Reading Poetry 6.9.2022

     You don’t need to be a musician to appreciate music. Music appeals to a non-verbal emotive part of our intellect. Music is complex and mathematical, but its beauty transcends its compositional nuance. Just about anyone can sing. To quote Buddy the Elf it’s “just like talking, but your voice moves up and down.” If only it was that easy. Nonetheless, countless people tune in, download, or, for traditionalists, spin music every day. It enriches our lives even when we cannot grasp or explain how it is made. 

    This brings us to today’s topic. You should be reading poetry. “Why”, you may ask? It does not seem rigorous or pious enough to inform preaching, teaching, or the work of ministry in any way.

    Why poetry? Shakespeare. The bard is responsible for more idiomatic English than virtually any other author. The King James Bible, of course, had a great impact, but it is a translation. And what’s more, much of the Bible is poetry. And Shakespeare is not the only notable poet nor is his poetry the only style. I make no secret of the fact that I’m a big Garrison Keillor fan. That man can whip up a limerick in his sleep! Limericks are poems. Earlier in the year when I was preaching from John, I wrote a limerick or some other accompanying poem for the first several weeks of the series. It was an exercise in word choice, which is what Poetry amounts to. 

    Why poetry? Because poetry is about pithy, pregnant phrasing. Poets try to find just the right word to evoke understanding and emotion. Poets labor over synonyms and antonyms, modifiers, and punctuation to create something which resonates with the reader or auditor. Can you think of any other writing, spoken publicly which needs to resonate? 

    You need to read poetry because as a preacher you are a wordsmith. Your goal is to interpret Scripture and proclaim it to your congregation Sunday after Sunday. After a few years of the discipline of study, you will have acquired habits. I know that I have done all that I can to inculcate those habits in this blog space every week. One of the habits you need to cultivate is creativity. You need to get better at choosing the right word and deploying it at the right time. A part of the process of learning to be a better writer is learning to be a better reader. That means a broader reading program, dipping into more and more genres, not only for information, not only for quotation but to get better at choosing your own words. 

    Unless the poet is writing stream-of-consciousness modernist free-verse (which some might argue should not even be properly called poetry) she must have some idea of the structure of the work before writing. This means that the poet is concerned not only with the meaning of the words but their sound, spelling, and architecture. Many of the forms of poetry that you can name: Haiku, Sonnet, and yes, Limerick, have specific criteria of rhyme, syntax, and even syllabification. You cannot write a Sonnet unintentionally. The pattern of syllables and rhyme must be understood before the beginning. Once the subject is selected the architecture of the poetic form itself begins to dictate the words you can use and in what order they can be deployed. Thus, poetry, which appears to be nothing more than emotionally gushing one’s thoughts all over the page, requires discipline and forethought. 

    Just like preaching. Above and beyond becoming more culturally aware, poetry will help you choose your words with greater discipline and clarity. In reading a poem it is possible to consider all the various ways the poet could have written what she chose to write. A part of the interpretive process includes evaluating what one omits and why. Now, this can be done with prose, but it is much easier and more fruitful with Poetry because the form focuses restraints. 

    Just like preaching. The timer on my sermon document is set for 30 minutes. Despite what many think, I generally am finished before hitting that mark. The form and focus of a sermon as well as the context for delivery and the amount of time allowed to preach it determine word selection during the writing process. Inclusion, exclusion, and selection of vocabulary must be deliberate. Every week the process of preparation is as much a matter of controlled omission as it is principled inclusion. Every word matters when you must limit the number of words that you can use. And, because a sermon is an aural experience, the preacher needs to write for the ear as well as the eye. There are a lot of things that look pretty good on the screen which will not communicate nearly so well when spoken. 

    Much of what we read is for information, but not all. We also need to read as a form of “exercise.” The more you read, the better you will be at it. Your skills at evaluating, summarizing, and integrating what you read into your own work will improve. Poetry is a genre that allows you to sharpen different tools than you use in reading commentaries and other Biblical studies works. Some poetry will be filled with images and word pictures that will broaden your understanding when you approach sections of scripture that are likewise filled with imagery and symbolism. Some poetry will evoke emotions with greater immediacy than reading otherwise creates. As a critic, you can question the source of this emotive power. Does the poet do this intentionally? Is emotive content determined more by vocabulary or form? Is affect the goal of the poet or an unintended consequence? These are questions we should ask all our reading. Because we need to be asking them when we write. Poetry, due to its deliberate structure, brings an immediacy to this process of evaluating content by vocabulary, syntax, and structure. 

    And it need not take a great deal of time. For many years, one of my favorite sources of poetry has been Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac. I commonly listened to NPR (classical music, opera, jazz) and made certain to be paying attention when the Almanac came on the local station. In the brief program Keillor provided a few historical, literary, and biographical facts for that date. Then he read a poem. For the last 15 years, the Email version lands in my Mailbox first thing in the morning. I shoot the Email to Evernote and file it under the tags “Poetry”, “Poem”, and “writing” If at some point I need some flavor for a sermon or lesson, I can easily search and find a poem that works. The use is noted in the database. This is about as easy as it gets. A daily poem finds me rather than the other way around. If you want something more traditional you can readily find poetry online or access it through iBooks or Kindle. You could likely find a good anthology of English verse on Amazon and have it delivered to your office tomorrow. 

    I have and will mention several times in this month’s series that we read for many reasons. Information to include in messages. Data to provide evidence for points we wish to make. Illustrations and color to help our preaching connect. Poetry reminds us that one of the reasons we should read is for pleasure. We need to read because we like to read.