Kind of Brave You Wanted to Be

Brian Doyle (1957-2017) was the longtime editor of the University of Portland's award-winning Portland Magazine. His essays appeared in Harper’s,The Atlantic Monthly, U.S. Catholic, First Things, Christian Century, America, and The American Scholar. He was the author of two Liturgical Press books, A Shimmer of Something: Lean Stories of Spiritual Substance and The Kind of Brave You Wanted to Be: Prose Prayers and Cheerful Chants against the Dark as well as a contributor to Give Us This Day.

• ContentsAcknowledgments   xvThat’s the Kind of Brave You Wanted to Be   1Astigmata  2Holy Thursday   4Your Theatrical Training   6Poem Celebrating the Tiny Metal Flag-Holding WidgetIn the Shadows on the Stage of the Lovely Old WoodenLincoln Theater in Pastoral Mount Vernon, Washington   7The Requisite Darkness   8The Song Sparrow   10Goofing the Angel   11Poem for My Friend Louis   12Sweeney’s   13Seamus   14At Marine Park by Flatbush Avenue, August 1974   16A Chicago Story   18A Bride with Brass   19Poem on Our 28th Wedding Anniversary   20Summer Camp   21 Flew   22Down by Fulton Fish Market   24The Morning Bus   26On Halsted Street   27Lily   28Poem for Father’s Day   29Poem for the Wooden Shutters and Little MeshGrilles in Old Confessional Booths   30Rules for Being an Altar Boy at Saint JohnVianney Parish for the Liturgical Year 1964   32Such Delicious Absence   34Learning Owl   35Poem in Which I Am Sitting At the Sullivan Square Station On the Orange Line in BostonStaring at the Old Schrafft’s Candy Factory, and Contemplating The Rubble and Smash of an AffairWith a Young Lady That Has Slumped From Bad to Worse to Epically Awful,And Realizing That Even as I Am Idly Pondering the Detritus of This Terrible AffairAm Much More Interested in The History of the Old Candy Factory Than I Am in the Young Lady,  Which Probably Explains, Very Well Indeed, Why the Affair Is Disastrous, as I AmNot in Love With Her at All in the Least, Which I Realize Just as the Train Arrives   36 Warming Up   37The Tender Next Minute   38What People Gave Me One Evening In Rural Coastal Oregon after I ToldThem Stories in a Lovely Tiny Library   39Poem for the Tall Man Who Interrupted Me Last Night During a Reading to Say That He Didn’t Much Care forWhat I Was Reading and Could I Read My Better Stuff?    40Poem in Which My Wife Spoons Her Mother’s Ashes from a Soulless MetalBox to the Beloved Old Blue Cookie Jar   41Once in a While We Should Say What Is   42In the Sacristy Just Before the Dawn Mass   44Pop   45The Usual Perfect Mask   46Poem for My Friend Lee   47Basketball Dads   48Poem for My Friend John Roscoe   50A Tenderness in the World   51Ten Thousand Smiles   52Poem in Which Ray Davies and Dave Davies Huddle at the Top of the Staircase at Their HomeIn Muswell Hill in London Listening to Their Aunts   53Tyee   54Poem for an Editor   55Near Otis, Oregon   56 Spectacle   58Poem for a Guy I Knew in College Who Was Not Actually My Friend   59Here’s What I Think When I Think about That   60Their Raptorish Privac  y 62The Tree Surgeon Talks about Good Wood   63The Hurling Match   64Miraculum   66Just Now Right Now   67How to Dress for Your Wedding   68What We Think We Forget   70The Western Yellowjacket: A Note   71The Peach Pie   72The Things We Say When We Have Nothing to Say   74Poem in Which Four Men, after Hauling Flowers from a ChurchAfter a Funeral, Discuss Poetics   75The Most Arrogant Knife   76Poem for a Quiet Lady at Saint Patrick’s Church in Oregon   77Poem for a Friend to Whom I Wrote Every Week   78Swagger   79The Best Rebounder I Ever Had   80Questions I Was Asked Today by Sixth-Graders   82 Yes   83Finally Is a Lot Further Away Than Sick Ever Expected   84Poem in Which Dave Kingman Hits a Home Run That Is Amazingly Still Traveling   36Years Later 86 Skiffling Shuffling Skittering Scuffling   87Best Day Ever   88The First Layer of Favorite   89Holy and Fearsome   90Owls Are the Bears of the Sky   91Whatever It Is You Think You Are Chasing, You Just Ran Away from It   92A Shy Expedition   93Could There Be a Badger Jesus?   94The Antipodean Comma   95And Then There Is This   96Cards That Are Good for Scraping Ice off Your Car   97Poem in Which a Love Letter Floats over Western South Dakota   98Nailed by Wonder   99The Slight Light   100A Swirl of Affectionate Air   101A Poem for Literature Teacher Beth Morgan of Lassiter High in Georgia   102Poem for Dave McIrvin   103How Can You Write a Poem if You Are an Essayist?   104 After   105Seanchaí   106The Tale You Did Not Know You Needed to Know   108

Brian Doyle focuses on daily life experiences, allowing familiar stories and ordinary encounters to emerge as genuinely humorous and sad, noble and emotionally rewarding! The poems tug the heart both through story and the simplicity of superb writing. The Kind of Brave You Wanted to Be is fresh and thoroughly engaging. An entrancing poetry fest!Bishop Sylvester Ryan, Bishop Emeritus of the Diocese of Monterey