Contingency: Selected, Collected Poems, Volume Two 1989-2001

During the years he was writing this collection of poems, James Howard Trott was also putting together an extensive anthology of Christian poetry in English, A Sacrifice of Praise. His first edition was published in 1997, after which, in 1999, a kind friend found a bigger venue for its publication. Trott says in the Preface to that anthology, he, like many American poets, often felt his wrote poetry in a vacuum – a condition neither necessary nor salubrious. It was a desire to know how the Christian poet should write and speak to his own ‘tribe’ in his own ‘tongue’ that led me to begin this collection . The labors of love which that project involved formed this poet’s perspective. Nonetheless, as many of those close to him will happily agree, Trott is a peculiar person, and his poetry is peculiar to him. He cannot blame Caedmon, Emily Dickinson, John Donne, or Charles Williams for his particular fascinations - with natural, biblical, and existential anecdotes, for instance. He has reached an age where he may safely be called an eccentric, and doubtless there are eccentric dimensions to his poetry. In the end, however, this poet can usually be discovered to delight in the germ or gem of truth that is frequently found curled up in a well-worn phrase, or a phrase re-arranged, or some small bit of creation … or in a common experience of life. He finds delight in looking for such things. He apparently finds delight in trying to communicate what he finds to us. And, since this is the second, selected, collection of his own poetry - we may safely say, he seems to delight in writing poetry toward that purpose.