A statistic that even people familiar with the Bible find rather startling is that more than half of the Old Testament is poetry. The Psalms are the most obvious, but large parts of the major prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah and his Lamentations, and Ezekiel are written in poetic form as well. Even the New Testament has poetic sections, including the Sermon on the Mount of the Gospel of Matthew.
But it’s been my own experience – mostly in Protestant denominations but with a not-insignificant overlay of Catholicism – that poetry is rarely if ever mentioned within the church context. My own eyes were opened only a decade ago, when I took a weekend seminar with poet Scott Cairns at a writing retreat. That seminar not only introduced me to Cairns’ poetry but to that of Luci Shaw, Mark Jarman, Dana Gioia, and several others. A door in my mind was suddenly flung open.
To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.
Some Tuesday Readings
Exile’s Journey – Jeffrey Bilbro at Current Magazine on writing and publishing amateur poetry.
“On My First Son,” poem by Ben Jonson – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.
Passage at Nineteen – poem by Donna Hilbert at Every Day Poems.
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