Religion and Poetry: Where’s the Depth?
May 14, 2008 – 11:12 pm by EricIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
NaPoWriMo ate me alive (not to mention a class of fifth graders who know that the school year is ending in a matter of days)! I am finally able to get back to some serious reading and, hopefully, some serious writing as I sift through the many lines written through the month of April. I have been anxious to highlight and link to Allen Taylor of World Class Poetry Blog. He recently (though in “blog time” it’s more like an eternity) wrote two posts here and here on the subject of religious poetry.
After I commented on the first of the two posts, Mr. Taylor responded in the second as follows:
Why don’t religious writers of poetry write with more depth? For one thing, I think that most religious poets do not keep up with the latest trends in poetics. Many of them are still writing trite phrases in iambic pentameter as if mimicking John Donne or William Shakespeare. There is nothing wrong with iambic pentameter, of course, but if you’re going to write that kind of verse, whether religious or not, you need to bring something new to the park bench, which most poets don’t do. Your meter may be traditional, but your subject matter or the way that you present your subjects must be new and unique, and that’s where many religious poets fall short. They’re stuck on “Jesus loves me” and have forgotten that there may be other ways to say it, or to show it, than simply using Biblical language that one can read by picking up a leatherbound KJV.1
He stated quite well the state of most religious poetry (and for that matter most contemporary religious artistic endeavors), however there is still some quality work out there to be found.
I ran across the following piece by Jane Kenyon recently:
Back from the City
After three days and nights of rich food
and late talk in overheated rooms,
of walks between mounds of garbage
and human forms bedded down for the night
under rags, I come back to my dooryard,
to my own wooden step.The last red leaves fall to the ground
and frost has blackened the herbs and asters
that grew beside the porch. The air
is still and cool, and the withered grass
lies flat in the field. A nuthatch spirals
down the tough trunk of the tree.At the Cloisters I indulged in piety
while gazing at a painted lindenwood Pieta -
Mary holding her pierced and desiccated son
across her knees; but when a man stepped close
under the tasseled awning of the hotel,
asking for “a quarter for someone
down on his luck,” I quickly turned my back.Now I hear tiny bits of bark and moss
break off under the bird’s beak and claw,
and fall onto already-fallen leaves.
“Do you know me?” said Christ to his disciple.
“Lord, you know
that I love you.”“Then feed my sheep.”2
In applying Mr. Taylor’s thoughts, Ms. Kenyon has shown success by taking a biblical story, the interaction of Christ and Peter following the resurrection, and brought it into a contemporary setting in a particularly lovely and relevant manner. She alludes to Peter’s denial not by using archaic language and symbols but current relevant images that a contemporary reader can grasp.
So there is hope, there is depth to be found. One place that I have been frequenting of late (and recently subscribed to) is Image Journal. You can visit the main site here and the blog here. I would be interested in others thoughts on these matters. Please feel free to comment and offer your opinion.
Sphere: Related Content- The State Of World Class Poetry (And Religious Verse) Today [↩]
- Kenyon, Jane. “Back from the City.” The Boat of Quiet Hours 1986. Rpt. in Divine Inspiration: The Life of Jesus in World Poetry. Eds. Robert Atwan, George Dardess, Peggy Rosenthal. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. 561. [↩]
