World Class Poetry Blog

The State Of World Class Poetry (And Religious Verse) Today
2 April 2008, the poet @ 8:15 pm

I had projected that I would get 10,000 unique visitors to World Class Poetry in the month of March. I was right. Setting a new record, I ended the month with 10,600 unique visitors, my first month over 10 grand. Those are uniques. My total visitor count was 14,970. I also set a new daily record for visits on March 12 with 683 and a new record for unique visitors in one day on March 31 with 636, but I shattered that yesterday with a whopping 818 visits and 752 unique visitors. April looks to be a not-so-cruel month for WCP. Since it is National Poetry Month, I fully expect April to be another banner month.

The blog is doing equally well. I saw 3,491 visits in March and 3,112 of those were uniques. Not bad for a blog that was started only six months ago. My biggest day to date was March 20 with 376 visits.

It’s equally interesting to look at the content and see which posts have been the most popular. How To Market Your Poetry Online is my most popular post to date. That’s very interesting since it was posted just 20 days ago. Since then it has seen more than 700 page views.

Other popular posts have been:

• Hyperbole: A Necessary Evil … In Poetry Or Politics (one of my earliest posts)
• In Poetry, No Subject Is Taboo
• Poetics: The 7 Essential Elements Of Poetry
• My Favorite Poetry Blogs (Thanks Ron Silliman)
• Get Paid For Your Poetry
• Blog Critique: Poetry By Stacey

Interestingly, if I include yesterday in my analytics, An Ode To Alexander Hamilton, which was posted yesterday morning, comes in as the fourth most popular blog post since I started this blog last September.

And that’s the state of World Class Poetry today.

The State Of Religious Poetry Today
Speaking of yesterday, a commentator had this to say about religious poetry:

My own speculation is that most religious poetry today, like much of the contemporary “church” music, has a lack of depth (unlike many of the religious writers of the Renaissance). There seems to be, pardon the cliche, not much meat on the bone. There seems to be a lack of basic biblical/religious literacy that seems to pervade our society and spill over into the literature realm so that we end up with poetry fluff.

I empathize with this reader because this has been my own thought as well for several years. Why don’t religious writers of poetry write with more depth? For one thing, I think that most religious poets do not keep up with the latest trends in poetics. Many of them are still writing trite phrases in iambic pentameter as if mimicking John Donne or William Shakespeare. There is nothing wrong with iambic pentameter, of course, but if you’re going to write that kind of verse, whether religious or not, you need to bring something new to the park bench, which most poets don’t do. Your meter may be traditional, but your subject matter or the way that you present your subjects must be new and unique, and that’s where many religious poets fall short. They’re stuck on “Jesus loves me” and have forgotten that there may be other ways to say it, or to show it, than simply using Biblical language that one can read by picking up a leatherbound KJV.

I hate to commit to a month-long project on this blog because I never know when my full-time job will require more and I have to break a commitment, which I hate to do. I’m one who doesn’t like to commit unless I am sure that I can fulfill the commitment. Funny quirk I have.

But I would like to post a religious poem every day for the month of April. Especially since I got at least one reader to acknowledge me on that last post. There are some religious poets I admire. Donne, of course, is at the top of the list. And my favorite is Gerard Manley Hopkins. I will try to find quality religious poems that I can share throughout April. Some of them may be my own, but others will not (likely, most of them will not be). If I falter at this, please forgive me. I am only human, but I will do my level best.

The first poem I’d like to share is this one by Denise Levertov:

The Servant-Girl at Emmaus (A Painting by Velasquez)

She listens, listens, holding
her breath. Surely that voice
is his - the one
who had looked at her, once, across the crowd,
as no one ever had looked?
Had seen her? Had spoken as if to her?

Surely those hands were his,
taking the platter of bread from hers just now?
Hands he'd laid on the dying and made them well?

Surely that face - ?

The man they'd crucified for sedition and blasphemy.
The man whose body disappeared from its tomb.
The man it was rumored now some women had seen this morning, alive?

Those who had brought this stranger home to their table
don't recognize yet with whom they sit.
But she in the kitchen, absently touching
                                     the winejug she's to take in,
a young Black servant intently listening,

swings round and sees
the light around him
and is sure.

Notice how very different this poem is than your typical Jesus freak verse. How well laid out it is from the very beginning. Not in traditional verse at all, rather written like the postmodern free verse that it is. Yet, we know immediately what the poem is about, a certain man from a moment in history nearly 2,000 years ago.

If it weren’t for the title, we might not know in the first stanza who the man is. There is a mystery to it. The subject is a woman. The repetitive “listens” in the first line set up for what follows perfectly. Then the enjambment is in itself spellbinding. Words like “holding”, “touching”, and “listening” ending lines that lead to greater mystery. And the indented line toward the end of the poem - how jarring that the winejug gives the impression that there is an indenture in the air of the place of this setting, though the poem never tells us in so many words.

Again, without the title of the poem, by the end of the second stanza, when we know that the man has laid his hands on “the dying”, we are intrigued. Who is this man? This mysterious stranger. Is this a love poem? It is, but not the type of love poem we might imagine.

The mystery continues, and well.

The single line about his face, broken with a dash and a question mark. So simple a technique, but not common. Brevity in beautiful measure. And the perfect lead-in to the next three lines …

The man they’d crucified for sedition and blasphemy.
The man whose body disappeared from its tomb.
The man it was rumored now some women had seen this morning, alive?

There is no question who those lines can be about. If we did not know by now, we know for certain now. This man is the crucified Lord, Jesus of Nazareth, God in the flesh. His crucifixion so appealingly alluded to, his disappearance from the tomb, the rumors of his appearance to the women on the road … clues, yet no mention of his name. There is no “Jesus” in this poem, but we know who it is about. We know because of the subtle and crafty way that the poetess has lead us to discovery. And that’s what makes this poem a success. It appeals to our knowledge of the past while not spelling anything out. It leaves just enough to the imagination that all we need are the subtle hints, then the spirit (of the poem) does the rest.

1 Comment a “The State Of World Class Poetry (And Religious Verse) Today”

1. Eric’s Writing Corner » Blog Archive » Religion and Poetry: Where’s the Depth? — May 14, 2008 @ 10:17 pm
   

   [...] He recently (though in “blog time” it’s more like an eternity) wrote two posts here and here on the subject of religious poetry. After I comment on the first of the two posts, Mr. [...]

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