THE CONSOLATIONS--AND ODD CONTEXTS--OF POETRY

As related in his gripping true-life tale in the New York Times Magazine, the author, Jon Mooallem, was faced with an episode of not-knowing-what-to-say that makes my experiences of that uncomfortable phenomenon seem trivial. (The following slight hint of a spoiler will not detract from your enjoyment of the yarn.) He was pretty sure that he had to keep talking in order to keep his friend alive. And talking… and talking… for almost two hours, awaiting a rescue that was anything but certain. But what to say? After exhausting his store of platitudes—What to say?

He said poetry. Mooallem reports his gratitude to two college professors who made him memorize poetry. And so, there on the forest floor, he recited poems to his friend. Nature poems, comic poems, mystical poems. Love poems! Elizabeth Bishop, WH Auden, Robert Frost, AR Ammons, Richard Wilbur. “For the most part,” he says, “I trafficked in hits.” 

(With the author, I’m grateful that he could recall his poetic “hits," but it also caused me a bit of mild regret. I, too, had teachers who encouraged the memorization of poetry; but if I were to find myself in a similar situation, I could maybe muster three or four, with a few snippets thrown in. And I read poetry every day.)

Mooallem’s account reminded me of another nearly-doomed adventure: The 1907 Shackleton Antarctic Expedition. As the Endurance was being crushed in the ice, the crew rescued what they could from their sinking ship and scrambled on to an ice floe—adrift in the middle of the Weddell Sea—where, after checking to see that all had survived, and getting situated on their floating home, Shackleton read poetry to them. Not memorized, but read from one of the many volumes rescued from the library of the sinking ship.

The sinking of the Endurance

Priorities! If the reader is moved to exclaim, “What?! Poetry?! There on the ice floe?!,” it is well to recall that the expedition didn’t lose a man in the three-year ordeal, of which the sinking of the Endurance was just the beginning. Historians give the credit to the leadership of the poetry-loving Shackleton.*

The late U.S. Poet Laureate Donald Hall said, “Poetry is the language used at its best.” Although, for many, “poetry” means a breezy recitation of facile, sing-songy rhymes—either silly or maudlin—it is actually the deepest language of life, death, love, purpose, hope, and mystery. The reason that the Twenty-Third Psalm is one of the most beloved passages of scripture (and literature) for the last three thousand years is not because it’s beautiful (which it is), not because it speaks the truth about life and death (which it does), but because it’s poetry--the language used at its best—and most truthful. (I bemoan the literalism of those of the “Evangelical” church who limit the Bible by not allowing much of it to be the poetry that it is.) Author Mooallem could have said to his friend, “Hang in there, man.” Ernest Shackleton could have said, “Buck up, boys!” The Psalmist could have written, “Hey—everything’s going to be all right.” But they didn’t. They used poetry.

There are different versions of poetry. As a pastor, I sometimes hear—from an elderly parishioner whose eyesight is dimming—“I’m glad I know that hymn by memory.” One of the members I visit in the parish I’m serving in retirement is deeply into Alzheimer’s—often expressing confusion or even belligerence. I asked her daughter if she could suggest ways I might try to reach her mom. “She likes hymns,” she said. On my next visit, I didn’t say too much, but I sang “Beautiful Savior.” My elderly friend quieted down, her eyes calmed, and her lips were moving silently with the words.

I really do regret not memorizing more poetry, but—considering these variations—I think I could actually keep a friend awake for two hours with a combination of folk songs and old hymns. By which time, no doubt, he’d be very happy to see the rescue crew coming through the trees.

______________________________

*One of the last books I read which merits the saying, "I couldn't put it down," is Roland Huntford's "Shackleton."

And, on the pure fun of reading poetry out loud: "Cargoes of Diamonds, Emeralds, and... Snipping Snoppers?"

On Discovering That My Room Divider Was Unhooked

I have one of those beaded bamboo curtains

hanging in the doorless doorway

to my small study.

“Hanging,” I say, except that , for months, I’ve had it
hooked back on each side

so as not to make that click-clack every time I come in.

Just now I approached to find it

unhooked, vertical, hanging—swaying

with an almost imperceptible motion.

It was the vertical—and that slight, breeze-like sway—

that caused me to pause

before walking through it.

“Violet’s been here,” I thought.

It’s as though she had discovered the door
to Lewis’ Wardrobe

and might be somewhere inside.

I pushed through the beads. CLICK-CLACK,

Click-Clack, click clack.

click.

Isn’t that why I installed it in the first place?

To keep the world outside,

And to let Violet, and me, into Narnia?

Click-Clack.

THREE LITTLE POEMS INSPIRED (ANEW) BY SAM AND VIOLET

Writers more profound and talented than I have experienced the mystery of the muse; the feeling one has—when reading over a song or poem or story—of pondering, “Now, where did that come from…” The germ of an idea, the flash of a thought—these may be no mystery, but the spirit that inhabits what began as a skeleton of words: Where did that come from? I believe in the concept of the muse—even if it’s just the hidden firing of brain synapses. But might it be more ephemeral than that? These bits of verse, below (with the exception of the last, which was penned on Sam’s first day), were written before Sam and Violet were born. Yet they serve as a kind of narration for their lives with us today! I like to think that they were my (prophetic? proleptic?) poetic muses! (Along with Anna’s violin!)

Violet

1) A few weeks ago, as we were preparing to leave the family cabin and head for home, six-year-old Violet said, “I’m going to go down and say good-by to the creek.”  Her sweet-but-determined resolve to linger a bit took me back a few years, to the time when Violet’s Auntie Anna—then about thirteen—and I had spent a week at the cabin—just the two of us and our dog, Sunny—and were packing the car for our departure. I later reflected on the wistfulness that is always part

of leaving:

CABIN CLOSE UP CHECKLIST (1996)

Remove all trash and recyclables from under sink.

Make sure all windows are closed and locked.

Check that fireplace is cold to the touch and swept bare.

Rinse out thermos, but first

take a last cup of coffee and

walk down to the creek where it all began,

where it all begins each time: the valley and the day,

to that flat rock where Tom used to like to hold forth
with a glass of wine.

Go back to the porch, to the piles of suitcases and guitars,

laundry and tattered books—

the open tailgate waiting at the bottom of the stairs.

Visualize the cargo space: a place for everything,

though everything will end up out of place when the dogs
scramble inside in terror of being left behind in paradise.

Before packing it away, ask Anna to take out her violin:

"Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" sounding up the valley
one more time.

Lock gate securely behind you.

2) On a recent eighty-nine degree day, nine-and-a-half-year-old Sam expressed that age-old epiphany: “Hey! When it’s cold, we want it to be hot, and when it’s hot, we want it to be cold!” Here’s how I wrote it for my third-graders, in my teaching days. (Yes, I was once a teacher!)

SEASON DREAMING (1975)

It’s three below January,

I’m wrapped to my eyes

in cotton and goose-down and wool.

I look like a beach ball

about twice my size,

or a pillow that’s stuffed much too full.

And speaking of beach balls –

It seems I recall

a season of summer and fun,

when the ice comes in root beer

in glasses this tall!

And the sand is as warm as the sun.

July in the nineties!

I’m hot as a spark

of the charcoal that glows in the grill.

I hope it gets cooler

tonight when it’s dark,

but I really don’t think that it will.

And speaking of darkness –

It would be so nice

to wake up to winter and snow,

and run in the whiteness

and slide on the ice,

and tell the old wind it can blow!

3) When Sam was one day old, I was already looking forward to the day we would read The Lord of the Rings together. Which we just did!

ON SEEING THE FIRST PICTURES OF SAMUEL

JORGEN FROEHLE (OCTOBER 15, 2007)

It was this boy that I prayed for and the Lord has granted what I asked.

Now I make him over to the Lord….  ~1 Samuel 1:27-28

Samuel, I dedicate you to the Lord.

Your kooky little cap even looks like

one a prophet (or a wizard) would wear.

Though the biblical Sam wasn’t so much

a prophet as he was a wild west sheriff

trying to keep the peace between the mob

and a God who could blow at any minute.

So God made Samuel a maker of kings.

(Like Gandalf lifting up Aragorn’s crown:

Another Holy Book waiting for us!)

Lawmen and wizards and cowboys and kings:

Someday you’ll play all these wonderful things.

     But now, little prophet, your visions must keep

     as mommy and daddy rock Sammy to sleep.

***

Sam today. Maybe my next poem will be
inspired by crayfish!

Violet and Daddy. Down by the creek.

JOHN DONNE, R.S. THOMAS, AND "THE FREEHOLD"

The one who would study the scriptures must have much leisure. ~Sirach 38:24

I sometimes envy the Victorian stereotype of the rector as a “kept man,” pottering in his study, breaking for tea, then attending the parish flower show up at the manor-house. This is an exaggeration of the Church of England's "freehold" system, in which the vicar essentially had ownership rights to his parish, and was, in a way, "lord of all he surveyed." (And now—post-Victorian, thankfully—also “she.”) I have to say that the modern pastor’s job description is more like the line from a (Victorian!) novel about “the man who mounted his horse and rode off in all directions.” Yet I do not want to be disingenuous about (or give up on) the built-in need in this calling for what the Anglican Church refers to as “reflective ministry,” and what the Book of Sirach calls, simply, “leisure:” Time, that is, to study, read, and write. (See introductory line, above.)

We are discovering that, in a humane civilization, all occupations and professions ought to offer a measure of flexibility in the work schedule. (It was, after all, the pre-conversion Scrooge who told Bob Cratchitt, "Be here all the earlier next morning!") And studies show that flex-time even helps the bottom line. So rather than succumbing to the lure of workaholism (an illness), the pastor can model a healthy balance in his or her own life, and support such balance in the lives of members of the parish and the community. Gold, perhaps, has been the most pursued; but time the most valued resource after all.

John  Donne
1572-1631

John Donne, who delivered powerful sermons from the pulpit of St. Paul’s in London from 1621 till his death in 1631, also wrote volume after volume of religious (and love!) poetry during those years. R.S. Thomas, who died in 2000 after forty years as a rural vicar in the Church of Wales and who wrote thirty books of (Nobel-nominated) poetry in that time, said frankly, after he retired, that it was the “Anglican freehold” that allowed him time to write. I trust that the reflective hours in the Rev. Donne’s London townhouse

R.S. Thomas
1913-2000

and Father Thomas’ country parson-
age also resulted in caring ministry,
but the world is grateful to their
parishioners for granting them the time.