Poets and Poems: Nicholas Samaras’ “American Psalm World Psalm”

Poets have long been interested in the Biblical psalms, and for good reasons. The psalms are written in poetic form, and read like poetry even in translation. They cover the range of human emotions, from happiness and gratitude all the way to depression. The psalms also seem to be voiced by real people, people

with questions, fears, demands, courage and cowardice. And the psalm are also set in a historical context, many of them dealing with the place of the psalmist in society and the place of the psalmist before God.

Two decades have passed since poet Nicholas Samaras published Hands of the Saddlemaker (reviewed here at Tweetspeak in 2011). He’s continued to publish poems and articles in literary publications, edited books, and contributed to anthologies. Now he has brought together 150 poems in a volume entitled American Psalm World Psalm.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph by Alex Grichenko via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission. 

Tania Runyan’s “How to Read a Poem”

It should be straightforward, right? Reading it is like reading any other piece of text, correct? Well, no, actually, it’s not. And actually, yes, it is.

"It" is a poem.

Poet Tania Runyan has a suggestion on how to read a poem, or rather, she has six suggestions, all taken from the poem “Introduction to Poetry” by Billy Collins, published in his 1988 collection The Apple That Astonished Paris (it's been republished a couple of times since then). Of course, in the style of poets generally, Runyan has far more in How to Read a Poem than approaches to reading poetry.

But first, her suggestions:

·       Consider the poem’s imagery – “hold it up to the light.”

·       Listen to the sound of the poem.

·       Reflect on all of the pieces that comprise the poem (or, as Collins writes, drop and mosue in and watch him nibble).

·       Look for what creates the Aha!” or “Gotcha!” moment.

·       Study the poem itself, and don’t worry about who the author is or what he or she is trying to do or convey.

·       Let the poem be instead of trying to wring everything possible out of it.

Runyan pulls these suggestions straight from the poem by Collins. What she does with them is one of the best parts of the book. She expands each of the lines of the poem, enlarging one’s understanding, and gives her own example of the suggestion at work. And then she provides several poems in each section for the reader to do the same.

In the process, she provides a wonderful if understated, introduction to reading poetry, and she introduces the reader to poets well known and not-so-well known. Poets whose poems are represented include Tennyson, George Eliot, Emily Bronte, Wallace Stevens, T.S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, Yeats, D.H. Lawrence, Marianne Moore, Robert Browning, Thoreau, Anne Doe Overstreet, Edward Scott Anderson, Carl Sandburg, John Keats, Maureen Doallas, Sara Teasdale, and many more.

“Think of it (How to Read a Poem) as less than an instructional book,” Runyan writes, “and more as an invitation. For the reader new to poetry, this guide will open your senses to the combined craft and magic known as poems. For the well versed, if you will, this book might make you fall in love again.”

Well versed, indeed. The pun suggests another quality of the book, and that is playfulness. How to Read a Poem is above all playful, written by a poet in finds joy in her own work, and joy in poetry generally, and knows how to laugh.

Interested in poetry? Read it. New to poetry? Read it. Well versed? Read it. It’s a wonderful guide by a poet who clearly is in love with her craft and magic.

Related: My review of Tania Runyan's A Thousand Vessels: Poems at Tweetspeak Poetry.

The rock, the stone, the pebble

He searched for the rock, everywhere,

the stabilizer, the foundation, the assured

platform on which to stand and not shake

or shift or waver.

He looked everywhere for the stone,

the talisman he could palm or pocket

or hold to umbrella the rain

and melt the snow.

He looked everywhere for the pebble,

the rounded hardness hidden in the sole

of a shoe or the creviced floor, the pebble

to protect, first, and then empower,

second.

He found them all and he found more

of them, rocks, stones, pebbles

of varying sizes and colors, and they

worked as expected and they didn’t

work as expected because he had looked

in all the wrong places.

Photograph by Petr Kratochvil via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Sheila Seiler Lagrand’s “Remembering for Ruth: Mitchell Meets Matthew”

Sheila Seiler Lagrand’s “Remembering for Ruth: Mitchell Meets Matthew”

Sheila Lagrand’s serial story continues.

Pastor Paul and Margot Goodharte live in Mitchell, California, where they care for Paul’s mother Ruth, who has Alzheimer’s Disease. In the first installment of this serialized novel, Lagrand set up with the story with a fall and injury for Margot, the return of Paul’s older brother Matthew, and Matthew’s interest in Sue, the next-door neighbor, Sue.

In the second installment, Mitchell Meets Matthew, new elements are introduced. Ruth keeps asking after Amelia, who turns out to be Matthew’s estranged daughter born out of wedlock decades earlier. A neighbor experiences a family tragedy. Matthew’s relationship with Sue continues to grow.

We’re beginning to see the major themes of the story emerge – reconciliation, grace, how a serious illness can provide blessing, and a little romance.

Related: My review of Remembering for Ruth: Paul Loves Snickerdoodles

25 October1415: Agincourt

Almost 600 years after the event, it’s rather amazing that we still remember, talk about, wonder at the Battle of Agincourt. I think we may have William Shakespeare to thank, with a little help from actor Kenneth Branagh in the 1989 movie Henry V.

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me, Shall be my brother.

The story of the Battle of Agincourt (Oct. 25, 1415 old calendar; Nov. 3, 1415 new calendar) can still stir the blood, and Decisive Days has created an excellent short ebook that does exactly that. 25 October 1415: Agincourt tells the story of the battle that actually wasn’t supposed to happen, or that the English hoped wouldn’t happen.

It is the Hundred Years War between England and France. Henry V is determined to claim the throne of France; he ardently believes it is his and he equally ardently believes God is on his side. He and his army sail for France and lay siege to Harfleur. The city eventually surrenders, but the cost has been high and winter is approaching. Henry decides to march to Calais, only 30 miles away, and return home. The English almost make it.

The French army, however, is standing in the way, and the English are going to have to fight. They’re tired, sick (dysentery is so bad that some of the soldiers have no pants, having thrown away the soiled garments), and hopelessly outnumbered. The French expect an easy victory and all the ransom that will have to be paid for the rich Englishmen they capture. They spend the night before the battle eating, drinking and celebrating. The English spend the night in tense silence.

What the French did not count on was the inspirational leadership of Henry V and the devastating effect of the English longbow, and the longbowmen themselves, throwing down their bows to fight in hand-to-hand combat, some using the hammers they used to erect the wooden pikes facing the enemy.

It is a gripping story, and the Decisive Days account effectively places the reader at the scene. The slaughter is almost gruesome; some men reportedly suffocate under the weight the bodies atop them. The French attack in three waves, and each wave is effectively destroyed. At the end, The English count about 100 of their own dead. The French count thousands.

And each English soldier could lay claim to being part of that we few, we happy few, we band of brothers.

Related: My review of The Battle of Stirling Bridge

A Painting Tells a Story, But Which One?

This article first appeared at The Christian Manifesto.

In 1864, the French painter Edouard Manet finished “The Dead Christ with Angels,” which he then sent to that year’s Salon for exhibition. It is a picture of the dead Christ with two angels in the tomb, based (rather loosely) on Mary Magdalene’s sighting of the angels after Jesus’ death. (In the Biblical account, Mary Magdalene only sees the angels, not the body of Christ.)

After it was on its way, the painter realized he had made an error – he painted Christ’s wound from the soldier’s spear on the side of the body, instead of the right. Manet wrote to his friend, the writer Charles Baudelaire, asking advice on what to do. Baudelaire advised him to fix it before the Salon opened, or face ridicule. Manet did not repaint the wound, and he was indeed ridiculed.

It is a moving painting, and oddly more modern-looking than 1864 might suggest. It is one of several religious-themed works that Manet did about that time, and at first glance it seems quite orthodox, aside from the placement of the wound.

But look more closely, and something else becomes apparent. The story of the exchange with Baudelaire notwithstanding, something else is going on this painting, and it suggests a kind of warning for Christians about both “serious” and popular culture.

Look in painting’s the lower right-hand corner, and you will see a snake slithering through rocks. What’s brought to mind is Genesis 3:15, where God tells Adam and Eve about the one to come, who will be bruised on his heel but will bruise the serpent on its head – the passage that is considered the first reference to the promise of the messiah. The snake in Manet’s painting is anything but dead or injured, while Christ is clearly dead (although you can see the halo above his head).

Step back and look at the painting as a whole, and you see the angels attending to the body of the dead Christ and the healthy snake slithering away. The angel on the left does appear sad; the angel attending directly to the dead Christ looks – what? Impassive? They don’t seem ready to announce that He is risen as much as that He’s dead, and they’re there to take him to heaven.

The story can go in one of two directions. Either it is right before Christ is resurrected and the angels’ announcement of that, or it is a new narrative, in which Christ is just another saint, and His soul is being escorted to heaven. The snake’s situation is equally ambiguous – it’s either right before the bruising of its head or there will be no bruising at all, and the serpent is perhaps just a serpent after all.

Manet himself inscribed the painting with the Bible verse reference – John 20:12: Mary is standing outside the tomb and bends over to look inside “and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.” The two angels in the painting are in shades of brown, not white; they are not at the head and the foot but on either side. Whatever one wants to say about the painting, it is not a literal rendering of the verse Manet based it on.

The painting, and the stories it may be telling, serve as a reminder for us about culture. It’s not that we should always, always be literal in how we participate in culture. It is more that we be careful, and not leave what we’re doing so open to two very different (and opposite) interpretations. Manet painted either a religious painting loosely based on scripture, or he painted what looks like an anti-Christian one.

Painting: The Dead Christ with Angels, oil on canvas by Edouard Manet (1864), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Love Test for a Hothead

It’s a familiar story. Jesus, with arrest, trial and death imminent, tells his disciples they will shortly be abandoning him.

And Peter, the hotheaded fisherman from Galilee, says, “Not me, Lord! I’m with you to the ned! All the way! Even prison and death!” Jesus then stuns Peter to the depths of his soul, telling him he will deny Jesus three times before the cock crows.

At first, it looks like Peter will follow through. When Jesus is arrested, Peter strikes the ear of one of the servants with a sword (I wonder where the sword came from?). But then it happens. Confronted by the serving girl, Peter denies Jesus exactly three times. He flees in shame when he hears the cock crow.

Here we see Peter in all his utter humanity. I don’t normally identify with the hothead, but I do here. This is where Peter is broken. In a sense, the denial had to happen if Peter was ultimately going to be of any use. Peter is everyman. Peter is us.

After the resurrection, we find Peter and Jesus again talking in threes. Three times Jesus asks Peter if he loves him. Three times Peter answers yes, and feels hurt and likely shamed by the third time he answers. But this is not the hothead who answers three times. This is Peter, broken. This is Peter, understanding the limits of his own power (and they’re pretty narrow limits). This is Peter, humbled and honest. And hurt.

The point wasn’t to hurt Peter’s spirit. The point was to remind him of where his power actually came from, and what would sustain Peter in the years ahead.

As Bob Sorge says in The Fire of Delayed Answers, this second conversation wasn’t a faith test. Jesus didn’t ask Peter if he believed in him. He asked Peter if he loved him. It was a love test. And Peter failed that one, too – something that’s not as obvious as the three denials. But the time of the third answer on the love test, Peter realized he couldn’t depend upon himself for anything. Everything came from God, even Peter’s ability to love God.

“Our love is perfected,” Sorge writes, “not when we become strong in love, but when we become so weak that we lean on the Lord for His love to empower us.”

That’s where Peter found himself. The hothead had learned what was likely the most important lesson of his life.

Led by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we’ve been reading The First of Delayed Answers. To see more posts on this chapter, “Quieted by His Love,” please visit Sarah at Living Between the Lines.

Photograph by Bobbi Jones Jones via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.