To many readers, poetry represents a kind of mysticism. We know the poet is trying to say something, but we’re not quite sure what it is.
Perhaps he’s just inviting us to have some sort of inward and personal encounter with his words, to lead us in making our own poem out of the lines, images, structure, form, and all the rest he supplies?
Poetry shouldn’t leave us scratching our heads. It might take some time and concentration to determine what the poet is trying to say, but we should be able, by understanding how poetry works and persisting in the reading of it, to decipher the images and make sense of the words so that the message of the poem and the experience it wants to convey can find some place to nest in our soul.
Personally, I want readers to enjoy poetry. My hope, in The InVerse Theology Project, is that the verse component of our project will catch readers up and lead them into the theology facet with a more open mind and heart, to receive important truths because they are offered in a more palatable form than in many theological tomes. We need theology. Lots of it. And I believe poetry can help us better understand why that is so.
But the poetry must be accessible for this project to succeed in its intent. We need forms, words, and images that readers can readily grasp. We need poetry that’s a bit more like what readers are familiar with and can understand. And therefore many of the installments in our project have been offered in a form we might call the verse essay. They’re poetry, of that there can be no doubt. But they read more like an essay, like the prose pieces a reader might encounter in a book or an online offering.
The verse essay has been around for a while. I’m thinking of works such as those by Alexander Pope (“An Essay on Man”), William Cowper (“The Task”), and William Wordsworth (“The Prelude”). However, one could count other lengthy, single-topic poems as verse essays, such as the set of seven hymns by Ephraim the Syrian, “The Pearl”, or even John Milton’s “Paradise Lost.” Not all long poems are essays. Some take the form of a story or narrative of one kind or another.
Aspects of an essay
In his book, Essayism, Brian Dillon writes, “Imagine a type of writing so hard to define its very name should be something like: an effort, an attempt, a trial. Surmise or hazard, followed likely by failure.”[1] An essay is just that—an effort, an attempt, a trial. Those who write essays generally have a single idea they want to convey, but they can follow many paths to accomplish that objective. And hope they succeed, rather than fail.
The Oxford Dictionary of English defines an essay as “A short piece of writing on a particular subject.” It offers a second definition which sounds more like Dillon’s: “an attempt or effort”. The ODE also reminds us that essay can be a verb meaning “attempt or try.”
In school we were taught that an essay has three parts. First comes the “proposition”, the statement of what we intend to describe or prove or illustrate, according to the purpose of our essay.
Next comes the “body” of the essay, the paragraphs that go to work seeking to demonstrate the validity of the proposition.
Finally comes the “conclusion” in which the proposition and supporting efforts are summarized and, if the essayist is confident of having succeeded, restated with a sense of satisfaction.
A verse essay will, for the most part, adhere to this form. At least, the verse essays we have proffered in The InVerse Theology Project. And they have been numerous. Our essays have ranged throughout the various theological disciplines and have helped us engage those disciplines from a variety of angles. We have written verse essays on time, on the system of Christian doc-trine, church history, creation, the notion of calling, and more. The verse essay works for us to accomplish the purpose of The InVerse Theology Project, which is to make theology appealing, interesting, enjoyable, and intelligible to readers at all levels.
Variety in verse essays
Let’s consider a few examples from our project, following the general outline of the verse essay form: proposition, body, and conclusion. Here is the proposition for our essay review of Homer’s classic, Iliad. It begins with a quote from Alexander Pope’s translation, and then proceeds to the proposition:
“Achilles’ wrath, to Greece the direful spring
Of woes unnumber’d, heav’nly Goddess, sing!
That wrath which hurl’d to Pluto’s gloomy reign
The souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain:
Whose limbs, unburied on the naked shore,
Devouring dogs and hungry vultures tore:
Since great Achilles and Atrides strove,
Such was the Sov’reign doom, and such the will of Jove!”
These words commence the tragic story of
the fall of ancient Ilium, doomed by love
illicit to destruction at the hands
of warriors from throughout Achaia’s lands.
Here is the theme of this great epic: wrath
unbridled, rage unchecked, war’s dreadful path
long trod, where heroes fought and plain men died,
‘til vain men’s rage and lust were satisfied.
Rage rising from injustice or offense
obliterates sound reason, common sense,
deliberation, and diplomacy,
and takes men captive to mere vanity
and pride. War is the consequence of all
such pique. And though the scale of it be small
or large, involving armies, states, and great
destruction, or a mob, consumed with hate
and anger, the result is usually
the same: lives ruined, hopes dashed, no victory
that satisfies or brings contentment to
the victor, and no lasting peace. Why do
we ever think it otherwise? The story
of Troy’s demise is not a tale of glory;
instead, the bards who sang this narrative
for centuries, before one thought to give
it immortality in writing, meant
to warn their hearers not to give full vent
to passion, lest their fondest hopes be lost
when rage exacts its doleful, dreadful cost.
The proposition thus asserts that war is futile—most wars, that is—and that a “dreadful cost” must be incurred when men decide to resolve their differences by this means.
Here is another example of a proposition, this time from the introduction to our rendering of Lives of Irish Saints as collected and translated by Charles Plummer in the early years of the 20th century:
What else but love can set a man to such
a thankless task? And what reward
could he expect, except that he might touch
a long-forgotten past with new regard,
and bring before our modern purview men
of such devotion, given to such hard,
uncompromising ways—men of a ken
in matters of the soul that scarcely we
can fathom—to excite us once again
about the world beyond this world, so free
and full of life and wonder. Who would care?
What would his work contribute? What would be
the impact of his labor? Who would share
in his excitement, his delight? It would
take many years, with little time to spare
for other matters, but he understood
that from the start. The Irish saints, who were
the focus of his labors, never should
have come to be so utterly obscure;
and he resolved to bring their stories to
the world, that he might for them all secure
the reverence and respect that they are due.
Translating ancient texts is art and science
together, which perhaps explains why few
take up this calling. It demands reliance
on fixed procedures, knowledge of both words
and grammar, and a resolute defiance
of profit motives. Each translator girds
himself with strength of will and patience, for
the work is long and slow. What he prefers
a text might say counts not at all. What’s more,
mistakes in texts must be identified,
accounted for, and fixed. Such work would bore
a lesser person, but it is with pride,
deep satisfaction, yes, and love that such
work is completed—love for those who died
so long ago, for those who showed so much
love writing down their stories, for all who
will read them, for the privilege to touch
and handle these rare treasures, and love, too,
just for the work itself. We do not know
the names of many of them, but the few
we do, we should appreciate, and show
respect, and on them hearty thanks bestow.
Here a different poetic form is used, the first example being in rhymed couplets while this one is in the terza rima form. But the point of the essay is clear: We must not fail to appreciate the contribution of those who have gone before us in the faith.
From propositions, let’s skip over examples from the body of a verse essay to consider a couple of conclusions.
These can be briefer and more emphatic than the arguments or other forms of demonstration used in the body of the essay. Here is the conclusion to our offering on poetry as a calling in which all believers can participate and from which all believers can benefit:
As Dana Gioia has written, we need more
folks working at the ministry of verse,
employing “language that participates
in glory.” We need poetry to help
us worship, preach the Gospel, write new songs
unto the Lord, raise children in the Lord,
delight the downcast, comfort the oppressed,
revive old truths, illuminate the world
and bring the knowledge of God’s glory to
our dark, sad times in everything we do.
We need a plethora of poems, a great
monsoon of metaphors, a rainstorm of
new rhymes and rhythms, and a cohort of
creators who have heard God’s call to verse
and are responding faithfully to feed
a dormant need in every human soul.
And here is the conclusion to our verse essay on Jeremiah Horrox, the first astronomer to predict, observe, and report on the transit of Venus across the sun:
These observations mark the apex of
the scientific work of Horrox. But
he made, besides these, many lasting marks
on the development of science, like
a ray of sun announcing dawn’s new day.
He was the first one to discover that
the moon made an ellipse around the earth.
His work led to the understanding of
what came to be described as gravity.
Sir Isaac Newton wrote that Horrox was
most instrumental in transforming what
was then called natural philosophy
from mere fictitious speculation to
the diligent investigation of
the facts of God’s creation. Horrox’ work
improved our understanding of the tides,
corrected astronomic tables, gave
us insight into comets, and much more,
and all of this while also serving God,
fulfilling all his duties as a priest.
He was a ray of scientific dawn,
and died when he was twenty-two years old.
Both these conclusions—and the essays that led to them—are in blank verse, in which, readers will recall, the iambic penta-meter line is preserved without end rhyme. In all the examples provided above you will note the use of a variety of poetic devices, including internal rhyme, alliteration, metaphor, and, besides blank verse, other traditional lyric structures.
Poetry and theology go together, or at least they should. In his essay, “Is Theology Poetry?” (Weight of Glory), C. S. Lewis wrote that poetry is “writing which arouses and in part satisfies the imagination.” He considers that theology, too, might “owe its attracting power to arousing and satisfying our imaginations”, and this would make these two disciplines doubly potent in helping us nurture and enlarge our Christian vision of life and the world. “Man”, Lewis wrote in that same essay, “is a poetical animal and touches nothing that he does not adorn.” If we can bring to the reading, writing, and study of theology the imaginative richness of verse, I’m persuaded it will make better theologians of us all. And the verse essay is an excellent resource for pursuing this project.
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