day 30: These Poems, She Said, by Robert Bringhurst

It seems fitting to close out National Poetry Month with "These Poems, She Said," by Robert Bringhurst, as it was Christian Wiman's recitation of this poem on the OnBeing podcast that sparked my desire to be better at speaking poetry out loud. I'm really happy with how this particular recording turned out.

I gained some lovely intangible things from doing this month-long project. (I did get better at reading poetry out-loud, I think - or at least I started to like my own voice a little more, which was my original goal, anyway). Mostly, I have noticed that lines from these poems have worn grooves in my mind, and I find myself running through them over and over again.

which the sky turns the color of ash. and we all know how that one goes, don't we? ...dressed in Sunday clothes, and dropped with a soft thump. to remember this moment otherwise. what was your word, Jesus? the two of us sat down. the sea gives way to river; both are everywhere. how many loved your moments of glad grace. what would you call his feelings for the words that leave him rich and orphaned and beloved? how you make the new street yours. touch me, remind me who I am. I want to know even our limits. out of which every intact thing comes, into which every intact thing finally goes. 

I also had a lot more conversations than normal with people about writing and poetry, which was very nice.

-

This is reminding me that, as Annie Dillard said, how we spend our days is - of course - how we spend our lives. Or, to use language familiar to my child-self: out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. Or to put it another way: where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Early this month while I was trying to explain why I love poetry to my parents, I felt, ironically enough, lost for words. Finally, after what felt a bit like talking around and around the heart of the thing, I paused. I had just said that a poem could be something beautiful and small, a little perfect thing to carry around in your head that might be difficult or sad, lovely or painful - a luminous little fragment that you could remember, carry, hold, to remind you that you are alive - and I couldn't think of any better way to talk about it. My dad said, "[It's] kind of like scripture," his voice settling just on the statement side of the question/statement inflection.

Yeah, I thought then (and still do). Yeah.

Kind of.

Yes and no.

How to say what I mean...

I suppose that it's true I treat good literature with the same sort of care and attention that some people treat the Bible. And also true that I like looking for the beautiful, lyrical sections of the Bible to read - the things that stick in my head the easiest are chunks of the Psalms, the structured bits of the creation story (and it was evening, and it was morning: the fifth day... etc), the little luminous verses at the beginning of John (in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God). And I think that I meet the Spirit on the page, and I am not too concerned if the Spirit wants to lead me on a wild goose chase & meet me in a poem on any weekday night.

That brief exchange with my dad has been niggling in the back of my head all month, though, sitting not-quite-right with me. I've been trying to figure out why, and maybe I have the first inklings of an answer. Two things have been coming to mind as I think about that idea of poetry being like scripture:

1.) These lines I read just a few days ago:

There are no right words
if by right we mean perfect
if by perfect we mean able to save us.

2.) A memory of a literature class at EMU, with a professor who said that love lets us see the world as it ought to be, rather than as it is.


I love poetry because the poems I read are in love with the world. They "expand the amount of reality available" to me, as Christian Wiman would say. They let me see the world as it could be; they give me a sense of what redemption looks like, sounds like, feels like, which sometimes is a remnant grove grown bright with praise, and sometimes is stars in a wilderness of stars, and sometimes is a laughing voice saying mostly, I wanted to love, and we all know how that one goes, don't we? Slowly.

But the poems can't save me on their own. The love that animates them has to come from somewhere outside them.

My prof at EMU might have said that they are pointing towards Reality-with-a-capital-R; failingly, flailingly, getting the words wrong sometimes, but trying nonetheless. Not Reality themselves, though, which is what Jacqueline Berger's poem was reminding me of.

...But then again, maybe it is good, sometimes, to read scripture more like poetry. To remember that no text is Holy on its own; that the Spirit in whom we live and move and have our being exists outside of the limits of our words.

_

I bring my celebration of National Poetry Month to a close with an excerpt from The Great Divorce, by C.S. Lewis. Maybe this will get at what I was trying to say a little more clearly.

‘I should like to paint this.’ said the Ghost. 

‘I wouldn’t bother about that just at present if I were you.’ replied the Spirit. 

‘Look here, isn’t one going to be allowed to go on painting?’ 

‘Looking comes first.’ 

‘But I’ve had my look. I’ve seen just what I want to do. God!–I wish I’d thought of bringing my things with me!’ 

The Spirit shook his head, scattering light from his hair as he did so. ‘That sort of thing’s no good here,’ he said. 

‘What do you mean?’ said the Ghost. 

‘When you painted on earth–at least in your earlier days–it was because you caught glimpses of Heaven in the earthly landscape. The success of your painting was that it enabled others to see the glimpses too. But here you are having the thing itself. It is from here that the messages came. There is no good telling us about this country, for we see it already. In fact, we see it better than you do.’ 

‘Then there's never going to be any point in painting here?’ 

‘I don’t say that. When you’ve grown into a Person (it’s all right, we all had to do it) there’ll be some things which you’ll see better than anyone else. One of the things you’ll want to do will be to tell us about them. But not yet. At present your business is to see. Come and see. He is endless. Come and feed.’ 

There was a little pause. ‘That will be delightful,’ said the Ghost presently in a rather dull voice. 

‘Come then’ said the Spirit offering it his arm. 

‘How soon do you think I could begin painting?’ it asked. 

The Spirit broke into laughter. ‘Don’t you see you’ll never paint at all if that’s what you’re thinking about?’ he said. 

‘What do you mean?’ asked the Ghost. 

‘Why, if you are interested in the country only for the sake of painting it, you’ll never learn to see the country.’ 

‘But that’s just how a real artist is interested in the country.’ 

‘No. You’re forgetting,’ said the Spirit. ‘That was not how you began. Light itself was your first love: you loved paint only as a means of telling about light.’ 

‘Oh, that’s ages ago,’ said the Ghost. ‘One grows out of that. Of course, you haven’t seen my later works. One becomes more and more interested in paint for its own sake.’ 

‘One does, indeed. I also have had to recover from that. It was all a snare. Ink and catgut and paint were necessary down there, but they are also dangerous stimulants. Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him. For it doesn’t stop at being interested in paint, you know. They sink lower–become interested in their own personalities and then in nothing but their own reputations.’ 

‘I don’t think I’m much troubled in that way,’ said the Ghost stiffly. 

‘That’s excellent,’ said the Spirit. ‘Not many of us had quite got over it when we first arrived. But if there is any of that inflammation left it will be cured when you come to the fountain.’ 

‘What fountain’s that?’ 

‘It is up there in the mountains,’ said the Spirit. ‘Very cold and clear, between two green hills. A little like Lethe. When you have drunk of it you forget forever all proprietorship in your own works. You enjoy them just as if they were someone else’s: without pride and without modesty.’

                                                                    -C.S. Lewis, from The Great Divorce

 -

These poems, these poems,
these poems, she said, are poems
with no love in them. These are the poems of a man
who would leave his wife and child because
they made noise in his study. These are the poems
of a man who would murder his mother to claim
the inheritance. These are the poems of a man
like Plato, she said, meaning something I did not
comprehend but which nevertheless
offended me. These are the poems of a man
who would rather sleep with himself than with women,
she said. These are the poems of a man
with eyes like a drawknife, with hands like a pickpocket’s
hands, woven of water and logic
and hunger, with no strand of love in them. These
poems are as heartless as birdsong, as unmeant
as elm leaves, which if they love love only
the wide blue sky and the air and the idea
of elm leaves. Self-love is an ending, she said,
and not a beginning. Love means love
of the thing sung, not of the song or the singing.
These poems, she said....
                                              You are, he said,
beautiful.
              That is not love, she said rightly.