Correction: Our email this morning incorrectly attributed this week's What Sparks Poetry essay to Martha Rhodes.  Our essayist this week is Martha Collins.  We offer our sincerest apologies to both poets. We have also corrected the translation credit.
What Sparks Poetry is a serialized feature that explores experiences and ideas that spark the writing of new poems. In our third series, The Poems of Others II, twenty-four poets pay homage to the poems that led them to write. Each Monday's delivery brings you the poem and an excerpt from the essay. 
Attributed to King David
The heavens declare the glory of God;
and the firmament sheweth his handywork.
Day unto day uttereth speech,
and night unto night sheweth knowledge.
There is no speech nor language,
where their voice is not heard.
Their line is gone out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.
In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun,
which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race.
His going forth is from the end of the heaven,
and his circuit unto the ends of it:
and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.

The law of the Lord is perfect,
converting the soul:
the testimony of the Lord is sure,
making wise the simple.
The statutes of the Lord are right,
rejoicing the heart:
the commandment of the Lord is pure,
enlightening the eyes.
The fear of the Lord is clean,
enduring for ever:
the judgments of the Lord are true
and righteous altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold,
yea, than much fine gold:
sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.
Moreover by them is thy servant warned:
and in keeping of them there is great reward.

Who can understand his errors?
cleanse thou me from secret faults.
Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins;
let them not have dominion over me:
then shall I be upright,
and I shall be innocent from the great transgression.

Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart,
be acceptable in thy sight,
O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer.
from the book THE KING JAMES BIBLE 
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Image of the title page to the King James Version of the Bible, published in 1611
What Sparks Poetry:
Martha Collins on Psalm 19

"One night when I was nine years old, when the stars and moon were shining brightly, my mother took me to the window and read the first verses of the 19th Psalm to me. That was a long time ago, so the version I heard was the King James, which is still....the translation I like to read. I was, as we would say now, blown away. I had heard and loved music all my short life, but I had never heard anything as beautiful as that Psalm."
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Black-and-white head shots of Dodie Bellamy
"Mutual Need and Equal Risk"

In the light of a new book, Dodie Bellamy Is on Our Mind, Nicole Rudick revisits Bellamy's poetry and prose. "Bellamy’s bibliography is slippery, in part because the notion of categories, of genre, is antithetical to her body of work....'Sometimes I feel like a role model without a role,' she has said. 'To me, being queer means doing without the false solace of categories.'"
 
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