Poetry Plunge ~ Discipline and Dessert

I'm here to say that I have not neglected the Poetry Plunge that that I started in early July. Am I taking a long time to get going? That's a question of perspective. During a week where I sat glued to my TV marveling at the Olympic sprinters, I'm also remembering the beauty of slowing down by reading poetry.

Take a moment to consider what poetry teaches us:

For me, poetry is a practice that is helping me begin to slow down and become more attentive. Learning to read a poem carefully trains us to pay extraordinary attention to the sounds and images of language that we might easily overlook in our haste. It is not surprising, given the value that our culture places on speed and efficiency, that poetry is not a particularly popular art-form these days; poetry books for instance are very rarely bestsellers. Poems offer us an invitation to abide with their words. (In Defense of Poetry, C. Christian Smith)

Rather than be frustrated by how I don't "get" poetry in the first reading, I'm slowly learning that it's opaqueness is drawing me in, trying to get me to crack the code. This happened as I read this one by George Herbert.


Prayer, the Church's banquet, Angel's age,
        God's breath in man returning to his birth,
        The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
    The Christian plummet sounding heav'n and earth;

    Engine against th' Almighty, sinner's tower,
        Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
        The six days world-transposing in an hour,
    A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;

    Softnesse, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,
        Exalted Manna, gladness of the best,
    Heaven in ordinary, man well dressed,
        The milky way, the bird of Paradise,

        Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul's blood,
        The land of spices, something understood.

At first glance, I quickly skip over "angel's age," but land on "the soul in paraphrase." Those four words are so lovely, I just stop and roll them over my tongue, at the same time realizing I don't even know what is the subject of the poem. Ah - prayer! Now I'm hooked. What a perfect description of prayer. Tell me more!

"Heart in pilgrimage." Yes. "Engine against th' Almighty." Hmm. This makes me scratch my head. Which I am now discovering is a good thing. S-l-o-w-l-y I work it out... prayer is where I also get angry and impatient with God, questioning and doubting and venting, an "engine" fighting against Him, but also engaging Him, much like the "reversed thunder" in the next line. On and on it goes...

George Herbert lived from 1593-1633, not even seeing his 40th birthday as he died of tuberculosis. He was an Anglican priest who was the rector at a little parish called Fugglestone St Peter (how priceless is that?). Richard Baxter, a well-known Puritan pastor, said of him, "Herbert speaks to God like one that really believeth a God, and whose business in the world is most with God. Heart-work and heaven-work make up his books." I would want such things said of me.

More importantly, I can say that this poem was not just a nice diversion. It changed me. I learned something as I was challenged to think about prayer in new ways. As Mr. Smith says later in his essay quoted above,

Like a rich and carefully crafted dessert, one must savor a poem in order to enjoy it fully—its images, its context, its sounds. A good poem is hospitable, inviting us to sit for awhile and enter into a conversation. Poetry, however, does not come naturally for us in our times; it is a discipline to which we must commit ourselves. 

Thus I plunge forward, continuing to savor the new flavors and old ones forgotten. Try it yourself. It's worth the effort.

Poetry Plunge - Caedmon's Hymn

Fortunately, we still have one really good bookstore left here in Santa Barbara -- Chaucer's. However, even though it survived the Borders / Barnes & Noble invasion, I'm surprisingly bummed those big box stores didn't make it. Because in my mind, there can never be enough bookstores.

One of my favorite things to do is to aimlessly wander through a bookstore and just browse. I have found many great reads this way over three decades, and there is no way to duplicate that experience online.

So when Borders was closing, I went in one day to scoop up as many deals as I felt I could responsibly afford, and to soak in one last browsing experience there. (And let's be honest, they were offering 70% discounts. I love a bargain.)

As I wandered through the literature section, I landed on an absolute brick of a book: The Norton Anthology of Poetry, Fourth Edition. It's 2 1/4" thick. Immediately, I had a wave of English major memories wash over me... the "Bibles" of English majors are the Norton Anthologies. In fact, I still have my "Nortons" of English Literature, Volumes 1 & 2 from college, tattered, highlighted and full of underlines. 

But funny thing, I never had a Norton Anthology of Poetry. Sure, I took the basic English major survey courses, and did my best to plow through Canterbury Tales, Paradise Lost, and read every play of Shakespeare. I found a poem here and there that I liked -- but really, I think I mostly liked them because I, um, understood them. Sadly, the majority of poems assigned to me went unread.

Because poetry for me is like modern art; I don't really understand what all the fuss is about. I'd much rather read a hearty biography, or something by C.S. Lewis. My favorites in college were novels written by Fitzgerald, Hemingway, James, Dreiser, and of course, Austen. Most poetry leaves me boggled. I'll read a poem now and again and feel quite confidently that a lot of deep, intense things are being said, and that I am not getting any of it. It feels like it's all written in code. But I'm not stupid. The entire process is very humiliating, and I basically avoid it whenever possible.

Yet when I stood in the literature section of the dying Borders that day, something in me drew me toward the honkingly huge poetry book. It might sound crazy, but I feel like I heard this teeny weeny little voice say, Kelly, it's time. Get over it. You're missing out, BIG TIME.

So here I am. I bought that book a year and a half ago, and it's practically been a doorstop, shaming me as it sits, shiny and new and unread. This weekend, I finally cracked open the cover and tiptoed in.

So far, so good. I think this will take me a VERY long time to work through it. But I'm not trying to get a grade, right? I have nothing to prove. I simply want to learn.

After reading through a rather dense introduction on "versification" (nope, not intimidating... OK, I'm lying) I read the first poem: Caedmon's Hymn, which is described as "probably the earliest extant Old English poem, composed sometime between 668 and 680."

After the first perusal, I had that familiar oh-no-what-was-I-thinking feeling. But I pushed through it, and read those handy little notes that are part of the Norton Anthologies. These were SUPER helpful. I read the poem again and... I was blown away. It was gorgeous. But it was so lovely for the same reason I love all good writing -- when I learn about the author and the backstory, I am won over. In other words, when I get some of the context, I see how the art emerged, and it becomes real to me. The story of Caedmon is utterly winsome: a lowly, illiterate herdsman employed by a monastery has a miraculous religious vision and receives the gift of song. (Follow the links I've given -- it's a good story.)

I'd give anything to know the melody that went with this early worship song. And repeating any of the lines from it won't do the poem justice. But there are a couple of phrases that are enchanting:

We must praise the heaven-kingdom's Guardian... and his mind-plans
He first created for men's sons, heaven as a roof...

I love these somewhat clunky but awe-inspiring images. And as I read the notes I see that the "poetry" is more obvious in the original Middle English, where lines start with the same sounds, creating an alliterative rhythm, thus fulfilling the opening lines of the Norton introduction:

A poem is a composition written for performance by the human voice... What a poem says or means is the result of how it is said, a fact that poets are often at pains to emphasize.

Whew. I still have a LOT to learn. But I am very intrigued.