Back-cover endorsements

“One of Marjorie Maddox’s gifts is her ability to knit together unlikely pairings into original visions: Eve smells the salt wafting off Lot’s calcified wife, Apple’s Siri becomes a gnostic saint, and St. Victor of Marseilles stars in a spinoff of The Walking Dead. Her poems question our default ways of organizing and categorizing: a backyard haircut becomes an exploration of many of the dichotomies that shape our thinking—inner vs. outer, before vs. after, childhood vs. adulthood. Her imaginative leaps work toward discernment, facing into the world’s strange bewilderments to find connections across time and place. Begin with a Question faces the ways that the notes of human imagination are often 'off-key, shrill, and wobbly' and builds from them a chorus large enough to hold the living and the dead." —Mary Szybist, author of Incarnadine, winner of the 2013 National Book Award

"To enter the universe of Maddox's new poetry Begin with a Question is to be  invited to participate in an amazingly  powerful and intricate work of art. Intensely personal, inventive, often ironic and complex but accessible upon careful reading, this skilled poetry opens our windows to wonder at a universe penetrated by divine power and grace." —Luci Shaw, author of Angels Everywhere

"Marjorie Maddox’s new collection Begin with a Question begins with a question, 'But why?' The poet then sets about providing an abundance of possible answers to the most provocative of all the interrogatives, taking readers on a careening journey through human history to discover the sources and salves for our discontents—from Eve cradling her murdered son in the ruins of Eden to Mary holding hers against her own 'crucified heart' on Golgotha; from the impending death of the poet’s suffering mother in a distant assisted living facility to the young mother who nurses her baby in the small hours of the morning accompanied by the hymn-playing Church organist on the other side of the duplex wall; from 'the hard Epiphany' of January 6th, 2021 when a hate-filled mob overruns the seat of government to the 'random acts' of kindness whereby a suicide is saved, an accident avoided, a toll paid. These poems bear faithful witness to suffering on both the small and the grand scale and bravely offer the antidote, asserting over and over the radical fact that when all seems lost we must begin again. In the face of sorrow, the death of loved ones, and the acedia of everyday suburban life, Maddox’s book posits nothing short of a theodicy of love." —Angela Alaimo O’Donnell, author of Andalusian Hours: Poems from the Porch of Flannery O’Connor and Love in the Time of Coronavirus: A Pandemic Pilgrimage

NPR Interview with Mindy Cronk and Erica Funke on WVIA

“Marjorie Maddox’s Capacious Poetry”: A Review of Begin with a Question for The Christian Century: “She can (and will) do anything with the English language she so clearly loves….”-Marjorie Stelmach

“There are people who write poetry, and there are great poets. By great, we speak of those few capable of transcending above the multitudes with their mastery of the word, imagination and homage to the interior and exterior worlds. An academic and writer, Marjorie Maddox, is such a poet. When you read her, you feel almost angry at her unbridled ability to speak to things you couldn’t begin to evoke yourself. She’s fleet of tongue in her assessment of the world, and does so without a shred of arrogance.

Begin with a Question is a clever collection of spiritual, religious and lived in moments. Whether you believe in a higher power or not, you may find yourself falling for Maddox’s quick wit, keen eye and erasable wordplay. Maddox explores existence from a multitude of directions. These are real moments, most of us have lived in some form….There are universal themes here that haunt and force thought beyond comfort zone, which is exactly what poetry at its most powerful, can do. Saying so much in so little, is both reflective, achingly transposing and deft in its precision. Often, I am struck by how closely Maddox’s work feels like a prayer, incantation, yearning for … betterment. And I take solace in this because I share its intention….” Reviewed by Candice Louisa Daquin for Borderless Journal. To read the full review, click HERE.

Poetry by the Sea New Books Panel Introduction by poet and scholar Anton Yakovlev: “The poems in Begin With a Question bear witness to a dazzling range of human experience, from a chance encounter with a nun from Nigeria at a college jazz concert, where “the slight / shadow of jazz expands / to fill her one solemn eye,” to heartbreaking poems dedicated to the memory of the late poet Anya Krugovoy Silver and to her son Noah, to the strangeness of family life and negotiations with the outside world at the height of the pandemic, to the helplessness of witnessing the poet’s mother growing weaker in an assisted living facility, it is impossible to avoid “the inevitable interaction with grief,” to quote the poem “Prince Henry Hospital Nursing and Medical Museum.” However, as Angela Alaimo O’Donnell observes in her blurb, “In the face of sorrow, the death of loved ones, and the acedia of everyday life, Maddox’s book posits nothing short of a theodicy of love.” It does so, in part, by interspersing poems of the here and now with powerful retellings of Biblical stories, especially the life and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the hope these stories give all of us. And still, this hope is never facile, never overconfident, never a guarantee. At the end of the heartbreaking “The Seven Sorrows,” which retells Jesus’ life from Candlemas to Crucifixion from Mary’s perspective, Mary “clings / to the slaughtered sacrifice who once /was her joy, who will be again / in time. She tries, with her crucified heart, / to believe this. She tries.”

Sheila-Na-Gig Editions Reading of Heart Speaks, Is Spoken For and Begin with a Question: click HERE!

Anna Cotton interviews Marjorie Maddox about Heart Speaks, Is Spoken For

“The act of loving the world -- or any person in it -- is an act of faith. We know that loss will befall us, and so each act of connecting with the world becomes an act of hope, of faith, of divinity. Maddox explores this idea in her latest book, in which small things get new attention ("hidden-below berries/nowhere-to-go berries), in which small acts of kindness are seen as rites ("my husband relaxes/calmly exposes his neck"), and the large griefs of the world are held with tenderness. The questions here are what Maddox encourages us to ask ourselves -- how are we fading away? how has the pandemic altered our attention? how do we continue to simultaneously live and wonder and grieve. The delights are numerous, from a wide variety of styles -- ekphrastic poems, shaped poems, poems that draw upon the language of the mass -- to the wonderful (sometimes humorous, sometimes startling, always engaging) use of language ("the constant tap of keys/the background of faraway horses we're all riding"). These are poems that return us to faith.” -Emily Miller Mlcak

What a curious, riveting book! Begin with a Question riffs on multiple themes with compassion, wit, and panache. Think jazz for the soul. There is “midnight music” here, “jazzy constellations of stars” resonating—especially amid the unthinkable. Poet Marjorie Maddox probes those enigmas, great and small. Endlessly inventive in her quest for understanding, she often stands words, images, or ideas right on their heads. Contradictions spill across line breaks, creating suspense. A fresh take. Solid reasoning underscores these poems, but the heart, too, has its say. I love the way Maddox communicates in multiple registers: storyteller, seeker or celebrant, puzzler or prophet. And like faith as well as improvisation, there are moments that tilt toward chaos until seemingly disparate notes coalesce. But pat answers? No. I’m entertaining new questions. Swaying a little. I identify with the Nigerian nun Maddox sits beside at a concert: “inside the long sleeves of her habit / her fingers, half-hidden / in the fabric’s heavy folds, / tap-tap, tap-tap.”-Laurie Klein, author of Where the Sky Opens

“Begin with a question,” writes Marjorie Maddox, and so she does, asking big questions about faith and doubt, despair and hope, endings and beginnings, love and loss, the chicken and the egg. . . . Yes, some of these are difficult topics, but there is always light shining behind them: ". . . .but one evening on a cliff overlooking an everyday sunset, you’re surprised by your own single note of joy."-Barbara Crooker, author of One Glad Morning

US Catholic’s column WHAT WE’RE READING NOW, SEPTEMBER 2022.

CMA (Catholic Media Association) 3rd Place Poetry!

Order a copy of Begin with a Question HERE! (paper) or HERE! (Kindle) or HERE! or HERE!

#CommissionsEarned “As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.”

Listen to the Paraclete Press Book Launch of Begin with a Question, moderated by scholar, poet, and author Mark S. Burrows

Listen to the Double Book Launch (at Redheaded Stepchild Reading Series) with photographer Karen Elias HERE!

Listed at Jama Kim Rattigan’s Nine Cool Things on a Tuesday (See # 7!)

Solum Literary Podcast: Poetry of Faith: Discussion and Readings by Marjorie Maddox with Host Riley Bounds

I AM AMERICA reading series, organized by Alixem Pham and sponsored by the Will & Ariel Durant Public Library, Los Angelos; selections from Begin with a Question at minute marker 45.

Listen to the Art of Questions Double Book Celebration with Guest Poets HERE!

EARLY PRAISE!

It has been many years since I first encountered Marjorie Maddox’s work, through her early deeply meaningful collection titled Perpendicular As I. Since then, I have sought out her books, reviewed them when I could, savored them in private, and conversed about them with fellow poets and readers of poetry. So, I should not be amazed by the resonance in me as well as the objective expressiveness, that is to say, relevance, of Begin with a Question.

Ah, how to describe this persuasive and substantive collection… Let’s see. To begin with, I love the line, “My heart takes off its sandals of maybe”, which appears early in the book, advising us that, for every question, there is not only a this-or-that response, but also the resounding answer, from the poet of faith, that can only be summed up by "yes": yes to embracing life in all its complexity, yes to its sorrows and joys, ironies and paradoxes, earthiness and heavenliness, most importantly, yes to a God-soaked, God-imbued, God-redeemed life. Maddox has a way of bringing opposites together without forcing meaning, yet finding meaning—even in, or I should say especially in, the most mundane actions: a crochet chain, a backyard haircut, “suburban dirt and city gardens”....

There are also, more often than not, deeper territories to explore: painful, yet redeeming territories: a father’s heart transplant, a mother who knows she’s dying, who says to her daughter, “I am slowly fading away”, a poet-friend lost to cancer, their final visits. Through these and multiple other instances, the reader is given the clear impression that something very important, something vital, is happening all the time in the poet’s life and in our lives, in the earth around us, in nature, in society, in time—and in eternity. It is all consequential, whether it is occurring below the surface or before our eyes, as we sense in these following lines. “Today, / a woman, not unlike me, / offered tea; the teen / the car in front of me / took on my toll; / the not-random angel / on the highway shifted / slightly to the right / a patch of ice / I did not see— / or was that me / become me / in them, finally folding / my fingers just so, the water / brimming, cool and clear / just as a stranger walks by?”

Perhaps in our do-this, do-that schedules, we may not take the time to pause and ask the questions Maddox asks—at least not consciously. But, here she is, the poet, asking them for us, nudging us to contemplate the answers, which always exist—hidden, tantalizing, frequently unknown, but no less real. The poems in Begin with a Question are as honest and open as the day, and as intriguing and haunting as the night. The people who inhabit the poems speak from their own places, yet enter into our space with as much ease as the fears and expectations that abide in us. Interestingly, we are never left simply with disembodied questions, because Maddox has a particularly heightened gift: that of connecting intimately with the reader. You hear her voice in the poem; you sense her insistence, the joy when there is joy, the gravity when there is gravity—and often both. This ability to connect is almost uncanny; the hospitality of Maddox's poems translates into her asking the reader, generously, to return for a second and a third perusal. And you will find it difficult to resist.

At the book’s closing, Maddox leaves us with the assurance that the questions are worth posing because the answer, no less impactful when it is yet to be discerned, involves ultimately a communion of saints, a communion of “mercy in perpetuity”, where we, all of us, sing “off-key, shrill, and wobbly”, but oh—by God, in God—ever so human.

—Sofia M. Starnes, Virginia Poet Laureate, Emerita, author of A Consequence of Moonlight and other works

Begin With A Question is a deeply spiritual book of poems that unflinchingly consider the essential questions that infuse our lives from our very first “Why?” Maddox bears witness to our trials and joys–quotidian, cultural, global, cosmic. A teenage son, too young to remember 9/11, “refuses fear” and expertly clips “the overgrown lawn” of his father’s hair, trims the pandemic-wild beard. In another poem, the author’s mother, suffering dementia, confesses in a phone call that she is “slowly fading away,” her voice “so slight/it unravels me.” The poem “Epiphany” testifies to the betrayal of January 6 (“and that bright star? We find the manger bare/except for all our anger swaddled there”)

Many of the poems are powerfully rooted in Biblical story and scripture. In “Pre-Pieta,” Eve is “just one mother” cradling her murdered son, her grief foreshadowing Mary’s grief at Golgotha. Eve’s torment at passing “the seed of her will” to Cain, who aimed the “bloody rock” at his brother, echoes in “Upon Leaving Eden, Adam’s Wife Thinks She Hears, Lot’s Wife.” There, she “stares straight ahead into the blazing/desire she will not choose again/Will not. Will not. Will not.” These and poems like “After Auden, After Bruegel,” which is right up there with Auden’s and Williams’ poems, make me wish I were back in the classroom again, I so want to share their beauty and wisdom and compassion. Begin With a Question compels me to return again and again to its pages, and to continue to pose my own questions.

-Mary Rohrer-Dann, author, Taking the Long Way Home.

“Hopeful and humane, Maddox’s poetry is anything but naïve in the face of contemporary life’s evils. It faces the future at a slant and invites us not to be afraid as it angles us toward an eternal perspective that will “Begin / where there is no beginning”—not with a question but with an inexhaustible mystery, into which Maddox extends a gentle invitation to explore.” -Full review by Caty Karl at Mom Egg Review

“Not only does Marjorie Maddox’s new collection “begin” with a question, as its title promises, but it even more fruitfully sits with the questions – of life’s meaning and purpose, of why people suffer, of how we can move forward each day in the face of heartache and loss. These poems also offer answers – but they are never facile. The tiny but crucial word “or” is an important fulcrum for the book (as is the forward-slash she also uses to suggest alternatives) in that it allows Maddox to acknowledge messy truths: that often enough we keep acting in the world as best we can (“there is no turning away from this/or there is…”) and that we sometimes fail to act as we know we should (“Breathe in/ the luminous, the angelic/ flutter of beauty. Or not….”). Maddox’s willingness to live with and express the tentative "yes" or hoped-for "I do believe" is what makes reading Begin with a Question feel like finding a wise friend who listens carefully, encourages us as we move towards love, and does not judge our missteps. What a gift that this new friend is also a talented craftsperson, whose poems delight as they gently lead.” -Mia Schilling Grogan

Verse-Virtual Ekphrastic reading with Brent Terry and Lorette Luzajic. Click HERE!