he had the protection of the Duke of Lancaster) he was condemned by both Pope Gregory XI and William Courtenay, Archbishop of Canterbury.  Forty years after Wyclif died, his bones were dug up and burned.  As part of my research, I stood on the bank of the River Swift in Lutterworth, England, where his ashes were scattered.

In the poem “Wyclif Places Himself, His Room…,” I am trying to imagine a young John Wyclif, a student then at Balliol Hall, Oxford, reading a summary of Aristotle’s ten categories of being and trying to make sense of what he’s reading.  Each of the poem’s ten parts can be read as a individual moment when Wyclif pauses from his reading to apply the “category” to his own life and surroundings.  As the poem makes clear, he is seated at a table with other students.  It’s evening and he is anxious for his dinner to arrive.  This poem is typical of several others that I wrote attempting to enter Wyclif’s thoughts by reading the books he himself may have read.  In this case, the book is The Font of Knowledge by Saint John of Damascus, which had been translated from Greek to Latin by one of Wyclif’s teachers.

“A Visit to Lutterworth” is a straightforward poem describing a trip I took with my wife in December, 2003, to the town where Wyclif spent his last years.  In Lutterworth, Wyclif served as Rector of Saint Mary’s Church, while continuing his scholarly writing in his rectory.  (He had been expelled from his teaching post at Oxford because of his controversial opinions on the doctrine of transubstantiation.)  Wyclif died in Lutterworth in late December, 1384, after suffering a stroke during mass at the moment the host was being elevated.

Link to Amazon.com page for Burning Wyclif:  http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=br_ss_hs/102-2163768-0133724?platform=gurupa&url=index%3Dblended&keywords=burning+wyclif