Tag Archives: poetry

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Tell the World It’s Beautiful

For my students…

It's been real, BFA

When I confess that I am not a “by-the-book” English teacher, I recognize two things. The first thing is that, yes, there is a great pun there. The second thing is that my occasional unorthodox approach to teaching English, and my attitude about it, can often confuse and sometimes even alienate students in my classes. I have a sarcastic sense of humor that is fused with a quirky desire to sprinkle pop-culture references within passionate, sometimes long-winded discourse on how important literature is to me. I know that, as we blaze through the spectrum of American literature each year, some of my students are left a bit bewildered, if not downright frustrated. What I try to do at the end of the year, then, is to explain why I am the way I am, and why I have chosen to teach this class for the last three years. Hopefully, in explaining that, I can help each one of my students understand the bigger picture – how all this affects our reality and how we view the world in which we live.

I love literature (that is, I love the reading and the analyzing and the discussing and the comparing and the contrasting and the interpreting) for many reasons, but the main reason I love it is that reading literature is incarnational. Something otherworldly comes alive when we read literature. Whether we’re reading a short story, a poem, a play, a novel, or comic book – somewhere in the depths of myself there is a swirling and churning of new life. Colors emerge and blend, suns ignite, stars glisten, characters take on flesh and a new world is born in my consciousness, and whether I intend for it to or not, this world will affect the one in which I actually live. As the C.S. Lewis quotation on the wall just outside my classroom door states, “Literature adds to reality – it does not simply describe it.”

We covered most of these, I think...

The selections we read in class are chosen not only because they all belong to the general category of American literature, but also because I believe each one comments on the incredibly intricate composition of the human experience – our joy, our pain, our anger, our sadness, our prejudices, our bravery, our need to give and receive love. Naturally, some of these stories may be darker than others. Some make us feel happy while others make us feel sad. We will agree with some outcomes and conclusions, but others cause us to shake our heads in disbelief or disgust. We have these reactions because we are human, and incarnation is a concept that moves us all. A person who tosses aside a story or poem and simply says, “It was boring,” or, “I don’t think it means anything” has not truly read the work. It means something. It meant something to the author, and even in the off-chance that it didn’t, it still means something to you … if you will let it. And you should let it.

Madeleine L’Engle once wrote, “There is nothing so secular that it cannot be made sacred, and that is one of the deepest messages of the Incarnation.” Translation: there is nothing in this world that is so dark, or odd, or obscene, or pagan, or anti-God, that cannot be transformed by Christ, who became a lowly, dust-footed man from a nowhere town so he could finish God’s work of reconciling the world to Himself. Every time I read a work of literature, I remember this quote, and whatever the subject matter I am reading, I remember that God is real, that He is present, and that the minute I doubt His presence (even in the darkest of places), I doubt the Incarnation.

We’re not all going to enjoy the same kind of literature. Some of us aren’t into the same kinds of stories, nor do we all enjoy the same kinds of poetry. Some of us want happy endings to the tales we read, and there is nothing wrong with that. Some of us don’t mind descending to dark places as long as there is a clear redemption at the end, and there’s nothing wrong with that either. However, we cannot be afraid of the challenge some stories or poems or plays present to us. There are a lot of works our there that are tough nuts to crack – one thing I’ve never said in class is that interpretation is easy, because it isn’t. It can, however, be very, very good.

Pictured: mixed nuts

If we would seek understanding, like the Teacher in Proverbs encourages us to do, I believe God will help us learn something from what we read, no matter what it is. I believe a new world will come to life inside us, and we will not be able to look at our own world the same way again, and that is a good thing. When it comes to transformation, the “loss of innocence” is a necessary archetype.

Allow me to sum up these thoughts in a story…

This place.

Several years ago, when I was attending seminary, a few of my best friends lived together in a big, white house on 15th Street in Waco, Texas, on a corner known to be one of the most heavily trafficked for drugs and prostitution in the city. Hey, rent was cheap; a few other seminary students lived in a small blue house next door. My friend Josh described how he would lay awake many nights and listen to cars rumble up to the curb, how he could hear the faint shuffling and scuffling sounds of business being transacted, and car doors squeaking open and slamming shut, and burping mufflers grumbling off into the night. He told me how depressing it could sometimes be, especially when he would hear familiar female voices speaking – these were the prostitutes who my friends would come across and speak to on a weekly basis when they would walk out of their house, or return home from class. The odd thing about these women, and some of the men who lived in the area and worked as pimps and dealers, was how much they loved these six guys living in this house. They watched out for them – they kept an eye on their house during the day. It was as if the neighborhood, rough and sinful as it was, had embraced them as members of some extended family. It was common for homeless people to wander up the street, see the cars with the college decals parked in the driveway, and come to the door to ask for money – after all, these were Baylor students, and the stereotype is that all Baylor kids are loaded with “daddy’s money” (unless they’re graduate students like we were). However, the guys had decided that they would never hand out money just like that – instead, they always bought extra bread and peanut butter and jelly, and when the street people asked for some cash for “something to drink” or to “catch the bus” or for smokes or Church’s Chicken, the guys would politely turn them down, but immediately offer to make them a sandwich or give them a glass of water. Eventually, the women who hung out on the curb and the men who passed most of their days sitting on tattered couches on their porches would yell out to people they saw approaching the house’s door that they would find no money for themselves there, but if they were looking to score a sandwich…

My friend Josh tells the story of one of the prostitutes from the corner the guys saw most frequently. Her name was Dee. She often stopped by to talk with the guys or to ask for a glass of water. One day, as Josh and some of the other guys were hurrying off to class, Dee came by for a visit. They gave her some water, but told her that they didn’t have time to talk because they were late for their class. She understood, and began to walk away. Then Drew, one of the housemates, looked at Dee and said, “Dee, you know what?” When she turned, he said, “You look really nice today.” Josh says that if you could have seen Dee’s face, and the way this seemingly simple compliment lit her up, you would wonder if anyone had ever given her a compliment before in her life. If so, it must have been a long time ago.

A few days later, a group of us were sitting around one evening, conversing about deeply philosophical and theological issues (as seminary students will do in their spare time) – things like predestination and prevenient grace and why The Scorpion King is apocryphal rather than a true member of The Mummy movie series canon. Somehow, the conversation spilled into the concept of “desensitization” – the idea that seeing too much violence, or sexuality, or hearing too much bad language (whether in books or movies or in real life) dulls you to it and leaves you open to its corruption. It seems like an important thing to remember, and perhaps a reason why so many Christians have such varied feelings on things like R-rated movies, Mature-Audience video games, secular novels and the like. I had started to take the natural defense of this position, until Grayson, one of the other housemates, spoke up.

“I’m not so sure desensitization is always a bad thing,” he said. “Look at what Drew said to Dee the other day. You know, if we hadn’t been living where we’ve been living these past few years, and seeing and experiencing what we have, I don’t think he would have said what he said. At least not honestly. But he was being honest.”

Grayson explained that the guys had finally gotten past the thought of these women on the corner as prostitutes. They were women, and they were God’s creation, and they were loved. No matter how trashy they may have looked to them at first, over time, the guys had come to view them not through their own eyes, but through God’s eyes. They had become desensitized to the darkness around them, but now there was light. There was honesty that pierced through the murky film of their misgivings and limitations. They could look upon the world – even the sinful, dirty, fallen world around them – and call it beautiful.

Whatever you do in this life, be it science or math or music or art or history or mechanics or linguistics or literature, never be afraid of becoming desensitized to this world. Of course, there are measures we must take to guard ourselves from “the sin that so easily entangles,” (Hebrews 12), but we must never shut out the world in order to protect whatever measure of holiness we think we have. Jesus blazed a trail of love directly into the darkest, seediest corners of this world, and he did so confidently while all the other religious people stood back with their heads shaking, their eyes wide, and they jaws hanging open to their knees. But he did it, and if we are going to follow in his footsteps, we must learn to walk the same roads that he walked. It’s scary, and it takes courage. Courage comes from learning, and learning comes when we throw aside easy, shallow answers and open our minds. When we become reflective. When we examine and when we interpret. No one ever said this was easy, but if we are going to be Christians who actually make a difference – who actually change the world rather than badmouth it – then we have to do what is hard.

He went this way.

Whatever you do in this life, don’t forget to slow down every once in a while. Don’t walk this road without taking time to look around. Read a good book, take to heart a poem, embrace the Spirit behind a song. Let the power of these things come to life inside you. Let the Incarnation matter, because it does. And as you live out your own story, look up from the pages every now and then and tell the world, in all its disorder and disarray, “You’re beautiful.” You’ll be surprised how soon you come to mean exactly what you say.

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The Gospel According to American Lit: 4 Writers Who Must Be Read Theologically

There’s a misconception going around in America that you can’t talk about God in public schools. It’s an erroneous assumption perpetuated by a media fascinated by even the most absurd lawsuits that are waged against teachers and school districts by parents and/or community activists terrified of what exposure to the spiritual hocus pocus might lead to (I can only assume the majority of these “concerned” individuals believe talk of God leads down a road that ends with clones of David Koresh rather than Mother Theresa). In reality, what a teacher is not allowed to do is proselytize in school, or lead the class in prayer; however, he or she is as free as a bird to talk about God if the subject itself is relevant to the curriculum. This is another reason I adore literature. If you’re reading most classic works correctly, you can’t get away from God. Spiritual fulfillment, spiritual isolation, spiritual confusion… the list goes on – these themes actually lend a great deal of depth to works that would otherwise be terribly mundane or run-of-the-mill. From Fitzgerald’s discontent with materialism in The Great Gatsby, to Huxley’s haunting description of a moral-less dystopia in Brave New World, book after book and poem after poem cry out for readers bold enough to look under the surface and discover deeper, richer meanings. It is a technique that harks back to the work of medieval theologians who sought to understand not only the literal significance of the Scriptures (and by extension all literature), but also read for insight into the moral world and search for the threads of redemption and transcendence.

Even when the work itself is not overtly focused on Christianity in particular or on God in general, the human experience captured by the writer is significant for its observation of the beauty of nature or its grappling with the nature of beauty. There are four American writers, however, who must always be read theologically, lest their works be blanched and robbed of power.

#4 – Emily Dickinson

1830-1886

If you’re familiar with her poetry, it is not hard to recognize that despite a pretty stable life, Emily Dickinson had some emotional problems. She maintained complicated relationships with teachers, cousins, a sister-in-law, a sister, and even her mother, and despite dying in her early fifties, she still outlived several members of her family. These things might account for her reclusiveness and the morose and morbid tone in many of her poems. And yet…

Dickinson’s poetry is extraordinarily reflective and courageous. Spirituality was certainly important in her time; she was born during the inception of the Second Great Awakening, and her family was close with Ralph Waldo Emerson, the founder of Transcendentalism. Perhaps this is why so many of her poems brood upon subjects like death, immortality, natural beauty and personal worship. She examines the necessity of genuine corporate worship in Poem 57, “Some keep the Sabbath going to church; / I keep it staying at home, / With a bobolink for a chorister / and an orchard for a dome…”  One of her most convicting works is Poem 185: “‘Faith’ is a fine invention / When Gentlemen can see – / But Microscopes are prudent / In an Emergency.” To read Dickinson’s poetry is to delve into a remarkably honest consideration of the nature of faith and the possibility of forgiveness, redemption and life after death. Her poetry reminds us how important it is not to stifle questions and theologically reflective thinking – that doubt and anxiety may very well be a window that opens out onto the rich landscape of devotion and eternal hope.

#3 – Nathaniel Hawthorne

1804-1864

A grandson of one of the judges of the Salem Witch Trials, Nathaniel Hawthorne had significant issues with American Puritanism. He used the theocratic community as a backdrop for many of his stories and novels, but he also delved much deeper into morality and the struggle with deeply rooted human sin. The Scarlet Letter is his quintessential work, but some of his most captivating pieces are the short stories he compiled in his Twice Told Tales, including the extraordinary “Young Goodman Brown,” which plays upon a Faustian concept of the devil while examining the doctrine of election and the Calvinist belief in total depravity, and “The Minister’s Black Veil,” which focuses on secret sin, hypocrisy and the power of symbolism. Another great work from Mosses from an Old Manse, “The Birthmark,” is a parable-like examination of the conflict between scientific arrogance and divine mystery.

To read Hawthorne in merely a historical light is to miss the potency of his works – his works are steadfastly focused on challenging the reader to reject the desire to create God in his or her own image. Many of his stories reveal the dark side of religious fervor and the complexity of the human psyche, and while it is not hard to miss the morals in his work (he was a dutiful Romantic), there is nothing ineffectual about his conclusions. They are as convicting today as they were back then.

#2 – T.S. Eliot

1888-1965

Although England may claim him as its favorite poet, Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St Louis, Missouri, the grandson of a Unitarian Church pastor and son of a successful businessman. He was privileged, from an affluent New England-based family, and received a thorough education of the highest quality. While he became a British citizen in middle-age, he claimed his poetry was still connected to and born out of his American experience, especially his time spent by the river in St. Louis, which he claimed was more influential to his writing than if he had grown up in any other city.

It is, perhaps, easier to read Eliot’s later works theologically – that is, after his conversion experience and his membership in the Church of England. Certainly, Ash Wednesday and Four Quartets ring with theological significance. However, even his earliest published poem, the magnificent “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” focuses on themes of isolation, inferiority, self-esteem, social malaise, and anxiety toward death. All matters to which spirituality relates. What makes T.S. Eliot’s poetry truly remarkable is his ability to capture the roughness of life, as well as the much-maligned feeling of body and soul, even in lines that seem to glow with beauty. A particularly haunting stanza from “The Hollow Men” reveals such a powerful grasp of language: “Those who have crossed / with direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom / Remember us – if at all – not as lost / Violent souls, but only / as the hollow men / The stuffed men.” To read T.S. Eliot is to be taken on a journey through the dusty landscapes and frustrated cities of this world, searching for a hidden doorway into redemption, into paradise.

#1 – Flannery O’Connor

1925-1964

She once paraphrased Jesus, saying, “You will know the truth and the truth will make you odd.” Odd in the sense that an encounter with God’s grace does not make someone normal, or self-possessed, or status quo. Odd in the sense that salvation in Christ does not beget physical safety or charismatic popularity. Odd in the sense that God’s will for our lives has absolutely no regard for the comfortable little trenches we dig for ourselves in this world. In truth, none of staunchly Catholic Flannery O’Connor’s peculiar and perplexing short stories come across as neat and tidy pictures of Christianity. None of them would sell very well (if they were to be welcomed at all) if placed on a shelf in a Christian bookstore. O’Connor’s stories are dark and earthy, and focus often on the outcasts and scapegoats and seekers stumbling through their dimly lit lives, unknowingly propelled on a collision course with the reality of God. Every story by Flannery O’Connor contains a moment in which the grace of God is either accepted or rejected by a major character, and this cuts to the heart of every individual message in her fiction.

It would be a travesty of education to read Flannery O’Connor’s stories purely for the social context of the American South of the 50′s and 60′s, or simply as an inclusion in the collection of Southern Gothic writers of the early and mid-20th century. While there is much to learn from her regarding the nature and structural technique of short story writing, her painstaking attention to detail and her incomparable grasp of character development, none of these things make her stories into the powerfully transcendent tales that they are. Rather, it is her dedication to uncover truth in even the darkest of places (that place most often being the human heart), and to avoid watering down the message of salvation, a message that is as scandalous and shocking as it is victorious.

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Stumbling onto Truth

For Elizabeth…

A former student recently asked me a very pointed question. From a Christian perspective, what should be the boundaries to a poem, specifically in regards to word choice and subject matter? In this post, I will seek to answer this question, or at least, as is common on this blog, draw as close to an answer as is possible.

Now, before I run the risk of coming across pretentious immediately off the bat, let me preface all that will follow with a particular quotation that has helped me keep this amateur writer’s feet on the ground and his head out from under the clouds. Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, who has penned such acclaimed stories as A Few Good Men, The Social Network and several excellent television series, never wrote a truer or more poetic statement than the episode of The West Wing in which Laura Dern’s character, the U.S. Poet Laureate, speaks to Toby Ziegler, the White House Communications Director and chief speechwriter. She tells him, “The goal of an artist is not to communicate truth. The goal of an artist is to captivate you for however long we’ve asked for your attention. If we stumble onto truth, we’ve gotten lucky.”

So, let it be stated at the outset that, for the purposes of this blog post, I am not declaring that prose or poetry or any form of expressive art is salvific. In other words, while a poem or story or song or painting can have an effect on us – while they can sometimes even incite change – no person will ever be saved by them.

So, then, what is the ultimate purpose of creative expression? What is the paramount reason to write a poem?

I believe it is to enliven the reader. To inspire.  Of course, the writer cannot redeem the reader – he can only propel the reader on a path toward redemption. But expressing oneself in a manner that even lays the groundwork for this is a lofty task. It requires the poet to be a keen observer of the world and its inhabitants so that his re-creation on the page is compelling. Henry David Thoreau writes in his classic work Walden, “We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep.” He explains that anyone can create a work of art, be it a painting, a sculpture, a poem, etc. But, “It is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.”

So, for a poet who is also a Christian (rather than “a Christian poet,” which uses the word “Christian” as an adjective that categorizes and thereby boxes in the writer), I believe poetry should be viewed as evangelistic. A poem should carry the aroma of the euangelion, the “good news” of salvation. Why? Because, if it doesn’t, it is a lesser poem. Like a private who shies away from the front, it is not being all it can be.

However, there are two caveats to this assertion.

First, it must be understood, in light of the quotation from The West Wing, that a writer who is solely concerned with an end goal – a protest or an argument or a specific persuasion toward truth – is no writer at all. He or she has ceased to be a poet and has instead become a preacher or a politician. This is because everything takes a backseat to expounding upon the determined point or message. The poem (and, as an extension, the story or song or even the painting) becomes didactic, or preachy. Remember, the only goal of an artist is to captivate the reader. Not to save, and not even to change. Only to encourage – to nudge the reader in the direction of both. And it works both ways. If I am not captivated by a particular work, I will not be inspired, which is the catalyst for change. If I feel that I’m being barked at by the work, then any chance there was in growing or coming to a deeper understanding of life or faith or God goes out the window.

So, while the poet may desire to effect change, he has a responsibility, first and foremost, to captivate. To entertain. To awake the imagination. To enrapture the mind’s eye and expand the mind. How does he do this? With every bit of skill he has, every technique he can execute. Language. Tone. Rhythm. Motif. Imagery. Metaphor. Symbolism. Whatever arrow is in the quiver that is suitably weighted  for the flight. It is the quality of the writing – not the intention – that truly moves the reader. How that reader will respond is out of the poet’s hands.

The second thing to remember, and perhaps what cuts to the quick of the question my student asked me, concerns what, if anything, is off limits. In my opinion, depending upon the theme, subject, character or level of realism, no speck of language is taboo. Word choice means word choice, not choices. For example, I am currently reworking a story that I first wrote for a college creative writing class. The story’s two principle characters are poor, washed-up, lonely men who live in a pauperized small town. One is unknowingly battling severe depression, while the other is bipolar and prone to violent, vehement outbursts. Now, the question is, as a Christian, should I avoid putting words into the mouth of these two sad, downward-spiraling men that I would not say myself in a church sanctuary or (as is a popular “what if” to morally-righteous folks) if Jesus suddenly appeared and sat down next to me?

First of all, if Jesus suddenly sat down next to me, I don’t think I would have much to say at all. I’m pretty sure I’d be speechless. Secondly, if these two men from my story use salty, offensive language when they speak, I’m pretty sure Jesus wouldn’t be surprised. It comes down to what I value more: my moralism or my realism. It has taken me several years, but I have come to value the latter, mainly because I believe that my job is, first, to tell a compelling story, not construct a squeaky clean one that avoids offending even the most conservative of readers. This may mean I have to give up the possibility of some “Christian” publications accepting my work, but that is a concern that shouldn’t be hard to relinquish when I remind myself that the point of my work is meant to be evangelistic. “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick” (Matthew 9:12).

But, as I’ve stated, this faithfulness to realism doesn’t simply concern language. The poet’s honesty must extend well beyond language. It must not shy away from portraying the darkness and the depravity in the world if the focus of the poem or the vision of the poet turns in this direction. T.S. Eliot wrote some of the most extraordinary poetry during the early years of the Modernist movement, and part of the reason he is remembered was that his images were strikingly truthful and relatable even in their metaphorical or symbolic depth. Eliot had a quiver crammed with techniques, but what makes him a great poet is not that he was good with words, but that he was not afraid to shoot them at any target, be it divine or disturbing.

To pull the reins on a poem in order that it avoids controversial, depressing or unpleasant subjects and images is dishonest, fearful writing. The poet robs himself of the challenge of identifying the threads of light that might be woven even through the darkest of fabric, and he robs the reader of the experience of taking that journey through the valley of the shadow that often comes before we reach the green pastures and still waters. Madeleine L’Engle writes, “There is nothing so secular that it cannot be made sacred, and that is one of the deepest messages of the Incarnation.”

So, what are the boundaries? They are the borders constructed by our conscience, but patrolled by our courage, and our courage is known to have a restless spirit. Where are the boundaries? They lie as far away from our freedom – a freedom that is as spiritual as it is literary – as our freedom can stretch us.

Poetry, not to mention all forms of true writing and true art, should be as challenging and inspirational for the poet to compose as it is for the reader to read.