Thank God for the poets
26/06/15 05:21
When I was in high school and college, I tried a few times to write poetry. I think I lacked the patience to keep working with words. I don’t know how poets do it, but I suspect that poems rarely come all at once in sudden bursts of creativity. Rather, I suspect that the process is a long struggle with words being changed and replaced over and over again until the rhythm and the mood and the pattern come out just right.
I have never been a poet.
In fact, I didn’t read much poetry until I entered the sixth decade of my life. I used to think that I didn’t have time for poetry. I read lots of nonfiction, mostly related to my vocation, and a bit of fiction for recreation. I would occasionally come across a poem in The New Yorker or Atlantic and enjoy it briefly, but I thought of it as bit of a waste of time.
I now know I was very wrong in that opinion.
A marvelous parishioner, Barbara Gunderson, challenged me to read more poetry. She asked me to report on what poems I had been reading when I visited her. I bought a few volumes of poetry and started to look for poems that I though she might find especially meaningful. I made it a practice to have a poem or two to read to her on each visit. A visit to Barbara was always a production. Even when she was in the nursing home, I had to call ahead so that she could be ready for my visit. She would enlist the help of the attendants in the home to get her wig adjusted perfectly and be ready for the visit. She was always gracious and charming even as she lived through the final chapters of her life.
And she got me to read poetry.
It was then that I remembered how the great Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann has for decades referred to the Biblical prophets as poets. The word prophet implies some ability to predict the future. Bruegemann, however, argues that the role of the prophet is not to predict the future, but rather to speak honestly about the present. When Israel strayed from its covenant with God it took poets to call it back to its intended relationship. Sometimes the poets were the only ones with the words to speak truth to power. And Israel has, from the beginning, struggled in its relationship with God, living in covenant, but prone to unfaithfulness, forgetting God’s marvelous works and relying on its own devices and methods.
Fortunately we have the poets’ words to call us back to God. Isaiah and Jeremiah, Micah and the others all understand the power of carefully chosen words. Their words are so powerful that they continue to speak truth despite multiple translations from their original languages.
These days I make room for poetry in my life every day. Currently, I’ve been returning to Emily Dickinson, a poet whose depth escaped me on first reading. A few months ago I was reading Maya Angelou each day. I read slowly, just a few poems each day so that the words can sink in and be processed. I memorize brief phrases or sections so that I can return to them throughout the day.
Angelou’s poetry was surprising in many ways. I expected to hear some words of anger and resentment from a clear voice of an African American who chronicled the Civil Rights movement in our country. And there is anger and power in her poems. I did not expect to find as much humor and joy as are present in her words. Who would have though that a woman recognized as a spokesperson for black power and women’s rights would have a white man laughing out loud as he read her words? It was good for me to read.
So I returned to a few of Angelou’s poems as I seek to bring some understanding to the senselessness of the murderous white racist attack on the pastor and people of Mother Emmanuel Church in Columbia, South Carolina. And a couple of the poems from Angelou’s “Just Before the World Ends” seemed appropriate. “To a Freedom Fighter” and “No no no no” stirred my emotions once again.
But it was a very different poet who has given me the inspiration to renew my work in the face of this depression-causing turn of events. Mary Oliver’s “Landscape” provides a different kind of depth:
Isn't it plain the sheets of moss, except that
they have no tongues, could lecture
all day if they wanted about
spiritual patience? Isn't it clear
the black oaks along the path are standing
as though they were the most fragile of flowers?
Every morning I walk like this around
the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart
ever close, I am as good as dead.
Every morning, so far, I'm alive. And now
the crows break off from the rest of the darkness
and burst up into the sky—as though
all night they had thought of what they would like
their lives to be, and imagined
their strong, thick wings.
It seems like a particular form of brilliance for the crows to be chosen as the vehicles of grace. We, too, get ourselves entangled in darkness. We find it hard to remember what dawn feels like. But the darkness doesn’t define us. Like the strong wings of the crows that separate them from the darkness and carry them into the light of day, our spirits aren’t destined to dwell in depression. Yes there is sadness in this world. Yes there is unspeakable tragedy. Yes there is genuine evil. But these are not our essence. These do not finally define the human spirit. We are called to the light of forgiveness and the brilliance of justice. We are called to love without reservation a world that seems at times to be loveless.
I thank God for the poets who remind me that there is more to this world than first appears.
I have never been a poet.
In fact, I didn’t read much poetry until I entered the sixth decade of my life. I used to think that I didn’t have time for poetry. I read lots of nonfiction, mostly related to my vocation, and a bit of fiction for recreation. I would occasionally come across a poem in The New Yorker or Atlantic and enjoy it briefly, but I thought of it as bit of a waste of time.
I now know I was very wrong in that opinion.
A marvelous parishioner, Barbara Gunderson, challenged me to read more poetry. She asked me to report on what poems I had been reading when I visited her. I bought a few volumes of poetry and started to look for poems that I though she might find especially meaningful. I made it a practice to have a poem or two to read to her on each visit. A visit to Barbara was always a production. Even when she was in the nursing home, I had to call ahead so that she could be ready for my visit. She would enlist the help of the attendants in the home to get her wig adjusted perfectly and be ready for the visit. She was always gracious and charming even as she lived through the final chapters of her life.
And she got me to read poetry.
It was then that I remembered how the great Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann has for decades referred to the Biblical prophets as poets. The word prophet implies some ability to predict the future. Bruegemann, however, argues that the role of the prophet is not to predict the future, but rather to speak honestly about the present. When Israel strayed from its covenant with God it took poets to call it back to its intended relationship. Sometimes the poets were the only ones with the words to speak truth to power. And Israel has, from the beginning, struggled in its relationship with God, living in covenant, but prone to unfaithfulness, forgetting God’s marvelous works and relying on its own devices and methods.
Fortunately we have the poets’ words to call us back to God. Isaiah and Jeremiah, Micah and the others all understand the power of carefully chosen words. Their words are so powerful that they continue to speak truth despite multiple translations from their original languages.
These days I make room for poetry in my life every day. Currently, I’ve been returning to Emily Dickinson, a poet whose depth escaped me on first reading. A few months ago I was reading Maya Angelou each day. I read slowly, just a few poems each day so that the words can sink in and be processed. I memorize brief phrases or sections so that I can return to them throughout the day.
Angelou’s poetry was surprising in many ways. I expected to hear some words of anger and resentment from a clear voice of an African American who chronicled the Civil Rights movement in our country. And there is anger and power in her poems. I did not expect to find as much humor and joy as are present in her words. Who would have though that a woman recognized as a spokesperson for black power and women’s rights would have a white man laughing out loud as he read her words? It was good for me to read.
So I returned to a few of Angelou’s poems as I seek to bring some understanding to the senselessness of the murderous white racist attack on the pastor and people of Mother Emmanuel Church in Columbia, South Carolina. And a couple of the poems from Angelou’s “Just Before the World Ends” seemed appropriate. “To a Freedom Fighter” and “No no no no” stirred my emotions once again.
But it was a very different poet who has given me the inspiration to renew my work in the face of this depression-causing turn of events. Mary Oliver’s “Landscape” provides a different kind of depth:
Isn't it plain the sheets of moss, except that
they have no tongues, could lecture
all day if they wanted about
spiritual patience? Isn't it clear
the black oaks along the path are standing
as though they were the most fragile of flowers?
Every morning I walk like this around
the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart
ever close, I am as good as dead.
Every morning, so far, I'm alive. And now
the crows break off from the rest of the darkness
and burst up into the sky—as though
all night they had thought of what they would like
their lives to be, and imagined
their strong, thick wings.
It seems like a particular form of brilliance for the crows to be chosen as the vehicles of grace. We, too, get ourselves entangled in darkness. We find it hard to remember what dawn feels like. But the darkness doesn’t define us. Like the strong wings of the crows that separate them from the darkness and carry them into the light of day, our spirits aren’t destined to dwell in depression. Yes there is sadness in this world. Yes there is unspeakable tragedy. Yes there is genuine evil. But these are not our essence. These do not finally define the human spirit. We are called to the light of forgiveness and the brilliance of justice. We are called to love without reservation a world that seems at times to be loveless.
I thank God for the poets who remind me that there is more to this world than first appears.