I love poetry. I don’t read it often enough.
Most of my reading is factual stuff. I want to know more about the origins of a movement. The mysteries of the universe. How plants communicate.
So I skim. Some call it speed-reading, but in fact, it’s mostly training my eyes to look for relevant keywords.
I can’t do that with poetry. Poetry, really, needs to be read aloud. Because reading aloud forces me to slow down, to savour the sounds of each word, to measure the musical rhythm of vowels and consonants, of rests and highlights….
I read aloud, so that I can feel the poet’s message resonating from my vocal cords into both head and belly.
Because poetry is not about facts, or arguments, or even about story. It’s about feelings. Poets try to evoke feelings with the fewest possible words. Which means that mental images get compressed, juxtaposed, overlapped. As they mesh, they create new connections, new images, new insights.
Which makes no sense at all to a literal mind.
How can Dylan Thomas have been “young and green under the apple trees”?
Where is Matthew Arnold’s “darkling plain…where ignorant armies clash by night”?
How does William Blake
“See a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour”
If you don’t get it, you don’t get it.
Some people think they’re writing poetry when they write aboutemotions. They think that words like frustration, or fear, or shock, will evoke those feelings in the reader. They don’t. Generalizations only evoke generalized responses.
Robert Frost wrote about life. But he used concrete details: “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood…”
Mary Oliver wrote about how swimming re-connected her to the origins of all mammals, who once came out of the ocean, and who were all born in the re-created ocean of a womb.
“Stroke by stroke my body remembers that life
and cries for the lost parts of itself --
fins, gills opening like flowers into the flesh --
my legs wanting to lock and become one muscle.
I swear I know
just what the blue-gray scales shingling the rest of me
would feel like!”
Not one abstract word. Not one generalization.
I find myself still in awe of Gerard Manley Hopkins, a Roman Catholic priest who put his faith into metaphors 150 years ago. To him, the whole world was
…charged with the glory of God,
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil…
And then, even while lamenting England’s industrial coal smogs, he ended with a note of hope:
Morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs –
because the Holy Ghost over the bent world broods,
with warm breast and with -- ah! -- bright wings.
Many of the biblical prophets chose a poetic form for expressing God’s intentions. Isaiah anticipated the Jewish return from exile:
“The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,
The desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus…”
Perhaps poets are still our prophets. If we’re willing to hear them.
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Copyright © 2017 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups, and links from other blogs, welcomed; all other rights reserved.
To comment on this column, write jimt@quixotic.ca
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YOUR TURN
The sight of a woman leading a pair of geese and their little goslings across a busy highway certainly warmed my heart… and apparently yours too.
From Nenke Jongkind: “Great story and parable. Thank you.”
From Hanny Kooyman: “Trust! Thank you! This writing made my day.”
From Margaret Mills: “Loved your parable re trust!”
And from Frieda Hogg: “Thanks for your wild goose parable and your paraphrase ofpsalm 104; both were beautiful, right on! Eyes got a bit teary.”
Margaret McLachlan asked an interesting question: “Jim, do you believe in reincarnation?”
In the traditional sense of reincarnation, probably not. That is, I don’t believe that my soul will be reincarnated as an individual goose, say, or as another human. But that the elements of my body will eventually be used in some other form of life, yes, certainly. Whether those elements still retain some distant memory of their once-upon-a-time part of me, I don’t know – some researchers claim that the molecules of water have memory, so why not my carbon compounds?
Ray Shaver took my parable a little deeper: “Jim, while reading your parable article centered on trust I was thinking about the concept that as the top goes, so goes the rest of the organization. My thoughts applied both your parable and the concept to the U.S. White House and the current president of the United States. What does it say about the present political and social environment, and the future that it affects?”
Bob Rollwagen wondered, “What comes first, trust or faith? Or are they the same thing? One has faith that he/she will awake tomorrow. When you go to sleep, you trust you will awake because you have no reason to doubt. They can go together. I trust my knowledge and therefore I have faith in what will be the outcome. When I cannot trust the news provider, I lose faith in public broadcasters and have to fall back my faith in common sense provided by education I can trust.
“When I witness reports of people who trust the current U.S. president and have faith he will do the right thing for them, I have to wonder whether trust or faith are the right words. [JT: Maybe blind faith?]
“But I can understand that they are words a few people use to keep a lot of people in their place. Ontario is currently watching a senior political party do just, that using hate as the policy.”
Larry Smith took up Dick Best’s challenge, in last week’s letters, to become a blood donor in his place: “You may add me to your list of recent blood donors. With the Red Cross situation, I stopped after 55 donations. At retirement, I thought about donating again but understood that ‘older people’ could no longer donate. I read a few months ago that all people are welcome to go through a qualification process. Now in my 75thyear, my last donation was welcomed! I’m due for another one close to Christmas and looking forward to it.”
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PSALM PARAPHRASES
On the news, a woman driven from her home by the lava spouting high in the air from Kilauea volcano in Hawaii said, “It shows me the power of God.” That’s also the view of God offered by Psalm 29 in its biblical version.
My first paraphrase of Psalm 29 played into that view. But I no longer see God as the instigator of natural disasters. Yet I have to recognize that crises and disasters – volcanoes, floods, storms – that shatter the stability of our ordered lives are also often the means of moving to a new awareness.
So I’ve modified the earlier version, to this:
1 Don't hang your hopes on human capabilities.
2 Science and technology, wealth and popularity -- these will all pass away.
3 Fame and fortune will not save you when disaster strikes. The winds whirl in; wild waters tear away your shores.
4 Houses collapse like cards; corporations crumble; assets become worthless.
5 In the storms of life, mighty empires are uprooted.
6 You stand as naked and helpless as the day you were born. Your possessions, your wealth, your status are useless to you.
7 There is just you and God.
8 You tremble like a twig in a tempest.
9 All that you depended upon is stripped away, like the last leaves from autumn trees.
10 Faced with your own frailty, you may sink into despair. Nothing can save you -- except the comforting presence of God. God is always there, supporting you as water supports a fish.
11 God’s all-encompassing compassion is greater than any human crisis. Only God can sustain you through the storm, and carry you to the calm on the other side.
For paraphrases of mostof the psalms used by the Revised Common Lectionary, you can order my book Everyday Psalmsfrom Wood Lake Publishing, info@woodlake.com.
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TECHNICAL STUFF
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I write a second column each Sunday called Sharp Edges, which tends to be somewhat more cutting about social and justice issues. To sign up for Sharp Edges, write to me directly, jimt@quixotic.ca, or send a note to sharpedges-subscribe@lists.quixotic.ca
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PROMOTION STUFF
To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols.
Ralph Milton ’s latest project is called “Sing Hallelujah” -- the world’s first video hymnal. It consists of 100 popular hymns, both new and old, on five DVDs that can be played using a standard DVD player and TV screen, for use in congregations who lack skilled musicians to play piano or organ. More details at wwwDOTsinghallelujahDOTca
Ralph’s HymnSight webpage is still up, http://wwwDOThymnsightDOTca, with a vast gallery of photos you can use to enhance the appearance of the visual images you project for liturgical use (prayers, responses, hymn verses, etc.)
Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,”an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. <http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca>
I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom
Alva Wood’s satiric stories about incompetent bureaucrats and prejudiced attitudes in a small town -- not particularly religious, but fun; alvawoodATgmailDOTcom to get onto her mailing list.
Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony”-- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’sreaders. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom or twatsonATsentexDOTnet