Poetry and Pope Francis
On a recent Friday afternoon, I joined Joe Hoover, S.J., our poetry editor, and James Davis May, the winner of last year’s contest, in a spirited debate to choose the winning poem for the 2025 Foley Poetry prize.
“Catalog of Cures in Ordinary Time,” our unanimous winner, features a grief-stricken speaker who draws the reader into a garden that is both real and metaphorical. There, she tends to memory as much as to soil. The poem is elegant in its restraint, exploring the speaker’s grief over her father’s death through the sensory language of a garden. Tonally assured and environmentally attuned, it stands as a quiet monument to how grief endures through motifs the deceased leave behind. We hope that in your celebration of our Foley winner, you also allow this poem to gently guide you through the loss of our Holy Father, Pope Francis.
Runners-up, to be published in subsequent issues, include “Question,” a shimmering and spare nine-line poem, modest in length but intricate in design. I found myself repeating it to others—from memory—long after our deliberations ended. Another runner-up, “The Half Life of Longing,” takes a different approach to absence, tracing the emotional territory of longing for someone still alive. Finally, “Designer Death” stood out for its lyricism and control. Ornate yet unsettling, the poem imagines death with both hypothetical precision and vivid concreteness.
A great poem makes an argument, makes me wonder about the world and makes a bit of sense, even if the ultimate conclusion reached in the poem is that nothing ever makes sense. And yet, after reading the submissions with Joe and Jim, I have revised my definition of a great poem. Like “Catalogue of Cures in Ordinary Time,” it should grip your heart, stretch your mind and startle your soul awake.
Grace Lenahan
A Message to the World
I have always been fond of Edward Hirsch’s idea that a poem is a message in a bottle. That message has to be written. It’s urgent! And it has to be shared; otherwise it could just stay with the poet. But the chances that the poem will find the right reader seem so steep—it is such a huge world, after all. Still, the poet sends the message out into the world, which is an act of faith, one that is realized the moment the reader picks up the poem and starts to read.
Aileen Cassinetto’s “Catalog of Cures in Ordinary Time” establishes that necessary urgency in the first line and maintains it throughout the remaining 27. As the speaker works through her grief—the loss of her father—the readers work through their own past, present and future griefs.
James Davis May
Always About Beauty
I am always moved by the people who reveal the depths of their longing, sorrow, sadness and hurt for anyone to read. (So much of poetry is about the shadows, no? Every story requires a conflict and has to have a bad guy, I suppose.)
The contest winner and runners-up this year all dealt in one way or another with loss—loss of a father, of a relationship, of innocence. “Designer Death” examined the topic of loss itself. Perhaps poetry can better capture the poignant lyricism of human loss than prose can. Or even the loss of something less poignant but still challenging: Kobe Bryant, after all, gave the world a poem about basketball when he retired from the sport.
The topic of a poem may be grief or death, but, in a way, the topic is beauty. It always is. After reading a poem, if we end up remembering only that the poet had a sad thing happen to them, then maybe we have simply heard a confession, have taken a moment or two to feel bad for the author and then moved on.
But if we come away with a sense of the beauty of the poem, if it takes our breath away, if it moves us, if the style and structure do something to us, even if we simply enjoy it, the poem has widened out from mere confession of another’s experience to a universal experience in which we can share.
Because when we experience beautiful poetry about the shadow moments of life, they touch our own griefs, large or small. “Catalog of Cures in Ordinary Time” and our three runners-up give each of our losses and endings the sacred dignity they deserve.
Joe Hoover
