Fear Not

Faith, irony, and poetic form are at the centre of Fear Not, Maurice Mierau’s new book of poems. The phrase “Fear Not” appears 80 times in the Bible, so it is more than an apt title for a collection inspired by the Gideon New Testament & Psalms. This book is lyrical, political, raunchy, blasphemous, and deeply engaged with ethical questions.

Ranging in subject from suicide to divorce, unemployment to gratitude, Afghanistan to Gethsemane, Fear Not attempts consolation, all the while mocking its own failure to lessen human pain.

Using the Gideon Bible’s list of self-help topics, each poem is arranged to play off poetic and Biblical forms. Mierau also surveys contemporary culture, skewering our intense involvement with pop phenomena such as America’s Next Top Model and Britney Spears. He recalls the formal beauty of
the Psalms with refrains that echo the commercial speech used to advertise iPods, Kahlua, and Cialis.

In Fear Not, Maurice Mierau boldly disturbs and draws from The Gideon Bible; the result is a magnificent achievement, a palimpsest at once steeped in irony and starkly tender, profane and sacred, ancient and relentlessly contemporary. With its formal innovations and haunting echoes, this is rare and necessary poetry for our time, for the skeptics and the faithful alike.”
—Barbara Nickel, author of Domain

The poems on this page are from Fear Not, © Maurice Mierau, 2008, published by Turnstone Press. You can buy the book here.

Conscious of Sin

And he would have gladly filled his stomach with the pods that the swine were eating….

—Luke 15:16

1 Now he said, “A man had two sons, and 2 “on the younger son’s bicep was a Chinese character whose meaning he probably misunderstood. The tattooed son said to his father, ‘Give me the share of the estate that falls to me. Give it to me on a Visa prepaid card.’ So his father divided his wealth between the sons on two such cards, and 3 “two days later, the younger son took an airplane to Cuba, and there he squandered his Visa card on sex tourism, every last pulsing decimal. 4 “After he had spent everything, he lived on the street, 5 “reciting bits of a Lorca poem he remembered from his desultory university career. 6 “Cubans sometimes gave him a few coins so he could eat, and the prostitutes gave him pomegranate seeds until the Canadian winter was over and the tourists went home. 7 “Maria, a young woman with an iPod, took pity on him, 8 “and he would have gladly stolen her iPod except that she had taken him home, taken and fed him, all as the rains began to fall, 9 “thousands of tunes nourishing him while he ate and realized that his father’s lowliest employees were better off than he was—

10 ‘early in the morning I will get up and go to my father, and say, “Dad, I have done wrong to throw away your money from this Visa product, getting cash advances to Conscious of Sin And he would have gladly filled his stomach with the pods that the swine were eating…. —Luke 15:16 ~ ~ buy Bolivian marching powder and Colombian gold, assuming free trade works as it should on this utopian island that jails poets and homosexuals; 11 “retain me as a contract worker and do not call me your son anymore. I deserve no benefits or security, 12 “I beg you to text me with your decision.”’ “But his father’s cell phone display was the colour of compassion, light blue as it hummed in the marble bathroom, and Daddy sent xos to Maria’s plain-Jane Nokia, 13 “and the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ 14 “‘Listen,’ said dad to his illegal immigrants, ‘let’s wire him money via a Canadian office of Western Union; and prepare the fresh sushi and goat when he arrives from the airport; for this son of mine has de-toxed on the seeds of a well-known anti-oxidant and my private jet’s gps flashes over Cuba.’ And lo, they began to celebrate though the goatless older brother was jealous.”

Tempted to Lie

1 As my grandfather lies on the ground, knowing completely the bullet in his neck, the exit wound bleeds away. 2 He sacrifices his body as a career choice. Why does he not lie to save himself? Because he counts on the end of winter, a new body and a new earth. 3 As there are many members in an army or a church, each has its own identical function, some as Viagra, others false unicorn root, Levitra, or Cialis. 4 “Will you be ready?” say the soldiers. 5 When the Germans invade in 1941 there are still some bad apples around.

6 But bless those who curse you, even though it won’t make any difference. And vice versa. 7 In 1943 fifty people march down the village road, wordless. 8 As the soldiers shoot them at the lip of a ditch, every last Jew in town, the winter coats in every size lie empty by the ditch, wordless and afraid. 9 My father is four years old. He will remember nothing before those people lying in the ditch. Like God and Ludwig and his father before him, my father speaks German. He sees those bodies march down the dirty Slavic road. 10 They cry without sound.

Advice on being a Pro Athlete

Our little systems have their day They have their day and cease to be….
—Alfred Lord Tennyson, Prologue to “In Memoriam”

1 Sacrifice your body, that’s the spirit, 2 worship the Escalade purchased with your 3 rookie contract. Don’t conform to this world, 4 just provide the sample, don’t fear it, 5 don’t be a mule or a baton twirled 6 out of a girl’s hand and into the sun;

7 bit, bridle or gravity stop the soar 8 of little systems, cheerleaders back-lit 9 in the shine of CO2-spewing Love, God’s one 10 Caucasian face whom we by arena light 11 well, embrace.

Ending with Music

Ending with Music (Brick, 2002) is a book of poems about making sense of a past that includes post-reformation martyrs, war atrocities in Russia and Europe, the Great Depression on the prairies, and a present that includes fundamentalist Christianity, pornography on the Internet, and the place of poetry and music in a postmodern world.

Popular culture is celebrated in the form of old Hollywood movies, jazz musicians, and country music lyrics. Many of the poems are concerned with “religious” violence and contradictory claims to meaning and significance. Parts of the book are based on family stories coming out of a Russian Mennonite background. Some of the stories come from the Martyrs’ Mirror, a sixteenth century Anabaptist text that enshrines folk narratives celebrating faith and martyrdom in a thoroughly neurotic way.

Other poems revolve around historical figures like Randall Jarrell and Louis Armstrong. There are recurring stories of suicide and murder, but also poems like the title piece, which is about Lenny Breau and implies a transcendence through art, no matter how temporary.

“I love the off-centre take in so many of these poems, the dark-sided humour, the odd focuses, always the restless intelligence. Characters are palpable in a wholly physical world, a loved world, shifting abruptly from time to time, a physical world with spirit illuminating it here and there. Sometimes a dark corner is almost lit, but the light moves on. People die in their sins, and in their goodness. Words and intentions preside over all of it.”
– Patrick Friesen

“Mierau’s poems are full of movement and human noise. They launch narratives with spin, invite silence, then linger on the ear.”
– Carol Shields

Book cover design by Alan Siu, based on an image by Daniel Corrigan of the Washington Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis, where American poet John Berryman ended his life in 1972.

Memoir of a Living Disease

Memoir of a Living Disease, Maurice’s non-fiction book, won a Margaret McWilliams Award from the
Manitoba Historical Society in 2006. You can buy the book here.