My school of poetry is what I call “hortatory poetry”; that is, poetry that exhorts. I’m the first to admit, my poems are didactic, that is, indicative. They indicate, point to, a way to see life through the lens of spirituality.
Sure, I’ll have coffee with an Imagist or sit down and chat with a Modernist and share concerns with an Existentialist, but my goal is to be explicit not impressionistic. I want to manifest a belief in a life-giving transcendence.
This sort of poetry is akin to preaching but is not preachy. Both poetry and good homiletics start in prayer; that is “a long loving look at the real”.[1] A poem and a homily both begin with a reflection on the reality of the present moment; both my subjective reality and what is going on beyond myself. They start with a going in and express themselves in an outward indication that, I hope, is a gift.
The notion of self-gift is the heart of my personal theology. God goes out of Self in an act of love. This self-gift is manifested in creation. Creation has built into it at its core this self-giving love. All creation is formed to give of itself, and it is in that giving that we creatures find our truest purpose. For Christians the ultimate manifestation of this self-giving love is Jesus Christ, the beloved of God. Christ shows this same self-giving love in his life on earth.[2]
Though he was in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Philippians 2:6-8
The religious poet recognizes God is the source of all creativity; because of the self-gift of God we are able to give of ourselves. The manifestation of this gift is the poem; for the iconographer it would be the icon, for the composer it would be the music, for a craftsman the work of his hands.
Entertain and Enlighten
Aristotle said that the function of art is to both entertain and enlighten. Poetry must touch the emotions. A poem touches that human center where we are moved to be mad, sad, glad, afraid, etc. If the poem hasn’t succeeded to move us it hasn’t succeeded as entertainment. Besides being entertaining, the poem must also enlighten; shine a light on our common humanity to reveal something about our nature and purpose. A poem helps us to see ourselves more fully and identify with one another; another way of saying that is a poem helps us feel compassion for one another.
Poets take their inner experience and share it with others. Religious poetry is not just a reflection of the individual’s personal inner life, not just a solipsistic self-reflection, a religious poem is called to reflect a shared reality.
Poetry with a spiritual sensibility is a community event. It conveys to the listener or reader some meaning that will resonate with her or his own experience of the transcendent. The work of a religious poet is to capture the religious experience, to create an icon of words that serve as a window to the transcendent. If the audience has no experience of the transcendent than the poem may at least point to the window. It will always attempt to elicit some spark in our spiritual wiring.
Preaching and Poetry
I have found preaching and poetry to be the same work. I let my experience of life and scripture sink in and then find the words to capture the experience and give it some meaning. Both require precision of language and evocative imagery. What is different is the structure. Poetry follows more disciplined patterns with a greater economy of language than the homily. Like preaching, poetry can enlighten the human experience by giving meaning to our experience.
Religion helps us make sense of our experiences, gives us some reason for why things happen. We experience good and evil in our lives and religion gives us a framework in which we can interpret those experiences. It tells us how to think about things. Poetry aids this meaning making function, that is, a poem gives us a picture to look at that we can see in a variety of ways.
Another similarity between preaching and poetry is that both can lift a prophetic voice. Poetry can provide an elegant way to experience a tough truth. God called the prophets of the Bible to be truth tellers, the town criers calling out injustice. This is not an enviable task because you could wind up at the bottom of a well like Jeremiah.[3] Poetry has served a prophetic function since at least the time of Homer, a way to couch the hard truth in beauty so the challenge doesn’t come across as a nagging mother telling us to eat our vegetables.
Truth, Beauty and Goodness
Another parallel between poetry and preaching; both are concerned with the classical trinity of truth, beauty and goodness. Poetry and preaching both are concerned with the truth of the human existence and giving it expression. The poet and the preacher must both have the ability to look unblinkingly at what is really in front of them.
Paying attention is at the heart of both poetry and prayer. The theologian and the poet both pay attention to what is and then try to describe it in metaphorical language. The theologians attend to God. The poet pays attention to everything.
When you look deeply at something, when you contemplate something, when you are aware of something’s fullness, it’s meaning, its essence, so that you can describe it then you are doing the work of both the contemplative and the poet.
When reality is hard, it makes us weary. As T.S. Eliot said, “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”[4]Poetry offers more than an escape from a hard reality. It offers hope. As we see things in new ways, we find new ways through problems. As we experience beauty we are emboldened to seek the source of beauty. When we discover that spring of beauty we find a waterfall of grace, God splashing us and reminds us with Dostoevsky, “the world will be saved by beauty.”[5]
The beauty of both poetry and a good homily come from the language, meter, rhythm, rhyme. Choosing the exact right word and using it like a sword to pierce to the heart of the matter. There’s no place for patter when talking about things that really matter.
Poets and preachers want what is good. Both have a moral vision, a sense of justice. Aristotle, in his Poetics, considers the poet as an agent of goodness. The task is to imagine and portray the moral essence of human experience. The imagination of the poet ranges to what could be and illumines a vision of how we can treat each other to live in right relationship. The poet presents a work of art that allows the listener to imagine moral consequences of attitudes and actions. When the poet evokes pain or pity, he evokes catharsis that guides the audience to understanding of virtue.
So, the poet not only entertains but also weaves a moral tapestry that presents ideals of justice and wisdom. Poets inspire their hearers to reflect on their own aspirations and actions to motivate them to pursue the good life, which Aristotle believes to be humankind’s highest goal. In Aristotle’s worldview, the poet is both artist and philosopher, actively helping to form a good society by the transformational, ethical power of their craft.
I started with writing about prayer and my aspirations for poetry. I better end with a prayer if I hope to achieve what I’ve written.
Creator God,
Your universe is a poem unfolding,
I envy your talent.
Please help me to create poems that both
tell a story and evoke a mood,
light the fuse on a feeling and
paint an impression.
Deliver me from literalism.
May my art serve your beauty
and your Spirit always inspire me. Amen.
[1] Phrased coined by Walter J. Burghart, Jesuit priest and author of books on preaching and spirituality.
[2] I am indebted to George F.R. Ellis, PhD and Nancy Murphy whose “On The Moral Nature of the Universe: Theology, Cosmology and Ethics” Augusta Fortress Press, Minneapolis, MN, 1996.
[3] Jeremiah 38:6
[4] T.S. Eliot – Four Quartets
[5] Fodor Dostoevsky, “The Idiot.”