Mormon Studies Commons^™

Was Samuel The Lamanite A Poet?

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

S. Kent Brown, professor of ancient scripture at BYU, has recently completed a study of "The Prophetic Laments of Samuel the Lamanite," available as a F.A.R.M.S. paper. His comparison of Helaman 13 with the poetic form of biblical laments offers a number of intriguing insights into both the form and meaning of Samuel's message for the Nephites and for us.

One Day’S Return, Long Past Childhood, Dixie L. Partridge

BYU Studies

You walk out beyond pasture

to see where it will take you. Dawn

blossoms from the hilltops. No breeze.

You come to still drowsing fields, a rock slope

with buttercups congregating.

Mary’S Assumption, Christopher Bissett

BYU Studies

On resurrection morning

surely He appeared to you,

His mother.

Constancy Amid Change, Michael Goodman, Daniel Frost

BYU Studies

Few issues are more sensitive and in need of serious study than gender and sexuality. Taylor Petrey’s book, Tabernacles of Clay: Sexuality and Sexual Difference in Modern Mormonism, contributes much to that study. The book provides a nuanced view of Church leaders’ attempts to understand and teach the nature of gender and sexuality. Petrey shows that Latter-day Saint discourse on these issues has changed substantially, especially since World War II. Petrey has gathered a trove of material for scholars and others who seek to better understand how culture, tradition, and theology have shaped teachings about gender and sexuality. Though …

What Her Missionary Son’S Letter Didn’T Say, Darlene Young

BYU Studies

Rain hangs in the air. Even my underwear feels wet.

I listen to the tapping fingertips of the bodies of bugs hitting netting at night. Gray water. Bare floors.

Moon To Moon Nights, Dixie Partridge

BYU Studies

like time-lapse film, signify now a moment, now a lifetime. A bonedrift of stone shapes pale and rise like years along garden’s edge. . . .

Mercy, Elizabeth Smith

BYU Studies

I merge into surging highway wind, my backseat baby babbles to the Tim-Tams macaroni yogurt burger cookies and bananas, and a crackling alto announces the world this hour: buildings burst in a distant port, scoundrel stabs doctor in a clinic past the mountains, furious inferno feasts on trees, towns just south of here.

Desert Harvest, Ben De Hoyos

BYU Studies

At last, it came, The cleansing rain at the fading Of this long, parched day.

A Short Tribute To My Genealogical Butcher Chart, Linda Hoffman Kimball

BYU Studies

If you were to parse me Like meat on a banner You’d find all my ancestors In parts or in manner.

His Body Breaks, James Goldberg

BYU Studies

His body breaks long before he hangs on the cross.

All Things Sing Praise, Susan Elizabeth Howe

BYU Studies

The anteater’s tongue licking praise in the tunnels of the termite mound.

The alpaca spitting praise, olé!

Serrano peppers’ praise in perspiration.

Plastic praise: the Taj Mahal, a million interlocking Lego blocks.

Bayou, Pamela J. Hamblin

BYU Studies

Slowly the rain plays thin strings, plucking.

Breeze, Daniel Teichert

BYU Studies

What if our prayers were the wind to God, and carried our thoughts like the smell of cut grass and barbecued meat and skunk musk and cow dung and tire-kicked dust?

The Grove, James Goldberg

BYU Studies

When the Smiths put money down on that plot of land, it was all trees. Maples and beech, wild cherry and ironwood; ash, oak, hickory, elm. The boys must’ve measured their hours by axe-stroke some days as they put their shoulders to the slow, sweaty work of clearing land. To make room for wheat, rye, and oats, for buckwheat and beans they brought down maybe six thousand trees— those towering majesties—some saplings before Columbus laid eyes on their world’s distant shore.

Rock Of Promise, K. D. Taylor

BYU Studies

When storms from thine opposer Entice our hearts to fear, O God, thou great disposer Of blessings, bid us hear

Even Psalm, Darlene Young

BYU Studies

Smog today, but I saw your wink in the pink light of the peaks above it, heard your chuckle in the plumes of trumpets and under-the-skin drums of the high school marching band practicing four blocks away.

Psalter For The Eternal Mother, Tyler Chadwick

BYU Studies

O, Lady of Luminous Things, Vessel of Radiance and Wisdom, Let-There-Be and Bearing Witness—

Learning To Touch, Marilyn Bushman-Carlton

BYU Studies

I was relieved when my daughter arrived at the dying, when she got to work saturating a hospital sponge, pressing it inside her grandmother’s cheek, allowing her to drink. I marveled

Our Lady Of The Unicorn Blanket-Cape, Tyler Chadwick

BYU Studies

O, Mythical Daughter, Story-Seeker, Herald of Imagination and Reverie— May your frayed and faded mantle burden you with comfort and abundance— May it swaddle your dreams, nuzzling their shadows into pastures of promise and grace, boldness and prophecy—

The Rain On Alan Avenue, J. S. Absher

BYU Studies

How the Missionaries Came to Marion, Virginia, 1955

In that far year when I was a child (you were not yet), I saw how rain on long afternoons can chitter and chat, gurgling and chortling out the downspout, its sing-song tune boring a brat with nothing to do.

At Least In Heaven There’S Food., Jared Pearce

BYU Studies

She was building bread when the building was bombed, a fighter jet or gasoline tank, kneaded to a flat cake.

Forerunner, Merrijane Rice

BYU Studies

As Isaiah foretold, you will be the voice of one crying in the wilderness: Clear a path for the Lord! Level a highway through this wasteland!

Green Things, Sarah Dunster

BYU Studies

Faith, they say, is a seed that grows. It swells, and as a mother I can say that things inside swelling are not always pleasant. But what sort of growing is always pleasant?

January Night, Susan Jeffers

BYU Studies

Once the snow has fallen, moonlight becomes superfluous.

First Argument, Darlene Young

BYU Studies

An ache like a seed caught in teeth, acrid aftertaste of unripe fruit; astonishment. That is not what I meant.

The Demands Of Poetry: A Review Of Collections Published In 2018 By Latter-Day Saint Authors, Susan Elizabeth Howe, Casualene Meyer

BYU Studies

During the nineteenth century, poets had the celebrity status of today’s most famous singers. Most of today’s educated readers (including educated Latter-day Saint readers), however, can’t name five poets who are highly regarded in our generation. But readers may not be completely to blame for this shift. Early in the twentieth century, poets such as T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, poets later grouped under the term Modernist, took poetry, which had been one of the most popular genres of literature, and made it so difficult—so full of allusions, voices, and fragments of thought not necessarily connected to each …

Anaranjado, John Alba Cutler

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

"Why Are Your Kids Late To School Today?", Lisa Martin

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Back, Mark D. Bennion

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.

Mystery And Dance, Daniel F. Teichert

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.