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.

1. The State Of World Class Poetry (And Religious Verse) Today
2. 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.

NaPoWriMo in honor of the Banana Boys:

Have we lost all sense
When one can be suspended
For being silly

And running around
As a piece of yellow fruit
Chased by a monkey?

Oh the strange lines that emerge as I attempt to get something written every day.

The job of The Poet
Is to take the tarnished,
Copper kettle
From the upper shelf,
Add tepid water and
Apply his passionate heat,
Cause temperatures to rise
Create conversions of one
Substance to another
Where the ordinary becomes
The
Extraordinary

Though the days have passed with little said here, much writing has been accomplished amid the myriad of state testing for my dear (after today I use that term loosely) fifth graders. I am still here with a beating heart, still meandering and visiting other NaPoWriMo participants.

Springs Arrival in North Georgia

Springtime has arrived
In the midst of April with
Winter’s icy blast

I was going through my library this past weekend and I cam across a collection of daily meditations of Thomas Merton’s writings. The quote for April 13 was as follows:

If we take our vulnerable shell to be our true identity, if we think our mask is our true face, we will protect it with fabrications even at the cost of violating our own truth.
-Raids on the Unspeakable

Which then led to this:

Do I know who I am?
Or am I a victim of my own
mistaken identity?

Is it the physical only
that offers each person
his or her a unique distinctiveness?
But the soul, the filling
inside the shell which
spills out as light into darkness or

darkness attempting to
engulf the light, yes
the soul can be your identity.

Can it be?
Is that that the case
in which you can overcome

your mistaken identity.

(applies very nicely to writing as well)

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. Thomas Merton, ‘No Man Is an Island’

Well, this post actually includes days three through 12 as well. I have been writing an average of fifteen to twenty lines (or more) each day though it has only culminated in six and a half poems. Does it still qualify for NaPoWriMo? Sure why not…I am still writing each day!

I am unsure whether I will be posting any of these pieces at this point. I’ve noticed that as I have made daily writing a priority (something that hasn’t happened since my college days), that I have begun to wander into topics of a more personal nature. I have material coming from places within that I’ve not visited in many years. This process has led to some interesting discoveries about myself and the nature of writing. Though the subject matter I am writing about is intensely personal (i.e. a parent’s death, marriage, parenting a special needs child, raising an adopted child), the process of putting pen to paper has allowed me to see many of these experiences in a more universal way. It’s not something that I recall being “taught” to me (though it may have), but that is how I view quality poetry: the ability to take something personal and through the course of words move it the theme(s) to the “bigger picture”. Take it from the inner being and lead it to a larger relationship with the world around.

Just some random thoughts…now back to the writing..oh, here’s something from a journal of mine from 21 years ago that I thought I would offer up for Day 13:

Tears flow silently
Down the white-face of a clown
Dreaming of dying

culmination anima

Red leaves of ancient Oaks
Flutter restlessly in autmnul breezes
As the erubescent sun
Reaches with florid arms
To embrace and kiss
The evening Star

Feel free to comment and leave a trackback to your NaPoWriMo if you wish and I will add your link to this post. …and away we go….

Day one of NaPoWriMo has arrived and with it a piece that is an attempt, slight though it may be, of poetry written in prose form. I’m not certain where it will lead (if anywhere) or what I may do with the punctuation, but here is my offering to the first day of NaPoWriMo…

Street of Man

Ethereal scents of wine mixed with sweat drift through thick heated air down the blue-collar street full of no-name bars, where the factory men go each evening to have their needs met.

It has been said that on this street, on this night, whatever it is you need, or believe yourself to need, can be found behind any one of these rusting, scarred, doors which hold within an elixir to assist in removing the layers of troubles life has handed out to unsuspecting souls.

This street used to be clean, spotless, without blemish on the outside. Families lived their quiet lives above the storefronts that housed various businesses catering to the middle class of the town.

Now lined with neon crosses of storefront churches offering salvation to the sinner hanging out in the porn shop next door.

Feel free to comment and leave a trackback to your NaPoWriMo if you wish and I will add your link to this post. …and away we go….

Billy the Blogging Poet will be opening up nominations for this years Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere on April 1, 2008!

Stop by his place for the rules and a list of past winners and sundry bits of information related to the high office in the blogosphere.

P.S. Billy also has a post highlighting various events taking place during National Poetry Month (which is in April lest you forget).

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, The Virtuous Republic, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Right Truth, Adam’s Blog, Leaning Straight Up, Big Dog’s Weblog, Cao’s Blog, Conservative Cat, Adeline and Hazel, D equals S, third world county, Woman Honor Thyself, DragonLady’s World, The World According to Carl, Pirate’s Cove, Blue Star Chronicles, The Pink Flamingo, A Newt One, Tilting At Windmill Farms, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.