Church Ladies by Renee Emerson
Review by Megan McDermott
Fernwood Press, 2023
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Renee Emerson’s poem “Prayer Chain” begins with the speaker’s children sleeping upstairs before moving into global concerns: prayers “for wars, / their endings and beginnings.” For the woman in the poem, “A note in the planner next to a chore, / an appointment, prayer becomes both / and neither.” Readers sense the potential struggle a modern “church lady” might have in maintaining faith and its practice while juggling the other demands of her life. The collection Church Ladies explores this challenge alongside many others, including the attempt to keep faith while aware of Christianity’s historical and present-day sins against women. Emerson approaches this particular topic from many angles. Though her poems concerned with the present, like “Prayer Chain,” are valuable, Church Ladies finds much of its heart in engaging with history, especially with individual women across various eras and traditions.
The women Church Ladies honors come in roughly two categories: revolutionary women who were punished for rebelling against strict impositions or made history for their boundary breaking, and women who worked more quietly, perhaps being sidelined or underestimated because of the assumption that their lives easily fit into proscribed, gendered containers. Revolutionary women include Anne Hutchinson (a Puritan woman whose preaching and teaching got her banished from Massachusetts), Jarena Lee (the first woman preacher in the African Methodist Episcopal Church), Anne Askew (a sixteenth century poet and writer burnt at the stake for heresy), Julian of Norwich (anchoress and author of the earliest surviving English language texts by a woman), Margaery Kempe (English mystic who wrote autobiographically), and Marcella of Rome (a fourth century ascetic), among others. Though these women all faced challenges in their patriarchal societies, they differed in their fates and theologies. It is fitting, then, that Emerson’s poems employ a variety of tactics in order to highlight multiple dimensions of women’s defiance.
“Anne Hutchinson,” for instance, uses an epigraph to provide context for Anne’s challenges and thereby elevate the power of Hutchinson’s voice. The epigraph, taken from one of Hutchinson’s contemporaries Reverend Hugh Peter, states: “You have stepped out of your place, have rather been a husband than a wife, and a preacher than a hearer…” Emerson transitions from these condemning words, which represent the views of the church and broader society, into a first-person voice. Emerson’s Hutchinson says of herself: “Not a wife–a Jezebel,” “Not a preacher–a witch.” Is the poem arguing that Hugh Peter was using coded language – that his descriptions of her were simply softer versions of the labels Hutchinson names? In these phrases, does this imagined Anne Hutchinson state only how others view her, or is she also identifying herself with this disparaging language, perhaps even delighting in it? One might perceive enjoyment peaking through in the poem’s next lines:
Not beneath you, not bending down,
I have stepped out
of my place, I have
removed my black frock
and petticoats and stamped
them in the mud.
Hutchinson continues to defend herself and even celebrate herself in the midst of great persecution: “I go into the world / bearing no arms, only God’s truth. // I go into massacre…. / the sun bleaching / my fine golden hair.” The ending hints both at freedom and beauty. Similarly, “Anne Askew’s Confession” celebrates its subject through a defiant first-person voice. However, it features no direct quotation of Askew’s detractors. Instead the poem immediately launches into Askew declaring, “You have no business with my sin.” Anne Hutchinson maintains innocence (“What charge can you bring against me?”), but Anne Askew is downright confrontational, insulting her accuser: “you are just a man / with your own pocketful of dirty coins, / your own false teeth.” In this poem, we feel both defiance and anger – a valuable representation for any woman navigating the myriad of emotions that accompany life in a patriarchal religious system. Though the tone differs between these two Anne poems, they end up in the same place theologically: a state of confidence in one’s standing with God despite any naysayer. Emerson assigns Askew these lines:
I’ve found that I too can talk to God.
There’s no special magic to it, just a willingness
that no instrument of torture or threat or flame
can wring from a body.
“I too can talk to God” might be a fitting mantra for any of us who contemplate the realities of sexism (or homophobia, transphobia, racism, or any other systemic sin) present in the church today, particularly those who have been told their communication with or closeness to God is limited because of their gender.
In contrast to these first-person voices are third-person poems like “Song of a Traveling Preacher Woman” and “Marcella of Rome.” “Song of a Traveling Preacher Woman” begins, “Jonah ran the other way / but not Jarena Lee.” Rather than having Jarena Lee defend or celebrate herself like Emerson’s versions of Hutchinson and Askew do, Emerson allows an outside speaker to theologically assess Jarena Lee. The Scriptural comparison puts Jarena in the same realm as the prophets and also judges Jarena as Jonah’s superior. Why begrudge women the possibility of prophetic leadership when the men God calls to the task often run away from it? Using the third-person voice, the poem repeats “she” several times: “She stood in the pew to save…,” “She let the sermon roll…,” and “she poured out the word of God…” Then, in the poem’s last stanza, the voice questions: “If a stone can cry, why / not a woman, why / not a woman…” This poem’s point of view allows gendered language to be used again and again, consequently emphasizing a pivotal piece of Jarena Lee’s identity that was held against her. However, not every third-person poem takes the same perspective. While the speaker of “Song of a Traveling Preacher Woman” clearly celebrates Jarena Lee, the third-person voice of “Marcella of Rome” takes a more omniscient, narrative tone. It describes Marcella as possessing only “her own life, as tattered / and worn as everyone else’s.” Though the poem conveys Marcella’s generosity, it isn’t obviously laudatory. Instead, there is something sorrowful or at the very least ambiguous to Marcella’s story (her “tattered” life). The variety of approaches in Church Ladies suggests an author who is thoughtfully exploring historical women and their humanity rather than merely cheerleading for or romanticizing them.
Though Emerson movingly captures women’s defiant qualities, her interests are not limited to defiance. She is inspired by a second category of women also: those who might be associated with conventional femininity even as their complexity and depth of faith exceed any gendered stereotype. In the poem “To Martin, on His Wife,” Emerson re-evaluates Katharina von Bora, wife of the famed Reformer Martin Luther. The poem begins with the note: “Soren Kierkegaard once said Martin Luther might as well have married a ‘wooden plank.’” Emerson’s poem then offers up a contrary interpretation:
Nowadays, Katie’d be
a keeper–queen of sustainable
living, herbal magician, urban
gardener, butcher, shearer,
nurse, and teacher…
The poem suggests a breadth to Katharina and her talents as it unpacks the many gifts and tasks that usually get lumped together under an umbrella word like “homemaking.” To keep a home is not a light or easy thing. This was especially true in times when so little could be outsourced to technology or a local supermarket. To Emerson, Katharina’s domestic skills are evidence of a vivacious and active spirit, and worthy of monikers like “queen” and “magician.” Just as Katharina von Bora’s full complexity can be diminished by those who view her exclusively through her relationship (wife of Luther), Susanna Wesley might also be dismissed as “just” John and Charles Wesley’s mother. “Susanna Wesley, Homeschool Mom” foregrounds Wesley’s contributions to what might be considered a feminine realm, the education of her children, while capturing her faith, persistence, and bravery: “….even when hubby hops train to London, / even when townsfolk light up her window with guns, // Susanna Wesley prays in her apron tabernacle…” Those two words, “apron tabernacle,” could easily be an alternate title for this collection, which repeatedly brings together the domestic and the sacred.
In addition to rethinking women who are remembered primarily for their relationships, Church Ladies also deepens recognition for women whose non-domestic accomplishments were not obviously rebellious, but instead situated in fields acceptable for women of certain status and privilege to pursue. For example, the poem “I Come” focuses on Charlotte Elliot, a successful nineteenth-century poet and hymn writer. At the time, hymn writing was a way women could have public voice in churches that did not permit their preaching or teaching. Although being a hymn writer wasn’t necessarily a radical role for a woman, Emerson suggests a radical side to Elliot’s most famous hymn text “Just As I Am.” While some might dismiss the hymn as sentimental or quaint, “I Come” points out, “No one wants to come / just as they are / to the Lord…. // We come to the altar / with bloodied knees and hands.” To come to God as one is requires courage. Once again, Emerson identifies overlooked power and strength in a woman’s contributions and perspectives.
The book’s penultimate poem, “To Church Ladies Who Persist,” provides a less literal avenue into questions about Christianity’s fraught relationship with women. In it, the speaker and her daughters fill a hole made by a groundhog or rabbit. On the surface, this has little to do with the idea of “church ladies,” yet the piece’s title reminds us to mine its imagery and language for applications to the book’s themes. For me, resonance comes in the poem’s final lines: “Creatures ourselves, we covered it just to see / if come morning, she’d dig her way out.” The language of “creatures ourselves” recognizes an animal quality to the speaker and her daughters. Girls or women who embrace creatureliness will resist the pressures “church ladies” face to deny their passions, desires, angers, and other wilder traits. After all, creatureliness is in opposition to expectations of politeness, restraint, quiet, and submission. The poem’s groundhog or rabbit might also be interpreted as an emblem of “church ladies.” The characters are eager to see whether this animal – referred to as “she” – can overcome the obstacle they’ve created. Ultimately, the animal’s quest is also the quest of women who choose to intertwine our spiritual lives with the complications of Christianity: we must keep digging ourselves out of holes even as others pile dirt on top of us and stomp their feet above us.
Church Ladies by Renee Emerson digs itself out of the dirt of church history by uplifting the varied women in that history (women of varied traditions, spiritualities, and theologies; women of varied feminisms, proto-feminisms, or lack thereof; and women whose actions received varied receptions in their lifetimes) while also touching on the experiences of women today. Even Emerson’s section titles highlight the different roles women past or present might have played, or still play, within a church: “Greeters,” ‘Sunday School Teachers,” “Choir,” “Outreach,” etc. These roles do not always garner attention or accolades, but they are essential to church life. While acknowledging difficult realities, Emerson’s collection also evokes gratitude for those who give their hearts, effort, and time to the flawed communal life of the church. Maybe this is why Emerson ends with a poem in the voice of Dorothy Day. In it, Day acknowledges that “Most Catholics want a little more separation” from the poor than she herself advocated. Despite criticizing her fellow Catholics, the voice of Day, as inhabited by Emerson, still turns towards an expression of “my hope” for “every street corner dizzy with harvest.” For those seeking hope while also desiring an honest and grounded perspective, Church Ladies offers an ideal read.
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Renee Emerson is the author of the poetry collections Keeping Me Still (Winter Goose Publishing 2014), Threshing Floor (Jacar Press 2016), and Church Ladies (Fernwood Press 2023). She is also the author of the chapbook The Commonplace Misfortunes of Everyday Plants (Belle Point Press), and the middle grade novel Why Silas Miller Must Learn to Ride a Bike (Wintergoose Publishing 2022). She lives in the Midwest with her husband and children.
Megan McDermott is a poet and Episcopal priest living in Western Massachusetts. She is the author of full-length collection Jesus Merch: A Catalog in Poems (Fernwood Press) and two chapbooks, Woman as Communion (Game Over Books) and Prayer Book for Contemporary Dating (Ethel). Connect with her more at meganmcdermottpoet.com or on Twitter @megmcdermott92.
ID: Cover of Church Ladies by Renee Emerson.
Psaltery & Lyre 