Mormon Artist articles

Chronicles of a New Age: Early Mormon Literature, 1830–1890

Mon, 19 May 2014 00:00:00 -0600

May 19, 2014

By Scott Hales

Scott Hales blogs about Mormon literature at The Low-Tech World, Dawning of a Brighter Day, A Motley Vision, and Modern Mormon Men. He lives with his wife and daughters in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Joseph Smith did not have a hand for writing, but he surrounded himself with women and men who did. True, he could dictate powerfully—the scriptures he revealed are evidence enough of that—but when he pressed pen to paper, the words came out clumsily and disordered.

This was not the case for many of his followers, who, having cast their lots with the Restoration movement, proceeded to share its good news through writing letters, diaries, personal narratives, sermons, tracts, hymns, and poems. While many of these writings have been lost to time, some, like William W. Phelps’ hymn “The Spirit of God like a fire is burning,” continue to be a part of the Mormon experience.

Still, it is sad that so little of early Mormon writing has a place in the cultural and institutional memory of the Mormon people today. We rightly honor the sacrifice of the early Saints by commemorating their difficult trek west and consecrated devotion to establishing Zion in the desert; yet, we miss something of that sacrifice if we ignore the public and private writings that kept it moving forward. These writings, after all, were more than the scribblings of a nomadic and frontier people. They were earnest expressions of faith that inspired the Saints to press on and understand what it meant to be a Mormon people. In a sense, they constitute a kind of utopian era of Mormon literature—a time when Mormon writers saw themselves as chroniclers of a new age of world history. They believed Christ’s millennium was cresting over the horizon, and their task was to prepare the world to receive it.

Founding Zion: 1830–1847

The earliest examples of Mormon creative writing are likely the hymns published in the June 1832 issue of The Evening and Morning Star, the first Mormon newspaper. Printed by William W. Phelps in Independence, Missouri, the hymns capture the millennial fervor of a people striving to build the City of Zion prophesied in scripture.

Three of the hymns were original verse by either Phelps or Parley P. Pratt, while the remaining two were Phelps’ adaptations of Protestant hymns by John Newton, author of “Amazing Grace,” and Joseph Swain. Of these two, the most enduring has been “Redeemer of Israel,” which draws from Swain’s “O Thou in Whose Presence My Soul Takes Delight” to praise Christ’s role in leading his chosen people out of the wilderness of apostasy and sin.

Of more interest, however, is Phelps’ slight modification of Newton’s “Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken,” a hymn that glories in the future City of Zion. In the original version, the hymn describes a city “on the Rock of Ages founded” (line 5). In The Evening and Morning Star, however, the city is founded on the “Rock of Enoch,” a change that reflects how Joseph Smith’s ongoing “translation” of the Bible, which greatly expanded the Saints’ understanding of the life and mission of the Old Testament prophet Enoch, colored their vision of the latter days (see Moses 7).

While small and seemingly inconsequential, this modification is indicative of a larger trend in early Mormon hymnody: a tendency to look to earlier texts as models for giving structure to an emergent Mormon voice. Indeed, there is nothing strikingly unique about many early Mormon hymns. Their subject matter, themes, and meters do little to set them apart from their Protestant contemporaries, who were equally animated by the grace of Christ and the promise of his second coming.

This changed, however, as Joseph Smith’s revelations gave Mormonism more unique material with which to work. By the time Emma Smith, the Prophet’s wife, compiled the first Mormon hymnbook, A Collection of Sacred Hymns, for the Church of the Latter Day Saints (1835), Mormon hymns remained unremarkable in terms of meter and rhyme scheme, yet had become more distinctive on the level of content.

For instance, the hymn “O stop and tell me, Red Man” (Hymn 63), likely penned by Phelps, is grounded in the Book of Mormon teaching that the American Indians were the descendants of the Biblical patriarch Jacob who “fell in darkness” and “dwindled/To idle Indian hearts” (lines 15, 19–20). Another Phelps hymn, “The towers of Zion soon shall rise” (Hymn 29), is a standard, unexceptional millennialist hymn except for where it refers to Jesus Christ as “the Son Aw-Man,” the name Joseph Smith identified as Jesus’ name in the Adamic language (see D&C 78:20, 95:17, JD 2:342).

In both instances, as well as in others, Mormon writers drew upon the power of hymnody to emphasize distinctive features of their new religion and forge a community identity apart from that of their Protestant neighbors. While a cursory glance through A Collection of Sacred Hymns certainly reveals its similarity to other hymnals of its time, close readings of its contents show how Emma Smith, whose role as the Prophet’s wife often overshadows her important contribution to Mormon literature, compiled a collection for the Saints that was, as its preface suggests, “adapted to their faith and belief in the gospel” (iii, italics added).

Perhaps the most important literary development during this era of imitation and experimentation, aside from the hymnal and the ongoing publication of Mormon poetry and hymns in Church-owned newspapers, was the publication of a full-length work of Mormon poetry, Parley P. Pratt’s grandly titled The Millennium, A Poem, to Which is Added Hymns and Songs on Various Subjects, Few and Interesting, Adapted to the Dispensation of the Fulness of Times (1835). Highly ambitious, the work’s title poem, written in heroic couplets, guides readers through six chapters that outline Jewish history, the discovery of America, various democratic revolutions, Indian removal, the latter-day Restoration, and the calamities preceding Christ’s millennial reign. Of special interest is the way the long poem ends with a recitation of Bible and Book of Mormon prophets “[w]ho wrapt in vision clear, in turn foretold,/The day of wonders,” a gesture that reiterates at once the unique and ongoing role of prophets in God’s eternal plan as well as the consonance of new scripture with old (30). Other poems likewise follow a similar track, blending traditional Judeo-Christian elements with Mormonism to foster a sense of new religious identity. For example, in the poem “Redemption of Zion,” Pratt draws upon Biblical tropes of exile, escape, and wandering to describe the Latter-day Saints’ recent expulsion from Jackson County, Missouri, which recent revelation had designated as a promised land for the building of the City of Zion:

Lo, far in the realms of Missouri,

When peace crowns the meek and the lowly,

The loud storms of envy and folly

May roll all their billows in vain.

The wicked, with evil intention,

May rouse all their powers of invention,

With lying, intrigue and contention,

Their end will be sorrow and pain.

The saints, crowned with songs and rejoicing,

To Zion shall flow from all nations,

Escaping the great conflagration,

They find out the regions of peace.

Though scattered and driven asunder,

As exiles and pilgrims to wander,

A scene on which angels do ponder,

Yet Jesus will bring their release. (lines 1–16)

In these lines, the “scattered and driven” Mormons join the ranks of previous wanderers, from the Children of Israel in the Old Testament to Christian in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), as they flee the wicked and receive a lasting “release” from evil. In its image of “saints […] flow[ing] from all nations,/Escaping the great conflagration,” the poem provides a picture of a people gathering together, unified in their difference from the wicked’s “loud storms of envy and folly.”

Poetry was not the only form Mormon creative writing took during this early period. In Nauvoo, for example, Parley P. Pratt wrote two works of utopian fiction, “The Angel of the Prairies: A Dream of the Future” (1843–1844) and “One Hundred Years Hence, 1945” (1845). Following other utopian fiction of the time, like Mary Griffith’s Three Hundred Years Hence (1836), both stories involve narrators who fall asleep and wake up in the future. Pratt’s futures are not like Griffith’s future of reformed social and educational institutions, however; rather, they are millennial worlds where Christ governs the righteous from his throne in the City of Zion:

Instead of a flowery plain without inhabitants, I beheld an immense city, extending on all sides and thronged with myriads of people, apparently of all nations. In the midst of this city stood a magnificent temple, which, in magnitude and splendor, exceeded everything of the kind before known upon the earth. Its foundations were of precious stones; its walls like polished gold; its windows of agates, clear as crystal; and its roof of a dazzling brightness, its top, like the lofty Andes, seemed to mingle with the skies; while a bright cloud overshadowed it, from which extended rays of glory and brightness in all the magnificent colors of the rainbow. The whole buildings thereof seemed to cover some eight or ten acres of ground.

Neither story offers readers much in the way of interesting characters or plot development. Instead, they strive to give readers a sense of awe about the future City of Zion and its beauty. At the end of “One Hundred Years Hence,” for example, the time travelers awake from their visit to the future “perfectly enamored with the beauty and glory of Zion to be” and longing for “the heavenly reality of one hundred years hence” (145). Like the millennial poetry of the same era, the story uses fantastic imagery of gleaming architecture and peaceful citizenry to inspire readers to contemplate and hope for a world where the influences of wickedness and sin are eclipsed by the glory of a celestial city.

A better piece of creative writing from the same era is Pratt’s “A Dialogue between Joseph Smith and the Devil” (1844), a kind of closet drama that is often labeled the first Mormon short story. Published in the New York Herald in January 1844, the piece is charming and surprisingly entertaining. As its title suggests, it depicts a good-natured religious debate between Satan and the Prophet, with Satan promoting “Christian” practices that are a “help to [his] cause”:

I am fond of praying, singing, church-building, bell ringing, going to meeting, preaching, and withal, I have quite a missionary zeal. I like, also, long faces, long prayers, long robes, and learned sermons; nothing suits me better than to see people who have been for a whole week opposing their neighbor, grinding the face of the poor, walking in pride and folly, and serving me with all their heart.

Joseph Smith, on the other hand, offers a more genuine and common-sense approach to Christianity, ribbing Satan with sarcastic rejoinders that expose the folly of the devil’s schemes. In the end, the two “shake hands cordially” and sit down together for a spruce beer, roasting each other one last time. Like Pratt’s other fiction, “A Dialogue” is rudimentary literature that places more emphasis on its function as an entertaining vehicle of religious themes and ideas than on its literary form.

Establishing Zion: 1847–1877

The Mormon migration to Utah in 1847 inspired new poetry. Among the most famous work of Mormon creative writing from this time was William Clayton’s poem “All is Well,” which Mormons today know as “Come, Come, Ye Saints.” Parley P. Pratt and William W. Phelps also continued to write poetry, although the most important poets from the early Utah period were Eliza R. Snow and John Lyon. Baptized near Kirtland, Ohio, in 1835, Snow quickly became known among Mormons in that region for her poetry. In 1842, while the Saints were headquartered in Nauvoo, Illinois, she helped to organize the Relief Society and later became a plural wife of Joseph Smith. During this time, she also wrote occasional poetry for marriages and births, poetic tributes to prominent men and women, devotion verse, and other well-known genres. After the Prophet and his brother were killed in Carthage Jail, Snow was among the first to use poetry to pay tribute to them:

Now Zion mourns, she mourns an earthly head;

The Prophet and the Patriarch are dead!

The blackest deed that men or devils know,

Since Calvary’s scene, has laid the brothers low.

One in their life, and one in death—they proved

How strong their friendship—how they truly loved.

True to their mission, until death they stood,

Then sealed their testimony with their blood. (“The Assassination,” lines 67–74)

After the Prophet’s death, she married Brigham Young and emigrated to Utah as a member of one of the first wagon trains. In the Rocky Mountains, Snow quickly became one of the most influential women in the region, becoming the second president of the Relief Society in 1866. Her poetry also flourished, becoming staples in publications like the Salt Lake City Deseret News and the Woman’s Exponent. Again, Snow worked with a number of meters and genres, writing occasional and devotional poetry, tributes, and pastoral and patriotic verses. “Evening Thoughts,” likely her final poem, was published in the Woman’s Exponent shortly before her death. In it, Snow expresses a theme common to her poetry: the exalting quality of a life consecrated to God:

Fear not, ye Saints—you who indeed

Are living as the Lord requires,

To sacred cov’nants giving heed,

And every word which God inspires.

An ordeal furnace near at hand,

Will test your faith and textures tool

But God will give you grace to stand,

And he will help you safely though.

And when the winds and tempests blow,

And the primed furnace vents its heat;

Whatever comes, ‘tis yours to know,

Your triumph yet will be complete. (lines 21–32)

Across the Atlantic, in Scotland, another talented poet joined the Church. Born in Glasgow’s slums in 1803, John Lyon was an illiterate weaver in Scotland’s working class until his debates with local college students inspired him to learn to read. By the time of his baptism in 1844, Lyon was already writing poems and articles for county newspapers, often to supplement his weaving income in hard times. As a Latter-day Saint, Lyon applied his facility with words and his commanding personality to missionary work, growing his local congregation and building up the Church in surrounding areas.

In 1853, following the encouragement of Orson Pratt and Franklin D. Richards, Lyon collected his poems into a single volume, The Harp of Zion, the proceeds of which he consecrated to the Perpetual Emigrating Fund to help poor converts pay their way to Zion. Unfortunately, the book did not initially sell well, despite the quality of its contents and binding, because of the poverty of the European Saints. Still, Lyon’s poetry continued to impress and inspire Mormons on both sides of the Atlantic, and when he finally emigrated to Utah in 1853, his talents as a weaver and man of letters were readily received and employed.

Lyon’s best-known poem, perhaps, is “The Apostate,” a “fragment” about a hasty European convert who emigrates to Nauvoo only to be disillusioned by its failures to live up to his utopian expectations. Indeed, upon arriving in the city, the convert confronts the “stern realities of life” in Zion and buckles under the blow:

[…] His hope,

Like morning mist, evaporated quite,

And with it, all his dreams of phantom bliss

Which nightly pictur’d out Elysian fields,

Woods, lawns, and bowers, and wizard, winding streams,

By crystal founts, and cool refreshing groves!

Amazed beyond description to rehearse,

He tried to reconcile his blasted hopes,

Where he beheld the toil-worn sons of God

Rolling the stone of Joseph, pond’rous grown:

Still disaffection’s deadly ’venomened sting

Withered his schemes, till every sense became

Corrupt, and dead. (lines 34–46)

The convert’s disenchantment with Zion comes to color his view of everything connected with Mormonism, including the temple, until he succumbs, like Lucifer, to apostasy:

And so he fell from his gigantic height,

As we have seen a falling meteor fall

From the starry vault, which never had,

’Mong constellations, a fixed residence,

Save the combustive fluid of scattered gas,

That, kindled by the windy current, flashed,

And falling, seemed a blazing orb of heaven! (lines 60–66)

“The Apostate” does not end with the convert’s fall, however. “[N]early twenty moons” after leaving Nauvoo, the convert returns to his Scotland congregation as a “strange, outlandish looking man,” still embittered by his experiences and railing against “[t]he Prophets, Saints, and all their labours” (lines 67, 69, 83). Through his sorry life, the poem offers caution to those zealously seeking the earthly paradise of an already-established Zion. Of course, like other poets of this era, Lyon often characterized Zion as a resting place where the Saints could find peace from repression, which could cast a too-idyllic glow over the Saints’ desert Zion. Still, for Lyon, Zion was less a Latter-day Cockaigne than a land where friends and family could gather to enjoy the blessings of the restored gospel. Indeed, Lyon addressed many of his poems to his brothers and sisters in the Church, expressing in them feelings of warmth and camaraderie through a shared spiritual vision. Poetry, in a sense, was a way for the Saints to grow closer together as brothers and sisters.

Interestingly, during this time of significant poetic production, the development of Mormon fiction was slow, with only an occasional piece of fiction appearing in newspapers or journals, often in the form of children’s stories. A primary reason for this lack of fiction was likely Brigham Young’s disapproval of the form, which was often used at the time to propagate anti-Mormon stereotypes and ridicule Church leaders, especially Young and Heber C. Kimball, his first counselor. While Young initially approved of fiction-reading within the Mormon community, he changed his mind as he got older and outside influences increased to threaten the mountain Zion. In an 1872 General Conference discourse on “The Order of Enoch,” for instance, Young even went so far as banning novels from his hypothetical ideal community:

If I had charge of such a society as this to which I refer, I would not allow novel reading; […] You let your children read novels until they run away, until they get so that they do not care—they are reckless, and their mothers are reckless, and some of their fathers are reckless, and if you do not break their backs and tie them up they will go to hell [….] You have got to check them some way or other, or they will go to destruction. They are perfectly crazy. Their actions say, “I want Babylon stuck on to me; I want to revel in Babylon; I want everything I can think of or desire.” If I had the power to do so, I would not take such people to heaven. God will not take them there, that I am sure of. (“Order” 224–225)

Subsequent Church leaders echoed these sentiments after his death, including George Reynolds, the influential secretary to the First Presidency. Like Young, Reynolds feared the popularity of fiction, particularly the way it made the world beyond the borders of Zion attractive to young people. Writing in The Contributor in 1881, Reynolds specifically warned against fiction that romanticized monogamy in the minds of Mormon young women:

In no feature is the genius of the Church of God more at variance with that of modern Babylon than in its ethics of social life; pre-eminently with regard to the marriage covenant. Modern Christian writers, when treating upon the subject of marriage, whether viewing it from a religious, legal, or social standpoint, universally (with one or two unimportant exceptions), claim that the union of one man with one woman only, is the true order of matrimony, and that a man cannot honorably and sincerely love two or more women at the same time as wives should be loved. This falsehood is still more strongly though indirectly, enforced in the current works to fiction, whether in prose or song which treat as most of them do, on the affections of the human heart. Literature of this class extols a state of society utterly inconsistent with that which will exist when the government of God holds sway upon the earth. Those of our people who are addicted to the habit of reading this class of works, and of filling their minds with their plots and episodes, insensibly to themselves imbibe a spirit and develop a state of feeling antagonistic to the teachings of divine revelation, which dwarfs their growth in heavenly principles and measurably unfit them for the realities of life. (358)

Significantly, this injunction against fiction remained intact until Mormons began to distance themselves from polygamy in 1890. As a form almost inextricably connected with the monogamous marriage plot, the novel did not secure a lasting place within the Mormon community until that plot paradigm became more complementary to their values.

Defending Zion: 1877–1890

Brigham Young passed away in 1877, and the years following his death were difficult on the Mormon people.

In 1879, the Supreme Court ruled against George Reynolds in the landmark Reynolds v. United States case, affirming that duty to religious beliefs was not justifiable grounds for disobeying the laws of the land, thus strengthening existing federal anti-bigamy legislation.

In 1882, Congress passed the Edmunds Act, which made polygamy a felony and rendered it increasingly harder for Latter-day Saint men to practice plural marriage. This legislation was followed up five years later by the Edmunds-Tucker Act, which further curtailed the rights of polygamists and essentially crippled the Church’s ability to function as an institution. By the end of the decade, many Mormon men—including prominent Church leaders like President John Taylor—were either hiding from federal marshals or serving prison sentences.

This atmosphere of opposition and oppression greatly influenced the rising generation of Mormon creative writers. Among those most affected was Orson F. Whitney, the grandson of two of Mormonism’s greatest early leaders, Heber C. Kimball and Newel K. Whitney. Always of a literary mindset, Whitney worked as a newspaper reporter, editor, and teacher while honing his poetic voice. In 1889, after publishing a number of poems in Church periodicals, Whitney collected his work and published it in The Poetical Writings of Orson F. Whitney: Poems and Poetical Prose, which is possibly the best-crafted book of Mormon poetry published in the nineteenth century. For Whitney, the book was a deliberate effort to gain credibility for the Mormon people and better their reputation. In its preface, Whitney writes especially of Mormon poetry’s ability to speak to change minds and reveal the profundity of Mormon thought:

[…] and though I may not hope to win for my verse favor and recognition, such as are accorded to and merited by productions of poetic genius, it may be these humble songs will help dispel the dense cloud of prejudice and misapprehension hanging like a pall over the true history and character of my people, and show that the author of these line, if he cannot create poetry, can at least admire it, and linger if not follow in the footsteps of those whose diving mission is to make the world more lovely and more lovable by producing it. That the name ‘Mormon’ is not necessarily a synonym for coarseness and carnality, need not be told to those cognizant of the truth. But what a vast mine of poetry, no less than science and philosophy, lies hidden in the mystic depths of what is mistermed ‘Mormonism,’ neither the wise world, not we ourselves, I trow, are half aware. (iii–iv)

As evidenced in The Poetical Writings, Whitney produced a number of sophisticated works that, sadly, had no measureable effect on the perceptions and prejudices of the outside world. One reason for this, perhaps, aside from their association with the much-maligned Mormonism, was the militant contempt a number of Whitney’s poems expressed toward the United States, which they characterized as a cruel Babylonian power. For instance, in his poem “The Women of the Everlasting Covenant,” a tribute to Mormondom’s plural wives, Whitney soundly condemns the United States for their opposition to polygamy, characterizing it as a hypocritical rejection of a biblical teaching:

Dare Christian bigotry assign of hell,

The law that framed the House of Israel?

Condemn as barbarous, or brand as crime,

The heaven-accepted rites of olden time?

Dare pious priest, or sectary, renounce

The sacred truths of Scripture, and denounce

The ones Almighty God could condescend

To own as Chosen, and to name as Friend?

Befoul the words that glittering begem

The pearly gates of New Jerusalem,

In future time to meet them face to face,

And crave admittance to that holy place?

Oh, blush for shame, false Christianity!

Thou synonym for inconsistency! (lines 177–190)

Other poems carry a similar antagonizing tone. In “Lines on the Exodus,” for example, Whitney attacks the American Babylon for its oppression, predicting its certain fall before Zion emerged to establish a new age of Truth:

O Babylon! what streams of human blood

Unite to swell thy crimson-rolling flood!

The cry of millions, bound within thy thralls,

Deceived and lost, of God for vengeance calls;

The prayers of martyrs, murdered for the truth,

Appeals of widows for their orphaned youth,

The blood of innocence thy hand hath shed,

Pronounced a curse upon thy guilty head.

And thou shalt fall, and great thy fall shall be,

A ponderous mill-stone cast into the sea;

Eternal night shall shroud thee in its gloom,

And Truth shall triumph in thy day of doom. (lines 23–34)

Whitney’s impassioned prediction did not come to pass, however. The year following the publication of Poetical Writings, the Church lost another important Supreme Court case, The Late Corporation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints v. United States (1890), and Church leaders increasingly recognized that their utopian dream of a Zion apart from the American Babylon was hopeless. In September 1890, following a period of earnest prayer and revelation, President Wilford Woodruff announced the end of officially sanctioned polygamy among the Mormon people, instigating what would become the most transformative years of Mormon history since the days of Joseph Smith.

Conclusion

Mormon creative writing, like so much else in the Mormon world, changed in important ways in the wake of the Woodruff Manifesto. By then, the great Mormon poets of the nineteenth-century—William W. Phelps, Parley P. Pratt, Eliza R. Snow, and John Lyon—were dead, and a new generation of Mormon creative writers, led by Orson F. Whitney’s vision of “Home Literature,” guided writers like Susa Young Gates, Nephi Anderson, Josephine Spencer, and Julia McDonald to a new century and new literary forms.

Poetry continued to be a popular literary form, to be sure; yet, a number of Mormon writers—particularly Mormon women writers—turned increasingly to prose forms like the short story and novel. The emergence of Mormon fiction signaled an end to a foundational era in Mormon literature.

In the future, Mormon creative writers would continue to explore themes of Zion and community-building, but in a less overtly utopian and apocalyptic way than their forebears. For them, Mormon creative writing provided a literary landscape where they could bid farewell to their utopian past and grapple with Mormonism’s new efforts to become an assimilated and participating member of society. ❧

“Is It Something in the Water?” Why Mormons Write Science Fiction and Fantasy

Mon, 20 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0700

December 20, 2010

By Katherine Morris & Kathleen Dalton-Woodbury

In a 2009 article published in the Boston Globe, Mormon author Carol Lynch Williams explains how book publishers these days have a tendency to look at the proliferation of authors in Utah and wonder, “What the heck is in the water here?” They’re not the only ones who have taken notice. From book publishers to bloggers to scholars of Mormon culture, a number of people have noted the success of Mormon authors, particularly in the genre of science fiction and fantasy, and have speculated as to why Mormons seem to be unusually well-represented in this field.

The most well-known Mormon writer of science fiction and fantasy is, of course, Orson Scott Card. With the publication of his first science fiction story, “Ender’s Game,” in Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine in 1977 and his receiving the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer from the World Science Fiction Convention in 1978, Orson Scott Card was the first Mormon science fiction and fantasy author to achieve notable success in this field. He won both the Hugo and Nebula awards two years in succession for Ender’s Game (1986) and Speaker for the Dead (1987), something no author had done previously nor has done since.

A number of other Mormons have followed Orson Scott Card’s break into the science fiction and fantasy scene. Dave Wolverton, M. Shayne Bell, Susan Kroupa, James Jordan, and Virginia Baker, inspired by Orson Scott Card’s success, have all been winners in L. Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future contest, the highest-paying contest for amateur writers of science fiction and fantasy—one that is said to draw thousands of participants each year.

In just the past few years, there has been quite a bit of high-profile activity from Mormon authors in the national science fiction and fantasy market. Brandon Sanderson, who writes epic fantasy novels, is a New York Times bestselling author who was recently given the distinction of being asked by Robert Jordan’s widow to finish the Wheel of Time, a popular fantasy book series that has sold over 44 million copies worldwide. Shannon Hale won a 2006 Newbery Honor award for her bestselling middle-grade fantasy novel Princess Academy. Stephenie Meyer followed up her wildly successful vampire paranormal romance series Twilight in 2008 with a science fiction novel, The Host, which stayed on the New York Times Best Seller list for over a year. Internationally known crime fiction author Anne Perry has recently taken her own plunge into the market with the publication of two fantasy novels, Tathea and Come Armageddon. Brandon Mull, Aprilynne Pike, and other Mormon children’s authors have consistently shown up on the New York Times Best Seller list for their middle grade and YA fantasy series.

Along with the success and awards, there is also the strange trivia of Mormon involvement in science fiction and fantasy. According to Scott and Marny Parkin, who maintain the online Bibliography of Mormon Speculative Fiction (mormonsf.org), Zenna Henderson, another Hugo Award winner, was raised Mormon. Glen Larson, producer of the science fiction television show Battlestar Galactica, is famously credited with having included aspects of Mormon theology and culture (a planet of origin called “Kobol,” a Council of the Twelve, marriage for “all the eternities,” etc.) in the series. Screenwriter David Howard co-wrote the screenplay for the successful Star Trek spoof, Galaxy Quest, which won the 2000 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation. Gary Kurtz was the executive producer of Star Wars: A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and a fantasy film directed by Jim Henson called The Dark Crystal.

There’s even an unlikely connection between Mormonism and Ray Bradbury, one of the most honored and influential writers of science fiction and fantasy in the 20th and 21st centuries. According to BYU professor Linda Hunter Adams, Ray Bradbury once told her in a phone interview that he was good friends with Reid Nibley (Hugh Nibley’s brother) when he was a boy, that he sometimes attended MIA activities with Reid, and that they even wrote Mormon roadshows together—Ray writing the scripts and Reid composing the music.

Several people have speculated about why Mormons seem to be unusually represented in the science fiction and fantasy genre. Mormon scholar Terryl Givens points to Mormon theology as a possible source for the “affinity” Mormons have with science fiction in particular and speculative fiction (defined as “imaginative” or “non-literary” fiction) in general.

Says Givens in his book People of Paradox, “Science fiction (or the more-encompassing ‘speculative fiction’), though still struggling for respect as serious art, is the literary form best suited to the exposition and exploration of ideas at the margins of conventional thinking, whether in technology, ethics, politics, or religion. And indeed, some Mormon doctrine is so unsettling in its transgression of established ways of conceiving reality that it may be more at home in the imagined universes of Card than in journals of theology.”

Two examples of Mormon doctrine that Givens sees influencing Mormon science fiction and fantasy writers’ work are (1) the theme of apotheosis—that men and women can progress to the point of becoming divine beings, and (2) that God has created other worlds and other peoples. Givens points to examples of Orson Scott Card stories that include these themes. Stories that include other worlds and peoples definitionally fall into the category of science fiction and fantasy. Recent examples of apotheosis, however, can be seen in some works by Mormon authors, such as John Brown’s Servant of a Dark God series and Brandon Sanderson’s novel Warbreaker.

Scott Parkin identifies the same theological and cultural explanations that Givens mentions and also adds another explanation: the idea that Mormons tend to be comfortable with rational explanations of things, including our very relationship with God. Since Mormons are comfortable integrating their religious faith with rational explanations, science is something they tend to embrace rather than avoid.

Says Parkin in an interview on the Morehead’s Musings blog, “The idea that there are rational explanations and that it’s okay to explore those explanations is one of the reasons why the rigors of science fiction appeals to so many Mormons. For example, Mormons have a view that science is an explanation of the way God gets things done. Religion answers the question ‘Why?’ and science answers the question ‘How?’ and they are complementary disciplines. So that sense of rationalism within the LDS theological construct brings the religious and speculative science together.”

Shannon Hale seems to agree with Parkin and Givens about why Mormons, unlike some other religious denominations, are not afraid of science fiction and fantasy—that it comes from our theology. From the 2009 Boston Globe article: “Mormons believe a lot of things that are pretty fantastic—we believe in miracles and angels and ancient prophets and rediscovered Scripture—so maybe it is almost natural for us to dive into these other stories.”

In an interview on A Motley Vision, John Brown offers a less theological and more practical explanation for why Mormons have done well in the science fiction and fantasy genres. “Do we even know if Mormons are over-represented in the SF/Fantasy field?” he questions. His theory is that the inroads Mormons have made into speculative fiction, particularly science fiction, is more regional than it is religious and has more to do with several people having broken into the field (Orson Scott Card, Dave Wolverton, and Tracy Hickman) and then making efforts to teach their craft to young writers, which, because these authors lived in Utah and were affiliated with the tight-knit Mormon community, means they ended up teaching their craft to young Mormons.

While Brown’s idea that Mormon involvement in science fiction and fantasy is more of a regional than it is a theological or cultural phenomenon does seem to be a good explanation for why Mormons have been successful in the field, it doesn’t take into account why Mormons might originally have been drawn to the field—and that the Mormon tradition of speculative fiction is much older than Orson Scott Card. Mormon scholar Gideon Burton has pointed to a short story by Parley P. Pratt as perhaps the first example of Mormon speculative fiction. The story, called “Dream of the Future,” which was read “In a Council of the Church, in the presence of the Prophet Joseph Smith,” is a fantastical tale about a young man who is given a vision by an angel—a vision of an idealized theocratic society that flowers in the Western prairies after the existing American government collapses. Says Burton in his introduction to an online version of the story, “Pratt’s ‘dream of the future’ recounted in ‘The Angel of the Prairies’ demonstrates an early and ongoing affinity between Mormon theology and speculative fiction.”

Another early piece of Mormon literature that represents an early foray into speculative fiction is Nephi Anderson’s Added Upon, a novel that tells the story of several spirit children who progress through premortal life, mortality, and the spirit world. Added Upon was originally published in 1898 and remained in print until 2005 and is credited with having influenced later Mormon works such as Saturday’s Warrior and My Turn on Earth.

Mormons from the very beginning, it seems, have been interested in exploring their beliefs and imaginations through fiction, and science fiction and fantasy seem to be a natural fit for that exploration. The jury is still out on whether Mormons are actually over-represented in science fiction and fantasy, and Scott Parkin acknowledges that Mormons may seem to be particularly involved in the genre not because there are actually more Mormons writing science fiction and fantasy (proportionally to other religious and minority groups), but because Mormons “are more aggressive in identifying themselves as Mormon in connection with their work.”

Theology, regional tight-knit communities, a history of speculative fiction, and strong self-identification all seem likely explanations for what has been a highly fruitful relationship between Mormons and science fiction and fantasy. Whatever the cause, the relationship seems to be rapidly growing in depth and scope, as this issue of Mormon Artist illustrates.

And who knows, maybe there really is something in the water. ❧

“The Class That Wouldn’t Die”

Mon, 20 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0700

December 20, 2010

By Joe Vasicek

In December 2009, on the popular publishing blog Editorial Anonymous, a reader noted the surprising number of Mormon authors in science fiction and fantasy and the seeming existence of a “‘Mormon Mafia’ of BYU alumni.” The reader then posed the question, “Will my odds of getting published improve if I move to Provo, convert, and squeeze out another kid?” While the ensuing discussion was more than a little tongue in cheek, no fewer than fifteen Mormons commented on the post.

Though the existence of a “Mormon Mafia” within the publishing world is almost certainly a myth, it is nonetheless surprising how many authors within science fiction and fantasy are LDS. From Stephenie Meyer to Shannon Hale, from Orson Scott Card and Tracy Hickman to Brandon Sanderson and Dan Wells, a rich and vibrant community of LDS writers has been flourishing for several decades. “It may be the culture,” says an article for redOrbit. “It may be religion or the landscape. Maybe it’s something in the water. Whatever the reason, Utah has some of the nation’s most prolific producers and ravenous readers of science fiction and fantasy.” As Terryl L. Givens notes in his book People of Paradox, “[There is a] demonstrable affinity between the genre and the faith…it is proving to be such a fruitful alliance.” While speculation abounds as to why science fiction and fantasy resonate so well with the Latter-day Saint audience, the roots of the LDS writing community can be traced to a series of events at Brigham Young University in the late ’70s and early ’80s, and a group of extraordinary people who collectively became known as “the class that wouldn’t die.”

Before 1979, there existed a general interest in science fiction at BYU but very few resources for serious writers. Perhaps the most ardent voice for science fiction and fantasy literature was BYU librarian Betty Pope, who in 1964 convinced the administration to establish a special collection within the Harold B. Lee Library for science fiction and fantasy titles. Instead of being spread across the entire fifth floor by author, the science fiction and fantasy collection was given a special catalog designation and gathered together in one place, which remains the case today. With more than 8,000 titles, the collection was at the time of its inception the third largest repository of science fiction in the country. Other student-based efforts, largely inspired by an interest in Star Trek and Star Wars, led to the formation of the Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy. However, the Association was more of a fan club for science fiction and fantasy media, not an organization for fostering writing. Though interest in the genres was definitely present, a science fiction and fantasy writing community did not yet exist.

Quantum Duck

That began to change in the fall of 1979, when Carolyn Nicita, then a student, attended a meeting of the Association and recognized the need for more resources for writers. “That club meeting was okay,” she wrote at the time in her journal, “but not what I had hoped for. I was hoping that there would be a couple of writers there, but there were only squirrels—nice ones, but squirrels all the same.” At the time, she was taking a communications class on persuasion, and she decided to start a club for one of the assignments. “I didn’t care whether they were reputable or not,” she says, “but I cared whether they were serious.” A bumper sticker from a local store supplied the name: “Beware the quantum duck that goes Quark Quark!” The first club meeting consisted of Carolyn Nicita, her fiancé, a guy who came only to see if Carolyn had stolen his Darth Vader costume, and Dave Doering.

“When you do an RPG (role playing game) party,” says Carolyn, “you want people with different abilities. Dave was like the herald/puller.” A young Mormon convert from New York City, Dave was a longtime fan of science fiction since even before he came to BYU. “Since the earliest days of science fiction,” Dave says, “I thought that we had an infinite potential, that there was so much we could do in our lives… When I discovered [Mormonism], I thought, ‘Here’s a gospel—a description of life—that allows for infinite possibilities.’” After Carolyn married in 1980 and took a job working graveyard, Dave took over leadership of Quark.

That semester—winter of 1980—Orson Scott Card came to the Lee Library at BYU and gave a lecture entitled “How a Mormon Deals with the Problem of Evil in Fiction.” Dave was electrified. “I actually saw somebody who understood some of the questions I had, and I said, I’ve got to meet this man. I’ve got to spend time with him, because he’s speaking my language.” Dave saw that Card was scheduled to give a lecture to Eugene England’s honors class later that night. “So I showed up, knocked on the door, and Eugene England opened up. He looked at me and realized, ‘I don’t know this man from Adam,’ but I just smiled and said ‘Hi! Sorry I’m late!’ and walked right past him.” The discussion at Professor England’s house proved just as creatively stimulating as the lecture at the library, but afterward, Dave felt that some of Card’s comments about BYU were a little deprecating. “I thought: I can prove him wrong,” said Dave, “and that gave me the impetus to want to do stuff.”

At this point, Quark was far too small to facilitate Dave and Carolyn’s ambitions. Fortunately, events would soon transpire to build the critical mass that they needed. In the fall of 1980, BYU’s English department offered a 218R class on writing science fiction and fantasy, with Orson Scott Card initially slated to teach it. Very quickly, the class filled up with student writers. “These were not people who had gone to Quark,” said Dave. “These were not people who had gone to the Association. These were much more serious writers.” Due to scheduling conflicts, however, Card was unable to come to BYU that semester. “The day the class started,” Shayne Bell described, “[the person] who we assumed was the teacher came in…advanced to the front of the class, picked up a piece of chalk, wrote on the chalkboard ‘I am not Scott Card,’ and proceeded to introduce himself as Marion Smith.” At first, student reactions were mixed: “There was some disappointment, naturally,” said Dave Doering, “not knowing who Doc Smith was—what kind of a teacher he was—but it was a science fiction writing class, so we decided, ‘Well, we’re here, let’s just do this and see how it turns out.’” Shayne continues, “He proceeded to teach a marvelous class. He proceeded to teach throughout that semester such a fine course, not just on writing, but on life and how to live it well. He was a very fine professor, who changed my life for good forever, and I believe I’m correct in saying he did that for the other members of that class as well.”

Professor Marion K. Smith proved to be exactly the teacher the students needed. “He was a master of literature writing and could speak authoritatively on any topic,” says Shayne. For science fiction, he possessed “an undoubted enthusiasm for the field; a belief in its power and ability to do good and to change lives—not just individual lives but the entire world…he had read the literature, and he knew the truth about it, that it was as good as any other.” Says Dave, “Doc was a laissez-faire kind of guy. He listened to the Spirit and felt comfortable having us run things. He sensed that we had good judgment running activities, and I think that over the years, we’ve earned that, time and again.” While he took a very hands-off approach to teaching and advising, he was very adept at working with the bureaucracy of the BYU administration, which helped out later as his students began to start initiatives on their own. “He was not hands-on at all, except under certain circumstances,” said Jonathan Langford, author of No Going Back from Zarahemla Books, who took several of Marion Smith’s classes after the class that wouldn’t die in 1980. “If something got really big, we’d bring him in, he would run interference for us, help us to get grants, etc.” Throughout the years, Smith sacrificed a great deal for his students, including in 1984 driving a van packed with twelve people down to the World Science Fiction convention in Los Angeles. Still, though an excellent teacher, Marion Smith was not himself a writer or an author. “Doc was just the right balance of good information and good encouragement,” Dave says, “but he left you hungry…to do more.”

After the class ended, the students went home for Christmas and came back the next semester with a yearning for the experience to continue. “When it came time for that class to end,” says Shayne, “none of us wanted it to. It had been that kind of fine experience. We regretted that it was ending.” One day, while walking down the sidewalk, Shayne and Dave happened to run into each other. “I asked him what he’d been doing,” Shayne says, “if he’d been writing. I had been, over the Christmas break, and so had he.” Dave recalls, “We said, ‘Why don’t we get together and form a writing group?’ We met in one of the Heritage Halls with the girls from the class and started Xenobia, and it was with Xenobia that we kept the class alive.” Xenobia, roughly translated as “love of the strange,” soon caught on as the name of the new writing group. “By the next week,” says Shayne, “we had found most of the rest of the class, and they had all agreed to come. We continued meeting for thirteen years…all of us with similar dreams to write professionally, and our goal in the meetings being to help each other along the way.”

Among the students, Shayne Bell was one of the key figures who pulled the people together and made things happen. “Shayne was very integral to all of this,” says Carolyn. “He was like the white mage—the one who does the magic.” A young Idaho farm boy who came to BYU to become a writer, Shayne was first introduced to science fiction by his mother, who bought him a premier copy of Magnus, Robot Fighter when he was four years old. “I grew up in a house where my parents both read a lot,” says Shayne. “They read everything, among them the works of science fiction and fantasy.” When he came to BYU, however, his initial goal was to write mainstream fiction. “I signed up for the class that Orson Scott Card was going to teach simply because he was a published writer, and none of the faculty at the time at BYU were.” On the stairwell after the first day of class, Shayne asked Marion Smith if he could write mainstream fiction in the class even though the subject matter was science fiction. The resulting conversation changed his life. “I decided on the spot, though I didn’t tell him then,” says Shayne, “that I would take the course and write science fiction simply to study with this good man who had already taught such a remarkable class.” Soon after Xenobia started, Shayne went out of his way to find and bring in several other student writers, such as Cara O’Sullivan, who had not been a part of the initial class that wouldn’t die. “Everyone has a Shayne story,” says Cara, who went on to help organize Leading Edge and the Life, The Universe, & Everything symposium. “Shayne was a really critical figure in those early days,” says Jonathan Langford, another major organizing figure in the student initiatives that would follow. “Dave Doering was the ‘sure we can do this’ person, and Shayne was the one who made it happen and made it a class act.”

With Shayne Bell and Dave Doering providing the impetus and drawing in new members, Xenobia quickly grew into a tight-knit writing community. “The fact that there was going to be a class taught by Orson Scott Card brought together some people who were serious and talented all at one place at one time,” says Jonathan Langford, “and then they had the critical mass.” Shayne compares it to Tolkien, Lewis, and the Inklings: “Our hope from the start [was] that we would be that type of support group for each other, that we would offer each other the best critiques and help each other prepare for publication.”

“There were a lot of keen editorial minds,” says Diann Read, who later published a fantasy trilogy with Tor, the largest science fiction and fantasy publishing company in New York. “They encouraged me to drop the fanzine stuff and get serious…. Xenobia was a major player in my success.” One of the major factors that forged Xenobia into such a tight-knit literary community was the opposition that the students faced almost from the start. “Because of the opposition,” Carolyn says, “we had someone to fight against. And for a campaign, you need an impossible quest—something that you can brag about.” In the early 80s, science fiction was often viewed by mainstream popular culture as a fringe thing, especially in Utah. “In the old days,” says Loreena Goertz, “if you were into science fiction and fantasy, you were just weird.” The opposition was not limited to the students’ peers but extended through much of the English department as well. When Shayne Bell drafted a prospectus for a science fiction and fantasy themed master’s thesis, his proposal was rejected twice before it was accepted, delaying his graduation for over a year. At one point, the secretary allowed him to read some of the professor’s comments, one of which read, “science fiction is dangerous for children and should therefore neither be written nor read.” His third attempt passed by one vote, but every professor refused to be his thesis chair, until Sally Taylor stepped up to the position. Even then, he had to include professors from the math department just to form a complete panel. But the opposition was not just limited to BYU. In the wider field of science fiction and fantasy, as well as New York and the publishing world, Utah had a “stigma of ignorance—that we’re religious, closed-minded people,” according to Dave Doering. “In 1982, you’re in a non-Internet era, non-cable television era, non-satellite era, so your contact with major publications, writers, editors, and so on was limited unless you went out of state—but very few people in 1980 had been out of state for one of those events.”

In response to this opposition, both from the BYU literary community and the continual rejection from New York, the members of Xenobia decided to organize their own literary magazine: Leading Edge. “The official literary publication of the university [Inscape] refused to accept science fiction and fantasy,” said Shayne, “so we decided to print our own journal.”

“We felt that we needed something as a leg-up,” says Dave. “The writers needed something to encourage them, and the magazine was a way to do that—to help them move forward in their careers.” Dave Doering was also motivated by his experience with Orson Scott Card at Eugene England’s house. “A magazine would show that we’re a real school.” The first issue was typed and collated by hand, with red and blue covers. A $20 contest was offered to attract submissions, and several members of Xenobia responded by sending in their stories. Though difficulties plagued the magazine from the very start, once it was off the ground, people started coming forward to help make it possible. “When the first issue came out, it wasn’t selling like we’d hoped,” says Shayne, “but we ran into some other great mentors and helpful souls along the way.” One of these was Linda Brummet, manager at the BYU Bookstore, who bought 100 copies of the first issue for a dollar each, making the publication of the second issue possible. As the publication gained steam and started receiving submissions from around the country, other people began to volunteer with it. “Now that there was a magazine,” says Dave Doering, “there were a lot of people who wanted to help out with the magazine.”

Throughout its nearly thirty years of publication, Leading Edge has had a tremendous impact on both the personal and professional development of hundreds of students. Several LDS editors broke their teeth at Leading Edge, including Anne Sowards at Ace and Stacy Whitman at Tu, an imprint of Lee & Low Books.

“By volunteering at Leading Edge, I discovered that I really wanted to be an editor, not a writer,” said Peter Ahlstrom, who went on to edit for Tokyopop and currently works as Brandon Sanderson’s personal assistant. “Leading Edge showed me that I was good at it.”

“If you want to prepare yourself to be a publisher,” says Dave Wolverton, “Leading Edge is a great place to go…. It’s a real life experience.” For the writers as well, the experience at Leading Edge has consistently proven invaluable. “When you participate from the editor’s perspective, you get to see why you might be getting rejected,” says Carolyn. One of the things that has always set Leading Edge apart is the practice of giving every author detailed feedback on their stories. Where other publications typically send form rejections for unsolicited submissions, Leading Edge has at least two staff members read every story cover to cover and write up a comment sheet for each one. Naturally, this teaches the student staff a great deal about writing.

“It showed me what worked and what didn’t,” says Dan Wells, author of the I Am Not a Serial Killer books. “I had always wanted to be a writer, but it was that experience [filling out comment sheets] that got me into the mindset of what works and why.”

Leading Edge has not only helped to launch the careers of several bestselling authors, it has also helped to boost illustrators and visual artists as well. In 2002, under Peter Ahlstrom’s leadership, Leading Edge won the Chelsey Award for best cover art. “It tells artists that here’s an avenue that we can get into,” says Dave Doering.

Of all the accomplishments of the class that wouldn’t die, however, the annual Life, the Universe, & Everything symposium (LTUE) has had perhaps the greatest impact on laying the groundwork for a flourishing of the arts in the LDS science fiction and fantasy community. Like so many other things, the symposium began almost by serendipity. In February 1982, the BYU administration brought in Ben Bova, a prolific writer and one of science fiction’s most accomplished editors, to speak at a university forum. “We got a call one day from Doc Smith saying that the university was going to host the editor of OMNI magazine,” says Dave. “The administration called up Doc Smith and said, ‘We’ve got him for the day—is there anything else we can do with him?’” Dave Doering put together a program on short notice, and the rest of Xenobia immediately rallied behind it. “After the session,” says Dave, “we took Ben and his wife to Betty Pope’s house, which wasn’t too far from campus, and had a reception up there with everybody.” The success of the reception left an impact not only on the Bovas but on the students as well. “That really gelled in our minds that we should do a continuous symposium of our own.” The following year, the students invited Orson Scott Card, and the year after, Frederik Pohl and C. J. Cherryh. Word quickly spread about the hospitality and enthusiasm of the students at BYU. “Science fiction writers will talk,” says Carolyn, “and Shayne led the way in being the ultimate host.” As the next generation of science fiction and fantasy writers at BYU began to take over from the original Xenobians, the symposium quickly grew into a major event, drawing in several big names from the field such as Alan Dean Foster, Michael Whelan, Algis Budrys, Lois McMaster Bujold, Tracy Hickman, L. E. Modesitt, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, David Brin, and many others.

An academic gathering of science fiction and fantasy enthusiasts across numerous fields of study, the LTUE symposium has contributed immensely to the creativity and personal growth of readers and writers in both the BYU and wider Utah communities. One of the things that makes LTUE so unique is the broad academic quality of the event. “BYU brings in a higher caliber of person,” says Jonathan Langford, one of the early organizers of the symposium. “In a lot of places, fandom is composed of people who have nothing better to do with their lives, whereas at BYU people who have plenty to do with their lives found that what was going on in the science fiction and fantasy community was so interesting, and the people so talented, that they chose to spend their time there.” Unlike other literary gatherings, LTUE has always brought in professors and experts from numerous fields of study—a useful approach for both readers and writers of science fiction. “One of the things I loved about the symposium was that it wasn’t just a literary thing,” says Cara O’Sullivan. “Literary conferences are more one-dimensional, geared towards literature and literary criticism—which is wonderful, but science fiction involves so many other things.” Says Jonathan Langford, “At LTUE, panels on worldbuilding are taught by actual professors of the sciences—people whom science fiction and fantasy authors should be taking notes from.” Among science fiction and fantasy gatherings, LTUE was one of the first in the world to approach the genres from a serious academic perspective. “The symposium became a venue that allowed us to bring in scholars from across the world,” says Shayne Bell. “We actually considered this genre from the scholarly point of view. It wasn’t a flippant, comical treatment at all, but a very serious treatment, of not just life but how to live it well.” At the same time, by attracting renowned writers and editors from the wider science fiction and fantasy community, LTUE has helped to break down the stigma of Utah as a cultural and literary backwater. “We were, early on, among the very first to consider science fiction from a scholarly point of view,” says Shayne, “and it did help us to bring actual working editors from profit-making magazines to the university to hear them speak.” LTUE has also provided excellent career resources and networking opportunities for writers. “LTUE helped many of us to get our foot in the door,” says Diane Read. “It gave us insight into publishing…. Personally, there is no way I would have succeeded without the networking I had through LTUE.”

Perhaps most importantly, however, the uniquely religious setting at BYU has allowed LDS readers and writers to infuse science fiction and fantasy literature with a unique gospel perspective. “We are endowed from our creator with a desire to be like him and to create,” says Dave Doering. “There is much in this world that discourages creation, and I thought it would be nice if we provided a fertile garden, to make this come together and to flourish.” In numerous ways, science fiction and the restored gospel have proven surprisingly compatible, especially in “the exposition and exploration of ideas at the margins of conventional thinking,” as Terryl Givens notes in People of Paradox. “Universal curiosity about everything is an aspect of divinity,” says Jonathan Langford. “Mormons think cosmologically and therefore have a natural affinity to science fiction and fantasy.” Many science fiction themes resonate with LDS theology and experience in ways that they do not with other religions, and at LTUE, readers and writers have an opportunity to discuss and explore this resonance in a way that can’t be done in any other setting. “It’s wonderful,” says Jonathan Langford, “because you get a chance to see it in a startlingly new context that makes it real and allows us as listeners to broaden our minds and to think and to learn.”

Since the passing of the class that wouldn’t die, the writing community that they helped to form has grown and flourished, laying the foundation for LDS writers to make a significant cultural impact on the world. “I can’t help but think that we were laying the foundation for a burgeoning in the arts,” says Dave Doering. “Leading Edge and the symposium gave encouragement to this audience—to feel that not only were they capable, but they weren’t alone.” The inclusive, volunteer-driven spirit found within the Church has played a large part in the growth and success of the LDS science fiction and fantasy writing community. “We are from a community of people who are trained to help each other and give service,” says Dave Wolverton. “We don’t see it as competition.” This same spirit of service not only connects other LDS writers with each other, but it also allows them to reach out to the world at large and share, through the unique genres of science fiction and fantasy, that which is “virtuous, lovely, and of good report.” “We wanted to change the world for the good—we wanted to make it better,” says Shayne. “We’re part of this wider, larger movement of science fiction and fantasy. One of its goals is to change the world—to make it better.” “Mormon writers have a storytelling ability that they’ve been waiting for and been anxious to hear from,” says Dave Doering. “We’ve got that writing, because there’s a belief we have about life that [the rest of the world] can’t imitate, because they’ve lost it. We’ve got it.” In laying the foundation for all of this, the members of the class that wouldn’t die often referred back to President Spencer W. Kimball’s call for Mormon artists to make a name for the LDS people in all the arts. “I remember reading that issue of the Ensign,” says Shayne. “I put it down and said to myself, ‘I will answer this prophet’s call.’ And others did the same. That was a driving force for us…. It’s why we kept fighting: we wanted to answer the prophet’s call.”

In science fiction and fantasy more than perhaps any other genre, Latter-day Saints have made and continue to make a name for themselves, largely because of the contributions of that class. From Dave Wolverton, Dan Wells, and Brandon Sanderson—all past editors of Leading Edge—to the many aspiring writers and published LDS authors who attend LTUE, the Latter-day Saint science fiction and fantasy community is answering the prophet’s call. ❧

Mormon Poetry Now! A Golden Age?

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0600

August 23, 2010

By Tyler Chadwick

I. Already to Harvest…Again

Twenty-five years ago, Dennis Marden Clark, then poetry editor for Sunstone, began a four-part series for the magazine, called “Mormon Poetry Now!” In his column published once a year over the next four years, he set out, according to his stated purpose, to survey “the state of the art of Mormon poetry,” to examine “the best of what Mormon poets [were] trying to publish.” I’m sure his survey of the field dovetailed nicely with the work he was doing alongside Eugene England to gather poems for the anthology they were editing together, Harvest: Contemporary Mormon Poems. Taken together, these projects may well compose a unique moment in Mormon literary history—a conscious move to place Mormon poets center stage, if only for a moment; to “definitive[ly]” represent “the new Mormon tradition of poetry” that had developed over the preceding thirty years and that continues into the present. As England has it, those working within this contemporary tradition tend toward “an unusually healthy integration of skillful form and significant content,” toward the marriage of formal poetic training and the moral “ideas and values…they claim to know through religious experience.” It’s a union, England concludes, that leads them to “act with energy to communicate those ideas in confidence that they will be understood” and accepted by both their peers within Mormonism and within the field of mainstream American poetry.

I’ve deliberately tied myself to those definitive efforts to represent the new Mormon poetry by making Clark’s title my own. My essaying here, however, is anything but an authoritative attempt to illustrate the expansive breadth of Mormon poetry as it has developed in the twenty-plus years since Harvest was published. That would require far more than the space of a single essay. My immediate project, rather, is to elaborate on Glen Nelson’s somewhat, in his words, “over-the-top” claim made in passing during his recent Mormon Artist interview with Randy Astle: while discussing the Mormon Artist’s Group’s recent “Song/Cycles” project—a collaborative effort facilitated by MAG and several Mormon composers and poets to set the poets’ work to music—he mentions that it’s “commonly known that we’re experiencing something like a golden age of Mormon poets,” that Mormon culture has certain “name poets” who are finding some degree of acknowledgment and success in the national poetry market.

I asked Glen what he meant by this “golden age” and to whom this idea was “commonly known.” In response to the first question, he echoed England’s comments about poets who are, to his knowledge, believing Latter-day Saints and whose work is stellar enough to garner national attention on its own merits. For instance, he mentioned that he had a phone conversation with the poetry editor of the New Yorker a while ago. He said, “I was curious whether she was aware that such-and-such a poet in their magazine was Mormon. It made no difference to her. And I’m fine with that. It did, however, make a difference to me.” As it does to me, especially because there seems to be an increasing number of (as best I can tell) believing Mormon poets making names for themselves beyond the Mormon journals and publishing houses—those like the core group reviewed below and the many more I don’t have space to mention here. Taken together, these poets compose a concentrated dose of our literary kin who are making noticeable splashes in the American mainstream, such as may or may not be happening in the more visible genres (the novel, for instance).

I’m not certain whether this increasing movement of our poets into the national spotlight (a) warrants the “Golden Age” appellation or (b) is “commonly known” among a broader audience than the few devout followers of contemporary American poetry who happen to have an interest in those mainstream poets who are also Mormon (or is it those mainstream Mormons who are also successful poets?). However, I am certain the field of contemporary Mormon poetry is “already to harvest” (D&C 4:4)—again—and that this trend and these poets deserve more of our community’s attention.

II. A Brief, Necessarily Biased, Survey

The following survey of eight Mormon poets—many of whom are winners of national poetry awards and all of whom are accomplished writers—was framed around several criteria: (1) the poets had to have published a book (either a full-length collection or a chapbook) within the last five years—I’ve included at least one book from each year, though each poet only appears once, even if they’ve published multiple books; (2) they had to be—as best I could tell—believing Latter-day Saints; (3) they had to represent something of the diversities of the Mormon lyric voice (a difficult thing to represent with such a small sample size); and (4) their books had to be on my bookshelf. I include this last criterion as a means to justify not broadening the survey’s scope and not including several recent volumes I want to read but haven’t yet because I’m on a young family/graduate student budget and haven’t the wherewithal to feed all my wants just yet.

So without further ado, I offer capsule reviews of books by eight contemporary Mormon poets, circa 2005–2010, listed by year of publication.

“A Delicious Lapping”: Lance Larsen, In All Their Animal Brilliance (Tampa, FL: University of Tampa Press), 2005. 84 pp. Winner, Tampa Review Prize for Poetry and 2005 Association for Mormon Letters Poetry Award. Larsen received a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2007. American poet Lola Haskins blurbed about Larsen’s second collection that “the book stands out” in the field of contemporary American poetry for at least two reasons: first, because “it travels—from a talisman in the first poem to a vineyard in the last, in which metaphors of growth and renewal are tied directly to the poet’s life opening outwards.” And second, Haskins continues, because “its honesty stuck with me when I went to bed at night.” These marks of Larsen’s poetry—its movement outward toward the apocalyptic moment when the self becomes expansive enough to embrace all that is Other (including “[t]he Father” of Jesus imagined in the book’s last poem, the Coke-drinking God who “wanders his overgrown / vineyard in an underfed body”) (“Vineyard,” lines 30–1), and its formal, emotional, and spiritual integrity—these characteristics make reading (and re-reading) Larsen’s work a delight. Like the best poetry, its content is substantive, structured on the lyric marriage of the transcendent and the everyday, making the experience both soul-affirming and soul-expanding. This tension between affirmation and expansion tempers the poet’s line, making it taut enough to resound with the rhythms, the wit, and the (ir)reverence—the “delicious lapping,” as he names it in one poem (“This World, Not the Next,” line 23)—of quotidian language laced with traces of an Infinite song.
“Not Satisfaction, but Its Proxies”: Javen Tanner, Curses For Your Sake (New York, NY: Mormon Artists Group), 2006. 44 pp. The title of Tanner’s chapbook frames well the experience captured in his lyric narrative poems. Extracted from the decree God directed towards Adam and Eve at the moment he expelled them from the Garden of Eden, the phrase “curses for your sake” (see Gen. 3:17) suggests that moral paradox and ambiguity form the developmental crux of mortality. In other words, the pain, suffering, and even, as Tanner calls them, the “proxies” of satisfaction (“Eden,” line 2) (objects or relationships that prepare us for the ultimate satisfaction of spiritual and physical salvation) work toward our advantage and enhancement as human beings and human communities. With evocative language and imagery informed, to some degree, by his Mormon religious experience and self-consciously centered on the visceral rhythms and ambiguities of human experience, he thus takes up his poetic cross and wills us to follow as he forges a path through variations on these ambiguous realities to the end of preparing us for more lasting psychological and spiritual connections and consolations.
“An Economy of Grace”: (Scott) Warren Hatch, Mapping the Bones of the World (Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books), 2007. 96 pp. Winner, 2008 Association for Mormon Letters Poetry Award. Although it might seem contradictory to suggest that this collection (Hatch’s first) of long narrative poems is economical—as if the poet had composed from a frugal rhetorical budget, determined to compress experience into as tight a linguistic vessel as he could craft in order to get the most out of his poet’s mite—the true economy of Hatch’s poems resides not in poetic thrift. Indeed, the poet is very generous with his words, both in terms of rhetorical kindness—his narratives are accessible, marked with compassion for his subject matter and for his readers—and the measured sprawl of his line. Rather, Hatch’s poetic economy manifests in the way he explores the rich narrative resources of his past and of his place (rural, wild, even suburban Utah), meandering through language and experience as he follows wisps of grace from astrology mapped on a lover’s skin to the snap of Grandma’s bed sheets, along the vistas and salt valleys of memory.
“The Points at which My Loves Fell From Me”: Philip White, The Clearing (Lubbock, TX: Texas Tech University Press), 2007. 77 pp. Winner, Walt McDonald First-Book Competition, 2007. In this book dedicated to his late father, mother, and wife, White invites us to feel our way around in the soul-space excavated by love and life, loss and death. Framed, then, as elegiac meditations on the loss of persons beloved, White lingers on these moments of departure—what the speaker in the final poem calls “the points at which my loves fell from me” (“Six O’Clock Flight To the Interment,” line 25). But this fall isn’t the end of love, though the poet neither finds nor offers easy consolations or platitudes to pacify the bereaved while making his way through grief to some measure of grace. Indeed, the fact that he leaves The Clearing with questions about how we represent and remember those we’ve lost suggests that coming home to love isn’t a simple matter of moving on with life after loss and thus of moving away from loss. Perhaps, instead, it involves learning to see our beloved dead as more than “mere scenery, props” on life’s stage meant to slide into the background, forgotten. Perhaps it means learning to see them as “a world” in themselves, as “a field,” “a struck stage, a slate / wiped clean, a cloud moraine above or below / or within which everything takes place,” including our lives, our love, our memories. Although, paradoxically, “we will never find ourselves in [these places] again” (lines 68–72), partly because in circling back to love through loss we find ourselves and our surroundings—or rather our perception of our surroundings—changed. And we will never again know those earlier selves, those earlier loves, losses, and landscapes—for better or for worse—the way we once knew them.
“How We Are Saved”: Neil Aitken, The Lost Country of Sight (Tallahassee, FL: Anhinga Press), 2008. 76 pp. Winner, 2007 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry and 2008 Association for Mormon Letters Poetry Award. Aitken’s first collection begins with a poem—“In the Long Dream of Exile”—that marks the solitary nature of the poet’s vocation. Pointing to this call to wander rhetorical landscapes in pursuit of, among other things, what poet Adrienne Rich calls “the dream of a common language” (the shared signs and tokens through which we might make our way into deeper relationships with one another, with the earth, and with God), the poet shows how this work keeps those who choose it always “on the verge of love” (line 19). As a participant-observer who is both a compassionate part of and who stands apart from various communities (the latter as a function of the solitude necessary for the poet to assimilate and express his insights into human experience), he skirts this verge with longing and lyric precision. He traces rich veins of language and connection through relationships lost, forged, and remembered on his journey through the lost country of sight: the exilic, often neglected place wherein poetic imagination and memory offer new visions of personal and communal histories, presence, and potential.
“A Little Tomb, but Flashy While It Lasts”: Kimberly Johnson, A Metaphorical God (New York, NY: Persea Books), 2008. 69 pp. Johnson received a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2005. Johnson’s second collection continues the poet’s self-avowed probing at the limits of language as a means to human expression and knowledge. Testing the world as we experience and order it through words from the beginning, she picks up with a poem titled “Epilogue,” whose group of speakers flaunts their poetic acumen, as here:

Before the sackbut, before the virginal

struck perpendicular chords, our madrigals

were sublime, loosing harmonies

to unhinge the spheres.

(Lines 1–4)

With this poem, she draws readers more deeply into the “little tomb” of poetic language from which she intends to raise us—or at least to make us more aware of—through the Lent-patterned movement of her poems. We follow her from her playing in an ash garden at the outset through a thirty-nine poem psaltery filled with physical and spiritual yearning to a voluptuous rise into the wor(l)d’s “profane loveliness” at the end (“Easter, Looking Westward,” line 10). In this compressed space framed by the structures of metaphor and sound, Johnson presents us with images, words, and word sequences that flash across the mind and the tongue, that highlight language as a material system through which we act upon the world, and that compel us to lay to rest the easy language (cliches, etc.) through which we too often experience one another and the wor(l)d.
“Braced against a Holy Staff”: Mark Bennion, Psalm & Selah: A Poetic Journey through The Book of Mormon (Woodsboro, MD: Parables), 2009. 109 pp. “However much I admire Nephi / I know it is with Sam / I hold the greater kinship” (“Tribute,” lines 1–3). With this declaration of affinity—a genealogy of alikeness, Nephi connecting the poet with Sam, and through Sam, the Book of Mormon’s cast of secondary characters—Bennion begins his lyric journey into the heart of Christian theology. As modeled by Christ, it is the act of attending to the one; of extending a hand of compassion and fellowship to the marginalized, silenced Other (as the leprous, the blind, the lame); of assimilating the margins into an ever-expanding center. The poet honors this principle by noticing and giving voice to those characters “braced against a holy staff, / Adjusting their shoes, / Unnoticed” (lines 28–30)—those on the canon’s periphery to whom we don’t pay much, if any, heed: Sam, Lemuel, Zoram, the daughters of Ishmael, Chemish, Abish, Abish’s father, Lamoni’s wife, Lehonti, Gadianton, and more. This revisionary accounting for the Other, offered through Bennion’s layered, dynamic, and aesthetically rich lyric narratives, merits multiple deep readings.
“Blooms Flourish In Spite of Her”: Karen Kelsay, In Spite of Her (Cheyenne, WY: Flutter Press), 2010. 26 pp. In this latest chapbook of narrative poems, Kelsay explores the relationship between a middle-aged woman and a world that changes and moves on “in spite of her” (“In Spite of Her,” line 11). These poems become acts of mourning mixed with moments of acceptance of and resignation to those things we just can’t change, those losses we’ll never get back. Children grow up, leave an empty nest purled with memories and parental regrets; and no matter how much we want them not to, the seasons change. The world—and our mortality with it—continues its entropic cycle through space. As the title poem suggests, critical language hurled at us when young can shape our self-conceptions for a lifetime. And yet, hope also resides in these elegies: in spite—even because of—the critical words we may carry for a lifetime, we can master skills we once struggled at and become good people. A new generation of kin—whether blood-related or just neighbors looking for a more mature presence in their lives—can give us the chance to try again what we feel we failed at the first time around. We can find redemption from regret. And despite the inevitability of death, there is beauty here, witnessing that God is near, even if a bit “too near” at times for our own comfort (“Autumn Ambivalence,” line 18). ❧

Works Cited

Clark, Dennis Marden. “Mormon Poetry Now.” Sunstone 10.6 (June 1985): 6–13. Print.
England, Eugene, and Dennis Clark, eds. Harvest: Contemporary Mormon Poems. Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books, 1989. Print.
England, Eugene. “Editor’s Commentary: New Tradition.” England and Clark. 285–8. Print.
Nelson, Glen. “Re: Question re: Mormon Artist Interview.” Message to the author. 22 June 2010. Email.
Nelson, Glen. Interview with Randy Astle. Mormon Artist 9 (Apr. 2010): 4–13. Print.
Rich, Adrienne. The Dream of a Common Language. New York, NY: W. W. Norton and Co., 1993. Print.

Set Apart, Drawn Together: The New York Stake Arts Festival

Sun, 02 May 2010 00:00:00 -0600

May 2, 2010

By Marin Leggat

Marin is a choreographer, modern dancer, instructor, and founder and director of the company M.E.L.D. Danceworks. Also see our interview with her.

Winter 2008: I’m sitting in sacrament meeting in my ward in uptown Manhattan, listening to strains of the opening hymn fill our chapel. Our numbers are not as large as Salt Lake City wards, but man, can this ward sing! I’m surrounded by professional opera singers, Broadway performers, musicians, dancers, writers, and artists. The song of the righteous is a prayer, and this morning, the prayer fills the air with zeal, faith, and near-perfect pitch.

Politics and religion are in the air this morning, too, with the recent passing of Prop 8 in California, the resulting protests at LDS temples—including our own Manhattan temple—and the diverse range of opinions and concerns being expressed within the LDS community.

I’m thinking about my own work as artistic director of M.E.L.D. Danceworks, a modern dance company committed to “dissolving religious and cultural barriers through the art of dance.” I’ve just begun rehearsals for a new project with a cast of interfaith dancers exploring the foundations of our spirituality. Rehearsals thus far have been part dancing, part discussion, part debate about current events surrounding politics and “the Mormons.”

Winter 2008 was a time of reflection, uneasiness and reconciliation for me as an LDS dance artist living in New York City.

Around this time, I suggested to a friend that our stake present an arts festival. The last arts festival presented by the New York, New York Stake had been held in 2001. I wasn’t alone in feeling the need at this particular time and place to step forward, open our doors, and say, “This is who we are! This is what we do! Come see!”

The three-day festival, Set Apart, Drawn Together, was held April 30–May 2, 2009 in the Lincoln Square Building on 65th and Columbus in midtown Manhattan. The festival showcased the work of over 100 LDS artists in all disciplines of visual, literary, and performing arts. Major events involved a film festival, dance concert, classical concert, musical theatre showcase, visual arts display, and children’s concert. Each of these events had its own team of coordinators and curators working under the direction of President Buckner and Nathan Bowen, a coordinating member of the high council and a composer completing a PhD in music composition from the CUNY Graduate Center.

In addition to major events, classes for adults and children were taught by experts in the field. Children worked alongside professionals to compose original songs, draw objects in 3D, and take creative movement classes. For adults, classes such as Writings of C.S. Lewis, Drawing the Human Figure, Opera for Beginners, Indoor Photography, and Jive Dancing were offered. Panels on timely topics like “Arts and the Economy” provided resources and networking opportunities for LDS artists in the stake.

Living the life of an artist in NYC is not easy. Some work day jobs to support families while auditioning, others juggle multiple jobs to pay rent, and some finance their own art—whether it be writing, choreography, theatre, or painting—while waiting for the next commission to come through. For five months, I watched as these artists stepped forward to give a little more in order to assist in the missionary and fellowshipping aims of the festival: extra rehearsals requiring more evenings away from family; time spent curating, collecting, and properly hanging original artwork; and donations from individuals like Rich Bishop, who provided the Marley floor, lighting equipment, and manpower necessary to transform the floor of the cultural hall into a thirty-five by forty foot stage, complete with side lighting and a sound board.

It was important to festival organizers that LDS artists working and living in Manhattan come to know, associate with, and support each other. Through the festival, the New York Artists Network was established to assist LDS artists wishing to network and collaborate across disciplines.

The work of LDS artists was recognized and celebrated by members of the stake and community over this three-day event. Set Apart, Drawn Together also provided artists of other faiths opportunities to share their talents with our stake members. The indie-folk trio Pearl and the Beard, including Inwood First Ward member Emily Price, performed a forty-five minute set, and the Handcart Ensemble, under the direction of Scott Reynolds, performed a reading of Odyssey, a production that would eventually go on to a successful off-Broadway run.

The arts play an important role in building bridges of understanding among diverse groups of people. In a city as diverse as New York City, LDS artists can help create opportunities to share ideas and build respect among our neighbors. Set Apart, Drawn Together set a precedent for future arts festivals that will continue shedding positive light on the Church and its members. ❧

MormonArtist: A Sign We’re Arriving

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0700

January 31, 2010

By Jon Ogden

Like hundreds of thousands of starry-eyed teens since the Beatles mopped the States with their gleeful ditties, I joined a rock band in junior high school. And like hundreds of thousands of starry-eyed teens since the Beatles, we were altogether unqualified for the part. We performed a few incoherent covers—U2’s “With or Without You” (a song two octaves beyond my vocal range) and Pink Floyd’s “In the Flesh”—but we really aimed to write our own stuff.

So when I wrote my first song for our band—a masterpiece that in one earnest verse rhymed “broad sword” with “fjord”—I felt a sense of elation. I decided that if I could write rock songs with Church-approved lyrics, or even better, lyrics that channeled my testimony, I could revolutionize the world; I could tug thousands of listeners toward Mormonism.

It wasn’t a bad impulse, but as I began crafting churchy songs and listening to EFY music for the first time, I noticed (with some exceptions¹) that even though I wanted to listen to and write overtly Mormon music, I mostly kept listening to the melodies and rhythms and metaphors of secular artists. I certainly wasn’t morally opposed to the stuff on the EFY albums, nor was I listening to secular music to rebel (unless Paul Simon or Cat Stevens is rebellious listening). What my introduction to EFY music did, more than anything, was cause me to question what good Mormon art is.

It’s a complex question, one I’m still wrestling with to this day and will likely wrestle with for a lifetime. It’s also the central question that this magazine, MormonArtist, works to answer. These interviews and articles, at their core, have been exercises in pinpointing what good Mormon art is.

Additionally, there’s an argument in the magazine title’s design, intended or not, that has helped me better understand how Mormons should approach art. The bolded word artist in the design raises an intriguing question: What makes someone a Mormonartist? While there are likely hundreds of answers to that question, I believe that Mormonartists are Mormons who create art with the primary intent to push at the frontier of the worldwide artistic endeavor (meaning that as artists they value aesthetics, inventiveness, etc. over didacticism), while Mormonartists are Mormons who create art with the primary intent to win converts or help troubled teenagers.

There’s potentially a lot of overlap between these two terms. In many cases art created with an overt agenda is also inventive and artistically compelling (think about “Because I Have Been Given Much” or “I Know that My Redeemer Lives,” among many other hymns). It’s clear from hundreds of examples that being a Mormonartist doesn’t mean shying away from Mormon topics. It just means that while creating art, the Mormonartist favors artistry over orthodoxy. Mormonartists—and I’d put some overtly Mormon artists like Mack Wilberg in this category—hope that their art will lead people to goodness and that in turn it will lead them to the Church, but they don’t produce art primarily for the purpose of winning converts—they seem intensely and primarily interested in artistry. This is a good thing.

We Mormons have the same expectations of Church members in almost all other professions. We expect, for instance, that dentists will favor dentistry over promoting religious orthodoxy while they are at work. To illustrate, we don’t expect dentists to give the missionary discussions to clients strapped, mouths agape, in the dentist chair. Nor do we expect accountants to slip copies of their testimonies in with their client’s tax returns. Dentists and accountants may be inspired in certain instances to share their beliefs, but we generally don’t expect such acts to be a mainstay of their professions. We shouldn’t expect it from artists either.

While the dentist and accountant analogies admittedly have some flaws—working with teeth or numbers is morally neutral in ways that creating art can’t be—I believe that Mormon culture will produce better art the more we (consumers and creators) long for Mormonartists. I believe this in part because it seems that President Kimball had Mormonartists in mind in his legendary (at least in artistic circles) talk, “The Gospel Vision of the Arts.”

When President Kimball envisioned the day when our artistic talents will flourish until “the eyes of all the world will be upon us,” he couldn’t have been calling for more Mormonartists. If the world generally rejects our orthodoxy, they won’t be sold on a piece of art simply because it conveys our orthodoxy with terrific clarity. They will be drawn to it, as they were drawn to Shakespeare and Milton, because the artistry is nonpareil. Like Milton’s Paradise Lost, the content of the art President Kimball envisioned might very well be religious in nature, but it will not be lauded because it mirrors the common religious tenets of the time. It will be lauded because, like Paradise Lost, it will contain brilliant psychological insights and because it will push at the frontier of a long artistic tradition. Such art, again, will not be primarily concerned with preaching orthodoxy as much as it is concerned with artistic innovation. “Make it new” has been the motto, whether realized or not, for all memorable artists throughout history. All memorable artists have caused us to see the world anew.

When President Kimball said that “if we strive for perfection—the best and greatest—and are never satisfied with mediocrity, we can excel,” he was likely referring to artistry. When he said, “to be an artist means hard work and patience and long-suffering,” he was likely referring to what it takes to achieve true artistic talent, not what it takes to accurately convey orthodox messages. His vision was for Mormonartists.

I should reiterate that I’m not arguing for a retreat from Mormon themes in art. I’m thinking of the fantastic musician Sufjan Stevens, an artist who does not shy away from subtly visiting Christian themes in his songs while making innovative contributions to contemporary music (his album Illinois was deservedly on nearly every major list for the decade’s best albums.) The artists interviewed in this magazine have struck a similar balance in their respective genres. MormonArtist is a sign we’re arriving.

Finally, I’m not arguing that artists should get so caught up in their work that they soften their commitment to Mormonism.

After all, whether we celebrate Mormonart or Mormonart, “Mormon” comes first. I believe that at church meetings all Mormon artists should be Mormonartists, the same way all church-goers put aside their profession on Sunday.

Who knows—Mormons could lead the next century in intelligent and innovative rock music. I hope that MormonArtist will help bring it about. The rock world is ready for a band of Mormon artists as innovative and as universally appealing as the Beatles. We certainly have the suit and tie thing down pat. ❧

Peter Breinholt’s “What About,” Jon Schmidt’s “Waterfall,” and Tyler Castleton’s “One Voice,” among others, stand out.

Are Scholars and Museums Ignoring Mormon Artists?

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0600

August 31, 2009

By Menachem Wecker

Menachem Wecker is a Washington, D.C.-based painter and writer, who blogs on religion and the arts at iconia.canonist.com.

Try searching for “Mormon” on the website of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and MOMA will ask if you meant “mormons.” But don’t get your hopes up—refining your search returns just one page, a profile of Dorothea Lange, who photographed Mormon subjects for Life in the mid-1950s.

Image courtesy J. Kirk Richards

Searching the sites of other major U.S. museums shows MOMA is not an isolated offender. The National Gallery of Art has hosted musicians who previously performed with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Orchestra at Temple Square. A quilts exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum mentioned the Mormon Trail, and the collection includes Thomas Moran’s painting Mist in Kanab Canyon, Utah, while New York’s Metropolitan Museum site yields only one hit: Charles William Carter’s print Mormon Emigrant Train, Echo Canyon.

The conspicuous absence of Mormon art in U.S. museums begs the question: Are art institutions maliciously turning a blind eye on LDS artists, or have LDS artists and cultural institutions done a poor job of marketing themselves to the wider public? And whichever is the case, are there good reasons why non-Mormons should take Mormon art seriously?

“I suspect most people don’t even know there is such a thing as Mormon art,” says Dr. Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, adjunct professor of religious art and cultural history at Georgetown University’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.

Apostolos-Cappadona, whose publications include Encyclopedia of Women in Religious Art and Dictionary of Christian Art, says she has rarely encountered Mormon art or artists as specific topics in her research. “I am not sure there is a strong, or even growing interest in the topic of Mormon art.”

A “conundrum” might account for this lack of exposure, according to Apostolos-Cappadona. Mormon-themed art is often off limits to non-Mormons, who cannot enter consecrated temples. And for whatever reasons, experts tend not to view the art by Mormon artists that is accessible to non-Mormons as part of the larger field of religious art, which is getting far more exposure.

A search through the online library catalog at a major East Coast university returned just one relevant publication, Mormon Graphic Image, 1834-1914: Cartoons, Caricatures, and Illustrations by Gary L. Bunker and Davis Bitton, published by the University of Utah Press in the early 1980s. Rather than championing Mormon art, the book turns out to be a catalog of anti-Mormon cartoons, some of which attack the prophet directly. One example, a 1904 drawing from Life by F.T. Richards, shows Joseph Smith wearing a top hat and a long white beard pushing a wheelbarrow full of babies, flanked by a long parade of wives. “Joseph Smith Comes to Washington,” mocks the headline.

In their introduction, the authors explain that they conceived the study, which was funded by BYU, after reading John and Selma Appel’s The Distorted Image, published by the Jewish organization, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. Bunker and Bitton decided studies of images that stereotyped Jews, blacks, Native Americans, and Catholics have proliferated, but such a study of anti-Mormon images was “long overdue.”

Some suggest that anti-Mormon sentiments might still present problems in academia. According to Christi Foist, who holds a graduate degree in religious studies with an emphasis on religion and art from Arizona State University, it can be “a little tricky” to find scholarship on Mormonism. Foist found that her program focused largely on “traditional, institutional religions” like Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, and Hinduism. “Things that fell outside those boundaries—especially things sometimes defined more as ‘cults’ than religions—typically didn’t get as much scholarship,” she says.

Image courtesy J. Kirk Richards

Pablo Solomon, an artist based in Austin, Texas, who draws and sculpts dancers, says galleries and museums are generally anti-religious, and as such, Mormon artists, who tend to be devout, might get targeted. “If you pay close attention, religious art is always portrayed as basically primitive propaganda used to scare and to control the ignorant masses in the days before the average person was educated,” says Solomon. “The work of great masters is seldom analyzed as to the message of faith, but rather as to the artwork’s relevance to the progression of art.”

Apostolos-Cappadona disagrees with the charge that academia discriminates against Mormons. “As far as I know, there is very little interest in Mormonism, let alone anti-Mormon sentiment, at least in the academic circles I frequent,” she says, adding that there was some interest, inquisitive but not necessarily negative, surrounding Mitt Romney’s presidential bid. “Who knows—if he revives himself for 2012, then maybe there will be more interest, positive and negative.”

Dr. James E. Bryan, a specialist in the history of the decorative arts and design, who has featured slides of the furniture of early Mormon pioneers in Utah in his lectures, also cautioned against overstating the absence of Mormon studies in academia.

“I would caution that the verb ‘ignore’ is perhaps a bit strong, implying that art historians are deliberately avoiding Mormon art, when I would expect that for the most part they are simply unaware of it,” says Bryan, assistant professor of art history at University of Wisconsin-Stout.

Bryan says he and his colleagues often use history, including religious history, to contextualize art in their teaching, but never try to proselytize or criticize any belief. On “rare occasions,” students have told Bryan his teaching contradicts their beliefs, but the reactions have been misunderstandings, he says. “What is being taught is not what the student should or should not believe,” Bryan explains, “but what the people we are studying believed, and whether we agree with them or not, that’s what they thought and here’s how it influenced their art.”

But art historians are not often bringing Mormon religious history into their teaching due to the influence of modernism on twentieth-century art historians, Bryan says, since modernism increasingly defined artistic “progress” in terms of an increasingly abstract style, which precluded realist traditions like Mormon art.

“This ‘greatness’ of given artists was most easily determined by how much other artists were influenced by them,” Bryan says, or, more recently with the rise of modern art, by the degree of popularity an artist achieved. “As far as I know, no Mormons have been highly prominent by either of these standards … If Mormons have done interesting things I would not be surprised for some art historians to start looking into it.”

Another difficulty facing scholars who seek to bring religion into art and art history is what Lawrence Klimecki, a Sacramento-based fine artist, illustrator, and designer, who is also a deacon in the Catholic Church, calls “the round peg in the square hole.” Museums and galleries rarely give viewers any information which facilitates connecting to the art on a religious level, according to Klimecki, and they tend to see art as just a commodity. “For the religious artist, however, the work is something more—it is an expression of their divinely inspired gifts,” Klimecki says.

David Dark, author of Everyday Apocalypse and The Gospel According to America, agrees, adding that the essential element of religious art-making is “faithful receptivity.”

“I think the best artists are almost un-self-consciously transparent about their faith. It comes through naturally and candidly in a way they really can’t help,” says the Nashville-based Dark, who is currently pursuing his doctorate in religious studies at Vanderbilt University. “It isn’t—and couldn’t be—incorporated into the work after the fact.”

When artists try to append religious significance to their works after the fact, it is easy to spot, says Dark. “When the audience discerns that a notion has been inserted unnaturally to make the work pass muster for the doctrine police or something (a Bible verse or a symbol placed obtrusively on an image), I’d say the artist’s career is rightfully and even helpfully jeopardized,” he says.

The good news for Mormon artists is that American art might be getting a higher profile in American museums, as Suzanne Muchnic reported on May 30, 2009, in the Los Angeles Times. “Long the stepchild of a Eurocentric art world, American art is finding new favor at home as a growing number of institutions showcase work from Colonial times to World War II,” Muchnic begins, explaining that experts are pointing to three factors which might be responsible for the revival: “a national coming of age, a thirst for new artistic territory and a critical mass of American material that has made its way from private homes to public museums.”

Mormon art could certainly play an important role in the new trend, as Apostolos-Cappadona explains. “Given its evangelical nature and its nineteenth-century roots and expansion into the American West, Mormonism provides a window into the ‘American’ interest in utopian societies and the drive to go west,” she says. Otherwise, there is always the possibility of a Romney 2012 campaign. ❧

The Art of Friends, Not Rivals: Shannon Hale & Stephenie Meyer

Sat, 30 May 2009 00:00:00 -0600

May 30, 2009

By Mahonri Stewart

Originally published by A Motley Vision. Reprinted with permission.

A little over a year ago, my lovely wife, Anne, and I had the privilege to go to a retreat hosted by the Mormon Arts Foundation. Founded by James Christensen (rightfully famous for his art of fantasy and his fantastic art) and Doug Stewart (playwright of the groundbreaking Saturday’s Warrior), it’s always one of the chief highlights of the year for my wife and me. An uplifting experience, not because of the number of recognizable names on the roster (which was a little intimidating at first, until their relaxed manner and cheerful camaraderie told me that they were only human and weren’t looking down on my comparatively pitiful contribution to Mormon arts), but because of the focus it brought to the spiritual aspect of our art, and the complicated ways our religion informs and doesn’t inform our art. It was a true inspiration to see all of these gifted Mormons from the visual arts, literature, film, drama, and music band together for a weekend of reminding each other why they’re artists and why they’re Mormons, and what a wonderfully strange and beautiful mixture that is.

The last time we attended, however, something stood out to me that I believe will remain with me for the rest of my life. This epiphany centered on Shannon Hale (author of young adult fantasy novels such as Goose Girl, Enna Burning, River Secrets, and the Newbery award-winning novel, Princess Academy—not to mention my wife’s favorite writer) and Stephenie Meyer (bestselling author of the wildly popular Twilight series and also the sci-fi thriller/romance The Host). It seemed as if there was a spotlight on them during the entire conference. I was intrigued, not only by the two women themselves, but by what was happening between them. They were attached at the hip, eating together, constantly chatting up a storm, and even breaking the rules a bit by attending all of the same group discussions with each other (people were supposed to be assigned to different groups in each session so it wouldn’t be cliquey and so we would get to know a wider, interdisciplinary range of people). They were like two junior high BFFs (Best Friends Forever, for those who haven’t kept up on pre-teen lingo). And this almost claustrophobic closeness was, in my mind, absolutely, remarkably refreshing. To see these two accomplished writers—both established and famous in their respective fields and markets—cling to each other was like what it would have been to see the scriptural David and Jonathan choosing friendship over rivalry.

To give you a better picture of what I was seeing, I think it’s important to learn how both women conducted themselves in this setting:

Shannon Hale was exuberant, an absolute ray of sunshine. Warm, talkative, opinionated (I mean that in the most positive of terms), confident, animated, intelligent, beautiful, and really, really funny. I mean, she was absolutely hilarious. She never hesitated to throw in her opinion on a subject or to give someone a good-natured ribbing. She was the kind of person who looks you straight in the eye—she was not afraid you were superior to her, but neither was she looking down on you. You felt like you were on equal ground with her, if not in talent, then as a human being. I was surprised that after one of the chats, she took a good deal of time to talk to my wife and me, relative nobodies compared to others in the room. She never talked down to us, never seemed impatient to get away—just a lovely and charming woman, which made my wife’s day as well as my own.

If Shannon Hale was the sun, then Stephenie Meyer was the moon. Quiet, polite, slightly hesitant in her speech, kind, shy, with a gentle beauty. Quite the opposite of what one would expect from the woman who knocked J.K. Rowling off the New York Times bestseller list. She was not only one of the humblest writers I have ever met, but one of the humblest people I have ever met. After talking with her privately for a few minutes, I discovered she prefers to talk one-on-one, which is when she opened up. Away from the stares of the public, I found her to be what I had only assumed her to be before: a wonderful, goodhearted, insightful individual. I asked her about the then-upcoming film version of Twilight, and she was very open with me, talking about the initial fears she had, especially with the first draft of the script (which, I later found out, had butchered the story and wasn’t a faithful adaptation at all), but how a different script saved the day and how she’s quite pleased with the outcome.

It could have been my imagination, but what struck me as ironic is that Stephenie Meyer seemed almost intimidated to be among this group of Mormon artists. Perhaps it was because she felt she was among “Artists,” with a capital A. What I mean by that is that certain artistic personalities can look down on anything that they perceive as popular, populist, or—excuse the term—for the “unwashed masses.” That’s an exaggeration, of course, a stereotype, but that’s the sense I got. She seemed to be afraid that she was at a conference full of people who were critical of her work, despite its overwhelming popularity and unabashed fans. Again, I could be projecting this on her, but whatever the case was, she certainly wasn’t broadcasting her fame, nor using her bragging rights, nor even holding her chin up high. Instead, at the beginning of the conference she seemed almost embarrassed, as if she didn’t know what to do with herself. Of course, I don’t believe this particular group thought any less of Stephenie Meyer. If anything, they were feeling the same thing—intimidated by this very famous person in their midst. I certainly know that’s how I felt at first.

And then came Shannon Hale. She literally took Stephenie Meyer by the arm and was instantly her bosom buddy. Not that their friendship hadn’t been created before this moment, mind you. How Shannon Hale told it, if I remember correctly, is that she saw the success that Mrs. Meyer was having and said to herself, “She’s going to need a friend.” So she e-mailed her and they became instant friends. I think Shannon Hale was very perceptive in this. Sure, it’s obvious that fame can be heady and thrilling and tantalizing. However, it also must be awfully lonely, for as soon as Stephenie Meyer made a name for herself, jealous individuals tried to take her name, tear it down, and humble her beneath their cruel heels.

This is one of the reasons I was so impressed with Shannon Hale. Here she was, a Newbery winner, an established, prolific author, and a darn fine writer, whose sparse but poetic (almost elemental) prose and well-realized characters seem to spurt fire and wind and water and life from the page. And then came Stephenie Meyer, a first-time writer who admitted to Time magazine, “I don’t think I’m a writer; I think I’m a storyteller. The words aren’t always perfect.” She was an obscure Mormon housewife from Arizona who catapulted into fame and fortune simply because she had a vivid dream about a vampire romance and decided to write it down. It would have been tempting to any writer to say, “Oh, I’ve struggled for my reputation as a writer, worked hard to perfect my craft, and here comes a freshman author who woos the world on her first try. Does she really deserve it? Is it really literature? Is she deserving?” Not so with Shannon Hale. Instead of being a jealous-hearted spoilsport who can’t identify with any work that falls out of her narrow definition of “art,” she looked at this other vulnerable woman who had been thrust into a whole new world and said, “She’s going to need a friend.”

This, I think, is something that deserves attention, quiet and intimate as it may be. Artists can be a contentious, avarice-eyed lot if they feed their insecurities and egos too much. However, at this Mormon Arts retreat, I found that the vast majority of this group of Mormon artists had something else entirely in their hearts—they had truly let their religion seep into not only their art but into their relationships as artists. And there were no better examples of this kind of love that weekend than Shannon Hale and Stephenie Meyer. ❧

What Does a Latter-day Saint Renaissance Look Like?

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0600

March 25, 2009

By Robert Hall

Robert Hall is the founder and executive director of Arx Poetica.

Photo courtesy Robert Hall

Is it a Mormon renaissance or just a renaissance?

As a writer, poet, musician, and designer, I am an ardent participant and observer of the arts. Over the years, I’ve thought over what the arts have and will mean for the Church, for saints, and for nations. I’m no stranger to the speculation among our members for “what’s in store,” both pertaining directly to the arts, and what the arts can do for the Church. I’m familiar with the vision laid out by prophets, scholars, patriots, and poets alike, for the hope of a future renaissance, the likes of which the world has never seen. This has always been my fascination, and I seem to hear echoes of the same sentiment scattered throughout the Church—especially among us artists. The collective voice speaks to a great and noble calling to become watchers on the towers, proclaiming to the world the good news of the gospel through the technology and medium of the arts.

I am a believer.

But why have we not yet been successful, at least in part, in bringing about a successful renaissance? I’ve thought of some solutions to the two fundamental errors I see with artistic endeavors among Church members, but first, I think it’s important to assert that God alone is the veritable source of all good things and that nothing so lofty or grand as a renaissance could be achieved without bringing God directly to the forefront.

Still, why such elevated language as “renaissance” and the like?

We’ve heard the quotes before. But let’s reflect upon a little concentrated collection.

Perhaps the most oft-cited talk is Spencer W. Kimball’s First Presidency Message in the July 1977 issue of the Ensign, titled “The Gospel Vision of the Arts,” adapted from a speech given at BYU about ten years prior. President Kimball said, “For long years I have had a vision of members of the Church greatly increasing their already strong positions of excellence till the eyes of all the world will be upon us.” This is riveting enough, but then he goes on to an even bolder declaration from years past:

President John Taylor so prophesied, as he emphasized his words with this directive: “You mark my words, and write them down and see if they do not come to pass. You will see the day that Zion will be far ahead of the outside world in everything pertaining to learning of every kind as we are today in regard to religious matters. God expects Zion to become the praise and glory of the whole earth, so that kings hearing of her fame will come and gaze upon her glory.”

This is an interesting promise, and, admittedly, has become a mantra for my own and others’ efforts in the Church and the arts. For added perspective, here are words from the hand of U.S. President John Adams, who viewed the blessed landscape of a future America:

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain. (Letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, 12 May 1780.)

We get the sense that even America’s founders had some inclination toward a prosperous future, blessed by the arts. This perspective deepens when we couple the blessings of American promise with the blessings of a Restoration. Richard Bushman offers:

In Joseph [Smith’s] own day, the Hudson River painters were men of acknowledged belief who struggled to capture divinity in their paintings. They pointed toward God, for example, not by bringing the perspective lines together in their landscapes but by focusing on a bright point that leads through the picture into infinite space beyond. The sincerity of this art is surely a recommendation for art in the service of religion…For Joseph Smith, the key word was…“glory.” (“Would Joseph Smith attend the New York Stake Arts Festival?”, Silent Notes Taken: Personal Essays.)

(Now get ready; I’m running multiple scriptures together here, chaining them together for effect.)

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace…that publisheth salvation; that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth! Thy watchmen shall lift up the voice; with the voice together shall they sing (Isaiah 52:7–8)…For Zion must increase in beauty, and in holiness (D&C 82:14)…If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things (Articles of Faith 13)…For they shall be as the stones of a crown, lifted up as an ensign upon his land (Zechariah 9:16)…And righteousness will I send down out of heaven; and truth will I send forth out of the earth, to bear testimony of mine Only Begotten; his resurrection from the dead…and righteousness and truth will I cause to sweep the earth as with a flood, to gather out mine elect from the four quarters of the earth, unto a place which I shall prepare…and it shall be called Zion (Moses 7:62)…And from thence shall the gospel roll forth…as the stone which is cut out of the mountain without hands shall roll forth, until it has filled the whole earth (D&C 65:2)…Out of the wilderness of darkness, and shine forth fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners (D&C 109:73)…Zion shall flourish, and the glory of the Lord shall be upon her; And she shall be an ensign unto the people (D&C 64:41–42).

Any one of these scriptures evokes a grand panorama, but taken together, there is an even greater sense of the truly awe-inspiring. We stand at the gate as a Restoration and, essentially, a renaissance rolls forth. As has been iterated in our own time by prophets:

Today we have a modern equivalent of the printing press in the Internet and all that it means. The Internet allows everyone to be a publisher, to have their voice heard, and it is revolutionizing society. (Elder Ballard, in a speech given at BYU–Hawaii on December 15, 2007.) We call upon all members, those in the arts and those seeking to appreciate the message of good art, to expand their vision of what can be done. If we are going to fill the world with goodness and truth, then we must be worthy to receive inspiration so we can bless the lives of our Heavenly Father’s children. (Elder Ballard, “Filling the World with Goodness and Truth,” Ensign, Jul 1996.) The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul.…We each have an inherent wish to create something that did not exist before.…Everyone can create.…Nearly a century and a half ago, President Brigham Young spoke to the Saints of his day. “There is a great work for the Saints to do,” he said. “Progress, and improve upon and make beautiful everything around you.” (President Uchtdorf, “Happiness, Your Heritage,” General Relief Society Meeting, October 2008.) We’ve barely scratched the surface. (President Hinckley, First Presidency Message, “There Must Be Messengers,” Ensign, October 1987.)

Finally, I remember hearing President Faust say during a stake conference on my mission: “When the arts in the Church mature, people will flock to the Church.” Whether or not I heard it correctly or just heard what I wanted to hear, I think it drives home the point succinctly. Why should those who want to fill the earth with filth and waste not be challenged? Do we want a renaissance of pollution and degradation? Can we survive as a people with continued moral decay in all the world about us? As Joseph Smith said,

That we should waste and wear out our lives in bringing to light all the hidden things of darkness, wherein we know them; and they are truly manifest from heaven—these should then be attended to with great earnestness. (D&C 123:13–14)

Great earnestness. We, of necessity, must mature in the arts. It’s incumbent upon us precisely because God would beautify the Earth and save his children. He would have us protect all good things. In fact, He would have us survive through a great renaissance, reborn.

Image courtesy Lili Hall

How does a renaissance happen? Our first error

Our first problem lies in what I call a bit of narcissism. We’ve been handed a noble mandate, but often we’re not careful. Our efforts become less effective. Our artistic efforts become so concentrated on a “Mormon” endeavor, that something gets lost in the shuffle. It is imperative to realize that an endeavor that is branded “Mormon” is, by its very nature, exclusive. Even with important exceptions, such as the New York-based Mormon Artists Group and this magazine (which I view as a necessary appendage of increased artistic endeavor), people who are not LDS will not necessarily feel inclined to participate or keep a finger on the pulse.

It’s like the difference between saying “I am Mormon,” and just behaving like one. We traditionally endeavor to lead by example. So why declare so forthrightly, “This is my Mormon artistic endeavor”?

Don’t get me wrong. I think there’s a fundamental need and place for identity. We are Mormon, and that’s important. We don’t want to forget who we are.

But we also have a proclivity toward too much self-awareness, and, at times, self-aggrandizement. After all, it’s what we’re taught. Our missionary endeavors are exclusively about proclaiming, boldly, the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We are accustomed to going into the world and proclaiming, “I am Mormon; hear me roar!” I mean, for heaven’s sake, we’ve been doing it at the world’s doors for decade upon decade. And I imagine we will continue in this fashion for important reasons.

However, it can and probably should be important to distinguish between the Church’s role and our individual roles as artists and members. Perhaps there is greater need to recognize all the blessings of humanity. We are not alone. My identity, your identity, our identity as Mormons, is perhaps less critical than recognizing God’s identity, your neighbor’s identity, our identity as sons and daughters of the Most High. And overtly conscious “Mormon art” undermines our efforts.

Our artistic endeavors need face

Too often, we don’t know how to present ourselves to the world. After all, isn’t it about promoting stories of the Restoration, of stories in the Book of Mormon, and of uniquely Mormon topics? Yes, absolutely, but that excludes the essence of what an artistic movement looks like. As Walter Pater said in his studies on the great Renaissance,

The basis of all artistic genius lies in the power of conceiving humanity in a new and striking way, of putting a happy world of its own creation in place of the meaner world of our common days. (The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry.)

If I were to sit down and say, “Okay, I’m going to write the great Mormon novel about Joseph Smith,” it’s likely that I’m already failing in my attempt. If, on the other hand, I have a strong interest in just telling a good story, and I happen to be fascinated by some aspect of Joseph’s humanity, I might have something going for me.

I could be struck with how to paint some scene from Lehi’s life and I might go about that with some success. This is quite different from starting out with “How can I create the best Mormon representation of Lehi?”

If we could sometimes just forget the “Mormon” strain, and just tell good tales, paint good paintings, sculpt good sculptures, and compose good compositions, everything else would fall into place. If I write a screenplay from an idea that I find so compelling, and it just happens to have some Mormon character in it, well, that’s terrific! But shoving a Mormon character in my film just for the sake of promoting Mormon arts?

Without getting too far into a conversation about what defines great art (O, the endless dialogue!), I still think it’s important to draw this single point. If you want to communicate to many people, your job is to understand how not to isolate them.

There is a flip side to all this awkward introspection: Our second error

In my days spent as an artist on the east and west coast, I have known people who take the reverse tack. They are embarrassed or ashamed, for one reason or another, to be counted as a Mormon artist. Sometimes there are legitimate concerns involved, especially when political or professional reputations are at stake.

I have found that many suffer from a delusional notion that a Mormon artistic effort will never succeed, and some aren’t willing to put forth an arm to help a movement along. Some are successful Mormons in professional artistic endeavors who, for one reason or another, aren’t willing to give back. Some are too proud to work with other Mormons. Some are scared. Some are lazy. And some are, rightly so, disillusioned by the lack of a successful Mormon renaissance, seeing too much of the error described above.

I don’t fault these individuals—I find it a waste of time and effort. I’m interested in working with people who want to work with me, not people who have a problem. Still, I think it’s an important difficulty to recognize. It is part of the reason we haven’t seen a successful Mormon artistic movement—at least, not yet.

There is actually a third common error, which is a combination of one and two. Some of us become so wrapped up in the Mormon artistic endeavors that we lose sight of what is good and look beyond the mark. We become not only too proud to work with others, but we believe that we alone understand what a Mormon renaissance looks like and label everyone else’s Mormon efforts as wrong. We could probably think of some examples where artists just think they “know better” than the rest of us, the Church, their Mormon peers, or just the cultural ideology itself. Some are so embittered that they leave the Church with a noisy fuss in the wake. They become laws unto themselves.

Still, I truly believe there is not only a happy middle ground, but a potentially thriving and alive middle ground for us all. Returning to Pater:

The history of art has suffered as much as any history by trenchant and absolute divisions. Pagan and Christian art are sometimes harshly opposed, and the Renaissance is represented as a fashion which set in at a definite period. That is the superficial view: the deeper view is that which preserves the identity of European culture. The two are really continuous; and there is a sense in which it may be said that the Renaissance was an uninterrupted effort of the middle age, that it was ever taking place. When the actual relics of the antique were restored to the world, in the view of the Christian ascetic it was as if an ancient plague-pit had been opened. All the world took the contagion of the life of nature and of the senses. And now it was seen that the medieval spirit too had done something for the new fortunes of the antique. By hastening the decline of art, by withdrawing interest from it and yet keeping unbroken the thread of its traditions, it had suffered the human mind to repose itself, that when day came it might awake, with eyes refreshed, to those ancient, ideal forms.

Pater’s words speak for themselves, but we can glean a corollary: “that which preserves the identity of … culture.” If there really is to be a renaissance, “a marvelous work and a wonder,” if Zion must arise in all her glory, then really all that has gone before—that “fashion … set in at a definite period” as “an uninterrupted effort”—is only a predecessor to the greatest era of culture and art ever.

Can this really be true?

It’s such a fantastical notion. But it seems we’re at the threshold. As the founder of this magazine, Ben Crowder, recently said, “The LDS arts world has been laying a solid foundation for decades now, and it looks like it’s just about reached critical mass for an explosion of talent. The future is very, very bright.” The annual LDS Film Festival just finished its eighth year. Mormon artist communities are growing in critical cities, such as New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Movements are afoot in various forms, and technological tools are becoming increasingly available to this end. Conrad Nebeker, for one, has been successfully reinforcing an active effort to support the arts in Provo (land of one million creative Mormon students) with a Facebook group titled “People in Provo who care for the arts” and a foundation to boot, the Sego Arts Foundation.

Slowly we’re starting to meet in the middle and overcome the two obstacles posed above. I think technology will be there for us as we go about doing it right. Technology is at an interesting crossroads. I’ve recently taken interest in something called the DiSo Project, which will likely effect another shift in the Internet, somewhat like the seismic changes we saw with so-called Web 2.0 technologies. In the next few years, we might see a corner turned in collaborative and creative online resources in ways difficult to perceive. We’ve seen a hint of this power in social networking tools such as Facebook, but a ubiquitous train’s a-coming. And, while I haven’t entirely figured out how to articulate it, social networking will help us forget ourselves and collaborate more freely. Contrary to the breeding ground of narcissism that places like Facebook and MySpace can be, when social networking becomes coupled with creativity and the arts, a gargantuan window will open—not only for Mormon artists, but for all artists with good intent.

We must work together, Mormon and non-Mormon alike. This is key. When the Savior asked us to take the gospel to all the world, he wasn’t saying “take your Mormon identity to all the world.” He was asking us to make peace with mankind. Fight necessary battles. Embrace all truth. Share with men and women all the good things we can. Raise an ensign to the nations. Embrace everyone possible in the process. Live righteous lives. Share with people the love that is in your heart. Find refreshing and creative ways to build bridges. Foster an atmosphere of respite from the storm.

This is the measure of a renaissance.

As an artist and web designer, I’m inclined to catch that train early. With a couple of like-minded LDS artists, I have started an organization for people interested in good art, both Mormons and non-Mormons. Arx Poetica is beginning as a “good art” resource spanning the disciplines of artistry: music and sound, studio art, writing and literature, film, theatre, and new media. As we grow, we will become a collaborative den of artists, eventually financially supporting the efforts of true artists in each of these fields. It is not a “Mormon Renaissance” because we call it such. Rather, it will be a renaissance by the very nature of how we nurture it. For “Zion cannot be built up unless it is by the principles of the law of the celestial kingdom” (D&C 105:5). And certainly, Zion cannot be built alone. We need to join forces.

Like President Faust, I feel that when the arts in the Church mature, people will flock to the Church, perhaps in numbers we never imagined possible. People long for beauty and truth. Many don’t know where to find it.

To echo President Kimball, “I believe that the Lord is anxious to put into our hands inventions of which we laymen have hardly a glimpse” (“When the World Will Be Converted,” Ensign, October 1974).

Zion will be a respite from the storm, and Zion will be beautiful. ❧

Toward a Mormon Renaissance

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0600

September 1, 2008

By James Goldberg

James Goldberg is one of the founders of New Play Project. See the interview with him.

In 1920, while riding on a train, Langston Hughes wrote a poem on the back of a napkin. Maybe you’ve heard it. It was called “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” and it goes like this:

I’ve known rivers:

I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the

flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln

went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy

bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

It’s a beautiful poem, I’ve always thought. And a wise poem. There’s something about the way that poem reaches so far back into the past and so deep down into the soul that communicates a grounded, mature kind of confidence. You know what I’m talking about? That’s a poem that can give depth and strength instead of just describing them.

It’s incredible that it does that, when you think about it, because that poem was written in 1920. You know what most people thought of black history and culture back in 1920? The vast majority of white Americans and all too many African-Americans thought of black as different, backward, inferior: the blacker physically or culturally, the worse. There was nothing to be confident about, as far as most people were concerned. But Langston Hughes wrote my black soul is deep like the rivers and 86 years later we remember him for it. Not because he was the greatest individual writing talent of his day, but because he had something to say. Something that went beyond himself. He wrote about the culture and heritage of his people with pride and artistry. He and other like-minded writers, not ashamed to call themselves Negro poets, gave this nation a literature of black dignity. All those individual writers, works, and goals clumped together are remembered as the Harlem Renaissance. And I hope that long after hundreds of movements from the last century have been forgotten, the Harlem Renaissance will be remembered; because America desperately needed the gift it offered to take another step toward being whole.

So. Here we are, eighty-eight years later, in the Mormon community. Mormonism is technically a religion, but it’s also a tradition and a people. (Being a Goldberg, I understand how these things work. A religion can form a people. It’s been done before.) We’re a people with a rich heritage that goes back far beyond the founding of the church in 1830. We’ve got unique institutions that have helped us keep a sense of community in an age when many communities are falling apart. And we have wisdom, a surprisingly rare gift in an age so saturated with information and opinion—we know something about how to treat each other, about our relationship to God, about the spiritual power that runs all through this world. We have an overarching gospel framework to organize and prioritize our insights within. And of course, we’ve also got online resources with wisdom on food storage and stuff. Profound or practical, inherited wisdom is part of who we are.

And who are we? Unlike most tribes and peoples, none of this heritage is restricted to any ethnic group or country. Anyone can choose to adopt this heritage as part of their own identity. The whole world is getting less national and more global and Mormonism is one of the world’s first great post-national cultures.

All this means that Mormon writers, like the men and women of the Harlem Renaissance, have a lot to say…if—let me emphasize that—if we have the courage to undertake the same kind of project they did. I mean, black history and black culture in 1920 were already incredibly rich. The black community already had an incredible strength, but hardly anyone had ever managed to write about it in a meaningful, resonant, artistic way. There was a black tradition and a black heritage but no body of black literature. The Harlem Renaissance changed that, and that changed the world.

What I’m trying to say is that maybe it’s time for us to help change the world again. Look, I know it sounds arrogant to say that. Who am I to change the world through art? There is no shortage of better writers out there, and a lot of them don’t worry about how to stay on insurance as much as many of us do. They’re more experienced, going to down better marked and tested paths of expression, in a larger and more connected community of artists. Who am I compared to that? Who is Aaron Martin? Who is J. Kirk Richards?

Who are we? Well, we’re Latter-day Saints. We’re people who have wrestled with some of life’s big and little issues and have been lucky enough to have help. We’re people who think and act a little differently than most of the country does and value that uniqueness. We’re people who know a little about God and a little about life. We’re people who believe that’s enough to say something big … and who are trying to connect with others who share that belief and desire.

Are we going to make a difference? I hope so. And I take hope in history.

See, when Langston Hughes was sitting on that train in the evening, watching the sun set, when he wrote, with the voice of his people, “I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins,” he was 18 years old.

The scripture says that through small and simple means great works will come to pass. And maybe with our shared work and prayers, building from the base of the heritage that binds us, they will. And maybe, if an amateur publication can help connect and inspire us, this will be a part of a process that people can look back on some day and call a Mormon Renaissance.

So, thanks for reading. And for being a part of whatever good unfolds. ❧