Via Crucis by Peter Siedlecki, art by Catherine Burchfield Parker

Some years before her death 2012, artist Catherine Parker was asked by Fr. Jacob Ledwon and Sister Jeremy Madura to render a contemporary Way of the Cross with social justice implications. When her depictions were being prepared for permanent installation in 2020, the music director of St. Joseph University Church, Roland E. Martin proposed the idea of his composing musical pieces that captured the spirit of Catherine’s pictures. Since we had both collaborated with Catherine on earlier projects, he asked me to write poetic meditations for her Stations of the Cross. A Compact Disc of Martin’s music performed by the Buffalo Chamber Players, as well as the meditations was recently released. In response to the request by some for the text of the meditations, I am presenting this little book.

—Peter Siedlecki

A remarkable scope is needed to render a contemporary setting for the Stations of the Cross from its countless portrayals. Catherine Burchfield Parker’s paintings seek fairness and equity across many aspects of society. They render little that is gentle or resolute. Siedlecki’s poetry resonates the surfaces and experiences of Burchfield Parker paintings. The Way of the Cross is understood as spaces of time, moments of loss, forgotten destructive comforts, and nightmare memories. The ordinary confronts the extraordinary as a means to strengthen, enable, endure, and ultimately transcend, “On some distant hill.” This is a tough, beautiful, provoking book of poems.

—Geoffrey Gatza

Peter Siedlecki is Professor Emeritus of English and Poet in Residence at Daemen College. He has coordinated the Readings at the RIC poetry series. He is a former Dean of Arts and Sciences at Daemen and Fulbright Senior Lecturer in Literature at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland and at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany. He is the current director of the Catherine Burchfield Parker Artist Salon. In the early 1970’s he was part of a folk singing group called The Circle that also included Mary Ellen Matta, Tom Dose and Jim Chase and performed at various colleges and coffee houses. He presently sings with The St. Joseph University Church choir and the Buffalo Philharmonic Chorus. He is a former member of Freudig Singers of Western New York. He has studied voice with the internationally acclaimed soprano, Cristen Gregory. His previous collections of poetry are Voyeur (2006), Going With The Flow (2015), and Le Trouvere Pretendu (2019).

Book Information:

· Paperback: 42 pages
· Binding: Perfect-Bound
· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books]
· ISBN: 978-1-60964-466-6