This is Poetry Moment on WPSU – a weekly program featuring the work of contemporary Pennsylvania poets. Your host is poet and author Marjorie Maddox, a 2023 Monson Arts Fellow, author of more than 20 books, and Professor Emerita of English and Creative Writing at the Lock Haven campus of Commonwealth University.
Welcome to Poetry Moment. I’m Marjorie Maddox.
A large gothic structure, the East Liberty Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh covers an entire city block. Also known as the Cathedral of Hope, its mission, as listed on its website, is “radical hospitality.” In her poem “At the Cathedral of Hope,” Janette Schafer describes it as an “urban sanctuary.” Hope, hospitality, and sanctuary: all three are needed today.
Janette Schafer is a poet, playwright, and singer living in Pittsburgh with her husband, Garth Schafer. She earned her MFA in poetry from Chatham University. Her writing often explores themes of resilience and recovery, magical realism, and mythology. When she’s not writing, Janette works as a realtor, helping people find their place in the world.
Janette Schafer explains today’s poem: “My poem ‘At the Cathedral of Hope’ reflects my ongoing fascination with how physical structures hold emotional and spiritual resonance. As a realtor, I spend much of my life inside the built environment, observing how people connect to homes, architecture, and indoor space. While many poems of place focus on landscape or community, my own often center on the buildings themselves; their histories, silences, and the ways they mold and contain human experience.”
Here’s “At the Cathedral of Hope” by Janette Schafer.
At the Cathedral of Hope
In Pittsburgh, after a cold dark winter—
after the sun was hiding somewhere further south—
In this chapel of urban sanctuary—
in this diamond of perfect acoustics—
A singer with a mouth full of petals
altered a season of silence,
brought the crickets and poems of spring;
and neither angels or pearls,
or couples running nude through a park,
or the wet grass of meadow sticking to the legs,
could have spoken the wanton language
of the season so well—
(and I am still translating.)
“At the Cathedral of Hope” appears in the anthology "Keystone Poetry: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania" (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2025).
That was “At the Cathedral of Hope” by Janette Schafer. Thanks for listening. With Poetry Moment, I’m Marjorie Maddox.
Listen for Poetry Moment with Marjorie Maddox, next Monday during Morning Edition and All Things Considered on WPSU. After May 11, Poetry Moment will take its annual haitus for the summer. You can view more episodes at wpsu.org/poetrymoment.
Our theme music is by Eric Ian Farmer.
