Category Archives: Poetry

Poetry potpourri

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Anyone else hear this story on NPR this morning? It discusses the state of poets and poetry in a suffering economy, and includes a link to its Planet Money blog, where readers have contributed original recession haiku. It’s worth a visit!

In addition, I discovered through Mr. Wendell Berry of Kentucky that Mr. Berry has a new short story here, at Threepenny Review. I read it earlier this week and it’s a delight — I found myself laughing out loud in spots. It recounts an episode in the life of young Andy Catlett, a familiar character for any who’ve read any of Berry’s Port William fiction, in which he gains a new glimpse of his mother. I won’t give away any more than that… but in honor of the story, I’m including a link to this Berry poem, “To My Mother,” which begins this way:

I was your rebellious son,
do you remember? Sometimes
I wonder if you do remember,
so complete has your forgiveness been.

So complete has your forgiveness been
I wonder sometimes if it did not
precede my wrong, and I erred,
safe found, within your love,

prepared ahead of me, the way home,
or my bed at night, so that almost
I should forgive you, who perhaps
foresaw the worst that I might do,

and forgave before I could act,
causing me to smile now, looking back…

In praise of border collies

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I’ve grown up with border collies. We’ve owned a total of 5 of them over the years since I was a very young child. My children have caught my enthusiasm, and along with caring for our own dog we’ve enjoyed the imaginative enrichment of Kim Lewis’s beautiful books for children, and David Kennard’s Mist, filmed on the Devon coast and narrated by Derek Jacobi.

For us they’ve been pets, not working dogs, and wonderful companions indeed. But if you’ve ever seen a sheepdog trial, you’ve seen this breed at its stellar best. They’re bred to herd, and they’re happiest when working. This poem by C. Day Lewis is a meaningful reflection on these unique dogs in action, and concludes with a comparison between the work of a border collie and the work of a writer:

Sheepdog Trials in Hyde Park

A shepherd stands at one end of the arena.
Five sheep are unpenned at the other. His dog runs out
In a curve to behind them, fetches them straight to the shepherd,
Then drives the flock round a triangular course
Through a couple of gates and back to his master: two
Must be sorted there from the flock, then all five penned.
Gathering, driving away, shedding and penning
Are the plain words for the miraculous game.

An abstract game. What can the sheepdog make of such
Simplified terrain? — no hills, dales, bogs, walls, tracks,
Only a quarter-mile plain of grass, dumb crowds
Like crowds on hoardings around it, and behind them
Traffic or mounds of lovers and children playing.
Well, the dog is no landscape-fancier: his whole concern
Is with his master’s whistle, and of course
With the flock — sheep are sheep anywhere for him.

The sheep are the chanciest element. Why, for instance,
Go through this gate when there’s on either side of it
No wall or hedge but huge and viable space?
Why not eat the grass instead of being pushed around it?
Like a blob of quicksilver on a tilting board
The flock erratically runs, dithers, breaks up,
Is reassembled: their ruling idea is the dog,
And behind the dog, though they know it not yet, is a shepherd.

The shepherd knows that time is of the essence
But haste calamitous. Between dog and sheep
There is always an ideal distance, a perfect angle;
But these are constantly varying, so the man
Should anticipate each move through the dog, his medium.
The shepherd is the brain behind the dog’s brain,
But his control of dog, like dog’s of sheep,
Is never absolute — that’s the beauty of it.

For beautiful it is. The guided missiles,
The black-and-white angels follow each quirk and jink of
The evasive sheep, play grandmother’s-steps behind them,
Freeze to the ground, or leap to head off a straggler
Almost before it knows that it wants to stray,
As if radar-controlled. But they are not machines –
You can feel them feeling mastery, doubt, chagrin:
Machines don’t frolic when their job is done.

What’s needfully done in the solitude of sheep-runs –
Those rough, real tasks become this stylised game,
A demonstration of intuitive wit
Kept natural by the saving grace of error.
To lift, to fetch, to drive, to shed, to pen
Are acts I recognise, with all they mean
Of shepherding the unruly, for a kind of
Controlled woolgathering is my work too.

Sarah

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This week I read the story of Abraham and Isaac and was confronted with its difficulty again. Sometimes poetry finds a dwelling place in the midst of a tangle, so I’ve looked around for an Abraham and Isaac poem.

I liked this poem from Abraham’s perspective, by Fr. Kilian McDonnell, though it violates the limits of the story by giving Abraham knowledge of Christ’s future sacrifice. This one by Wilfred Owen converts the story into a poem about war.

Madeleine L’Engle’s A Cry Like a Bell includes four poems about the story, one each from the perspectives of Abraham, Isaac, Sarah, and the ram caught in the bushes. I choose the one about Sarah to offer today. Sarah is such an important figure in some episodes, but she’s not included in this one. This poem imagines how she might have felt.

Sarah: before Mount Moriah

Like a small mouse
I am being played with.
Pushed around, sent from home,
passed off as a sister,
free to be the sport of others
(nobody asked me).
Nobody asked if I wanted
to leave home and all my friends
(the cat never asks the mouse).
Would my womb have filled
if we had stayed where we were
instead of following strange promises?
My maid, giving my husband a child for me,
then made mock of me.
So when the angel came
announcing — promising –
a child in my womb long dry
what could I do but laugh?
And then warmth came again, and fullness,
and my child was born,
my laughter, my joy.

…

Are you laughing at my pain
as I watch the child and his father
climb the mountain?
Am I no more than a mouse
to be played with?

I am a woman.
You — father-God –
have yet to learn
what it is to be a mother,

and so, perhaps, have I.
And if you give me back my laughter again,
then, together we can learn
and I will say — oh, I will sing! –
that you have regarded the lowliness
of your handmaiden.

The poem is no longer available online, but you can read it in its entirety in A Cry Like a Bell. Does it project a 20th-century mindset on Sarah? I’m not sure.

What I like:

  • cat and mouse motif
  • she tries to bargain with the Almighty — as many in these stories do
  • the last lines look forward to Mary (”handmaiden”) but without giving Sarah that knowledge
  • hope: she doesn’t despair
  • “and so, perhaps, have I” of the last stanza — both humble and profound.

Before the Throne

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Lately I’ve been struggling with discouragement as a mother. My girls are wonderful, such gifted and beautiful little girls. They (like my husband) challenge me to come out of myself and engage more than I ever would have done on my own.

But some days — like yesterday — I feel totally inadequate. These days are passing by, and I find it so natural to get discouraged and fail to enjoy them. Mainly it’s the repetitiveness; it makes me feel like I’m having no impact. I weary of saying the same things over and over: “Clean up your toys. Hurry up and finish your supper. Make your bed. No, do it right.” Sometimes I feel like I’ve taken up permanent residence in one of those nightmares where I’m screaming, but no sound is coming out. Am I really here — or just a shadow? Is anyone listening? Does what I do or say matter? Or is my life wasted effort?

Then, of course, I learn: yes, I’m heard. They feel my frustration. And that’s the impact I have. Oh goody.

A wise woman would probably say, “This is what motherhood is: training. Repetition is essential.” But I find myself impatient and irritable. It’s the easiest thing in the world to go from that to questions about my spiritual state. Has God really changed my heart? I recall a sermon illustration about how when you jostle a glass, what spills out is what’s inside. What’s inside me? Do I give any evidence of those fruits of the spirit — love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control? Or am I just talk — just the endless yammering of my flesh?

It’s a pointless line of thought. Once you’re a mother, you’re in it for life. I can’t return the gift of motherhood and say the product didn’t fit. I need to find the resources to fight that state of mind and stay fully in the game instead of withdrawing into self-pity and condemnation. One such resource this week is a new cd by Chris Rice called “Peace Like a River.” It’s a collection of 10 hymns, retaining the traditional melodies and very simply performed with piano or guitar. I recommend it; I like every single song.

This hymn was unfamiliar to me, and I’ve been finding it encouraging to meditate on it, especially the second stanza. It’s called “Before the Throne of God Above”:

Before the throne of God above
I have a strong and perfect plea.
A great High Priest whose Name is Love
Who ever lives and pleads for me.
My name is graven on His hands,
My name is written on His heart.
I know that while in heaven He stands
No tongue can bid me thence depart.

When Satan tempts me to despair
And tells me of my guilt within,
Upward I look and see Him there
Who made an end of all my sin.
Because the sinless Savior died
My sinful soul is counted free.
For God the just is satisfied
To look on Him and pardon me.

Behold Him there the risen Lamb,
My perfect spotless righteousness,
The great unchangeable I am,
The King of Glory and of Grace,
One with Himself I cannot die.
My soul is purchased by His blood,
My life is hid with Christ on high,
With Christ my Savior and my God!

–Charitie Lee Smith Bancroft (1863)

Pretty amazing. There’s so much truth and theology packed into three short stanzas. How succinctly and naturally this poet weaves her way through it all.

I’m memorizing it as a roadmap to walk through mentally on days like yesterday — a roadmap through grace, a nourishing dish when I come up empty, a dash of cold water when I’m faint, a breath of cool air in the sauna of my natural mind.

Christmas Memory

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The classical (or neo-classical) approach to homeschooling stresses the importance of memory work during the first stage, the “grammar stage,” of education. Fill those absorbent young minds with lots of good stuff, then teach them to evaluate and write about it in later stages.

But during this Christmas season, I’ve been struck by how much effortless memory work takes place as a matter of course. A few examples:

The opening of Steven Curtis Chapman’s Christmas album, where his adopted daughter Shaohannah recites a passage from Luke 2. My girls, charmed by her young voice and the musical background, now say it along with her. They have the whole Christmas story memorized — out of pure pleasure. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Handel’s Messiah is all Scripture:

Hallelujah! For the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth! And he shall reign forever and ever.

Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, and has redeemed us to God by His blood, to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing. Blessing and honor, glory, and power be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb, forever and ever.

The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible! And we shall be changed…

Christmas carols:

Thou didst leave Thy throne and Thy kingly crown when Thou camest to earth for me
but in Bethlehem’s inn there was found no room for Thy holy nativity.
Oh, come into my heart, Lord Jesus! There is room in my heart for Thee.

Or this one:

Be near me, Lord Jesus, I ask Thee to stay
close by me forever, and love me, I pray.
Bless all the dear children in Thy tender care
and fit us for Heaven to live with Thee there.

Or this one, a verse from “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” Listening to the Amy Grant version on cd a few weeks ago in the car, and my daughters pronounced their verdict: “Wow.” Then this last week, my pastor, my friend Ruth, and the Peanuts in their Christmas special, all confirmed a similar verdict.

Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace, hail the Son of Righteousness
Light and life to all He brings, ris’n with healing in His wings
Christ by highest Heav’n adored
Christ the everlasting Lord
Come, desire of nations, come
Fix in us Thy humble home
Come desire of Nations, come! Fix in us Thy humble home!

Even for an oldling like myself, memorization is almost unavoidable (though not always perfect memorization — I had to go back and edit this post because I spliced together two different verses in my rendition of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing!”). I wonder what sorts of things fill my mind at other times of the year? It begins to seem like the conscious effort isn’t to memorize, but to keep from memorizing the things that can be destructive or contradictory to what I know to be true.

Obituary for a Stranger

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I wrote this poem about a year ago, just before Thanksgiving. It was inspired by the news that a pilot of a small multi-engine aircraft had taken off from the airport where my husband works, and promptly crashed. His business in town was done, and he’d been on his way home for the holiday.

I didn’t know him. Neither did my husband, to whom the man called out a cheery greeting as he breezed through the hangar on his way to take off. But I wrote this the next morning in an effort to lift him out of our impersonal public language for death. Because I wrote it down, I’ll probably always remember this stranger on Thanksgiving, and remember too that for some the holiday season can inaugurate the worst grief and loneliness of the year. It gives a bittersweet edge to my own pleasure and thankfulness — something else to be thankful for, if it brings greater compassion.

Obituary for a Stranger

I woke this morning
to the cheery tenor of the radio voice
stating courteously that a pilot had died.
He moved on to the governor’s visit,
then the weather report.

The dead should only be declared
by those who love them.

To start, he was not “a pilot.”
In those final frantic seconds
less than a minute into the air
plunged into a dark bowl of soup
in a sputtering, unwilling vessel,
surely he was a man.

And though his name is not released,
surely it is known,
surely he is loved:
perhaps husband, perhaps father,
perhaps uncle or brother or cousin.
Surely he is a son whose first outraged cries
brought answering tears of joy from proud parents.

He grasped the complex workings
of engine and physics and weather and weight –
could fly in blind conditions
had bravery to try
and faith to trust the instruments
when sensation deceives.

“We prayed for the person in the crash,” cry my children
clamoring to the stairs for their first glimpse
of Daddy arriving home.
“I’m so glad,” he replies gently. “Because he’s gone to see Jesus now.”

In the wisdom of children, they fall silent.
When all the created masterpiece of a human being
is crushed into eternity
it’s not the chatter of news,
but the voices of those who loved him
that should break the silence.

–Janet Goodrich

America at War

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I discovered this book on the new books shelf in the children’s department at our local library. It’s a collection of poems compiled by Lee Bennett Hopkins and illustrated by Stephen Alcorn. To me, it raises some questions worth considering.

First, some description. The poems are arranged chronologically according to wars from the American Revolution to the Iraq War. They offer a wide range of authors and styles. The illustrations are bold and arresting: a maiden sewing an American flag, pausing to weep; soldiers lying in various death poses; an American eagle, clutching a gun in its talons, and a quill pen dripping blood in its beak.

My response to the book is complex. All of us hate war, and in these pages we find much to affirm that sane and humane response. Stephen Crane’s “War Is Kind,” for instance, offers a scathing comment on the sanitized or propagandistic language sometimes used to talk about it. Whitman’s “Come Up from the Fields, Father” emphasizes this disconnect between noble talk and the pathos of a family’s loss of its only son. “My sweet old et cetera” by e e cummings again exploits the irony of that contrast between spoken ideals, and a speaker lying in the mud, presumably dying.

Of course, the humane “amen” wells up when I read these poems.

At the same time, I question the honesty of Hopkins’ introductory insistence that this book “is not about war. It is about the poetry of war.” There is a fairly limited vision offered here, and a clear agenda against any war on any terms. It seems to me that “the poetry of war” must also include some examples of high-sounding language used unironically. This is part of the picture, isn’t it? (Our own national anthem, for instance.) Hopkins doesn’t trust his young readers as much as I wish he did. Children of all people have not lost their curiosity. In my opinion we can rely on them to question the “official” view of anything.

The perspective permitted in this book oversimplifies in its one-dimensionality. I hate war. Yet for centuries upon centuries, men and women have chosen to offer their lives for ideals they consider to be higher than themselves. Have they all been categorically wrong? Or do there exist ideals worth fighting — perhaps even dying — for? Does it disrespect those who have so offered themselves to consider their sacrifice a waste on any terms? Does our evaluation of war change depending on whether we look at it from the point of view of those who offer themselves willingly, or from the perspective of those who prosecute the campaign from afar? Is there such a thing as a noble motive that remains unsullied?

I think these are worthwhile, maybe necessary, questions to consider in thinking through the subject. I don’t mind asking them myself, but in a book like this I wish the poems had been allowed to. Hopkins offers Wilfred Owen’s words that “all a poet can do is warn. That is why true Poets must be truthful.” Perhaps a more complete range of perspectives would have earned this book the right to quote those words. It’s a beautiful, if limited, book. I admire the daring its editor exemplifies in attempting it. And maybe by putting it into a different category, I can redeem it entirely: this is a book that encourages young readers to dream of a world without war. In that, it can’t fail.