Poems for the spiritual journey

Rublev

The Heart's Time by Janet Morley gives a poem a day for Lent and Easter. And it's a good resource for spiritual reflection in Holy Week.

My favourite poem is 'I am the great sun' which draws upon the Reproaches of Holy Week and the 'I Am' sayings of John's gospel.

Anyone else got a good recommendation?


"I am the great sun

From a Normandy crucifix of 1632

... [heavy edit to rectify copyright infringement] ...

Seal up your soul with tears, and never blame me"

Charles Causley.

Edit: copyright. Link will follow

Galilit

Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ and queer * ... he was forced on us at school when we were 17 and I've never forgotten him or his work ...

*like the honour of "DFC and Bar"

Rublev

You must be the same age as me. When I was 17 my English Lit class was given the choice between TS Eliots The Wasteland and GM Hopkins The Wreck of the Deutschland. So we went for the lesser of two evils and struggled through the problem of theodicy in sprung rhythm.

Now I am glad that I read that poem: 'I greet Him the days that I meet Him and bless when I understand.' Yes.

Zappa

Hosting

Please note: it is absolutely a terrible way to make the Baby Jesus and Admins and Cthulu and Who Knows Who Else cry to quote slabs of poetry still in copyright. For safety's sake I suggest the poet needs tohave been dead since Moses was a baby for it to be okay to print his/her words. The actual law, generally, across the globe, is the copyright expires approximately fifty years after the author's death ... but even that can sometimes be extended.

Basically then .. a line ... a link ... then go and cradle happy thoughts in the bath or somewhere.

Copyright infringements will be dealt with severely

/Hosting

PS ... the OP poem can be seen at https://stmargaretsprestwich.wordpress.com/2017/05/29/i-am-the-great-sun-charles-causleyjussi-chydenius/ ... and it's predawn here in the antipodes so I would need more coffee to that link look sleek and sexy

Rublev

I didn't know that, so sorry for making the baby Jesus cry. 'I am the great sun' was written in 1957 so hopefully the copyright contract assassins will not come looking for me on the ship.

Galilit

Rublev wrote: »

You must be the same age as me. When I was 17 my English Lit class was given the choice between TS Eliots The Wasteland and GM Hopkins The Wreck of the Deutschland.

Probly not and certainly in Another Country
Another thing that makes the Baby Jesus (or at least the Bl. John Henry Cardinal Newman) cry is to refer to him as "GM Hopkins".

agingjb

Since T.S.Eliot was mentioned, I would advocate (but certainly not quote here) Four Quartets, and Journey of the Magi.

Miffy

Rublev wrote: »

You must be the same age as me. When I was 17 my English Lit class was given the choice between TS Eliots The Wasteland and GM Hopkins The Wreck of the Deutschland. So we went for the lesser of two evils and struggled through the problem of theodicy in sprung rhythm.

Now I am glad that I read that poem: 'I greet Him the days that I meet Him and bless when I understand.' Yes.

We were introduced to Pied Beauty and God’s Grandeur at school at the age of nine. Yes, really! I’m not sure whether sprung rhythm makes learning by heart any easier or not at that stage, especially when part of said requirement was to copy it out from memory, commas, semicolons and all!

It’s not dampened my love of Hopkin’s poetry, thankfully, even if it had taken many years to get to that point.

Rublev

I love the poem God's Grandeur and it's one of the few that I do know by heart. I was talking to my SD about learning poems at school and he thought that this was now on the decline with so much on the curriculum. But it's helpful to learn poems when you are young and have a good memory. I wish that I had memorised more of them. But if you can just tap a smartphone, then would you go to the trouble?

Rosa_Gallica

For those unfamiliar with his work Malcolm Guite publishes his own poetry & commentary and reflections on others work on his blog https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/blog/

Rublev

Thank you so much for posting this link. I have just read through it and the poems are amazing!

tclune

I have always delighted in this ditty from X.J. Kennedy. I trust it isn't too flip for Holy Week.

Barnabas

Friday's Child - W H Auden, for Holy Week; any time Charles Causley (again) "Ballad of the Bread Man". Always find something new in those.

Anselmina

Rosa_Gallica wrote: »

For those unfamiliar with his work Malcolm Guite publishes his own poetry & commentary and reflections on others work on his blog https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/blog/

Really love some of his poems. Great for sermons, too.

With reference to the Grandeur of God. Years ago I used to listen to an anthem on an old cassette tape of a cathedral choir singing to the words of this poem. Except I didn't know what they were singing: I kept hearing the words: The world is charged with a glandular God, a glandular God....' In a funny way I think Hopkins would have approved.

Zappa

Rublev wrote: »

I didn't know that, so sorry for making the baby Jesus cry. 'I am the great sun' was written in 1957 so hopefully the copyright contract assassins will not come looking for me on the ship.

Rublev

I'm sure the Hosts have strategies in place for dealing with visiting assassins

Zappa

Mwahaha

ThunderBunk

The Fine City is graced with the presence of Malcolm Guite, so we have a whole week of rather wonderful sonnets being read and amplified by their author.

Rublev

Malcolm Guite is a remarkably creative theologian. I've heard him lead a session on Praying with Poetry. And I have attended his Meditative Eucharist evening services which have beautiful liturgies. I'd like to attend one of his retreats sometime.

mousethief

Madeleine L'Engle's very short poem on the Incarnation.

Now's the irrational season
When love blooms bright and wild
If Mary had been full of reason
There'd have been no room for the Child.

NOprophet_NØprofit

May I recommend the corpus of Edna St Millay's poems?

She identified the losses well as I felt them: "Sorrow like a ceaseless rain
Beats upon my heart.
People twist and scream in pain, --
Dawn will find them still again;
This has neither wax nor wane,...." (Sorrow). First Fig from Figs and Thistles from the same pen made me believe I might live again. If my candle must "out, out" like Macbeth says I will effing light it brightly.

Climacus

I'm a sucker for Donne.

Sonnet XIV strikes me with this:

Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

At this time of year I'm also partial to:

Now Thou art lifted up, draw me to Thee,
And at Thy death giving such liberal dole,
Moist with one drop of Thy blood my dry soul.

from La Corona - Crucifying.

And finally, if this is not read at my funeral I will haunt everyone present for eternity...I hope I have some chains. It ends:

But swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore ;
And having done that, Thou hast done ;
I fear no more.

Rublev

The Holy Sonnets of John Donne are perfect for Holy Week and I'm now going to read them.

Do you like The Spiritual Canticle of St John of the Cross?

Stanza XI

Reveal your presence,
and may the vision of your beauty be my death;
for the sickness of love
is not cured,
save by your very presence and image.

Climacus

I have to thank shipmate Nunc Dimittis for introducing me to St John of the Cross 15 or more years ago... I do indeed love the stanza you shared -- the imagery strikes me very powerfully: and I find it stays in my mind.

Thank you for bringing it to mind. I gave away my books before I moved over here last year...I think I need to replace my copy or find a webpage source.

Lothlorien

Thank you for those, Climacus and Rublev. I was already fairly rung out by the fire at Notre Dame, like many others, then you post these words. I rarely cry, but all these short lines made me weep. Donne and Gerard Manley Hopkins both affect me.

When I unpacked here five months ago I found I had three copies of Hopkins’ poetry. Perhaps I needed to replace a misplaced copy so bought another. Twice.

Rublev

The mystic poets have a lot of insight into matters of faith, don't they? I read Donne's 19 Holy Sonnets yesterday afternoon which was a nice thing to do in Holy Week. I thought Sonnet 14 'Batter my heart, three person'd God' was the best one but there is also Sonnet 13 'What if this present were the world's last night?' I think I will have to read these every year for Holy Week.

Miffy

My copy of Ted Loder’s ‘Guerillas of Grace’ is falling apart through heavy use. An especial favourite being his ‘Ground Me in Your Grace;’ simple, profound, challenging.

I love the imagery and colour of Stewart Henderson’s poetry. The writing of the late lamented John O’Donahue and much of the output of the Iona Community have also played a significant part in my spiritual journey.

Zappa

I haved just been introduced to the work of Belfast poet Pádraig Ó Tuama ... powerful stuff

Amanda B Reckondwyth

The choral group I sing with commissioned a setting of this lovely little poem in honor of our 90th anniversary. I hope soon to post a YouTube clip of us singing it.

Nick Tamen

Please let us know when you do.

James Weldon Johnson. :notworthy:

caroline444

Ben Okri, An Africa Elegy. Have problems with the last line, but this poem moves me deeply.
https://gratefulness.org/resource/an-african-elegy/

Timo Pax

This moved me much: http://rmadisonj.blogspot.com/2006/04/lachrimae-amantis-geoffrey-hill.html

I found it in Before the Door of God: An Anthology of Devotional Poetry, an incredibly well-chosen collection to this perhaps-naive reader.

ECraigR

Everything by Geoffrey Hill is worth consideration, and that cycle in particular is great.

The anthology also looks quite good. There’s only one or two changes I’d make, not that I know anything, but thanks for the recommendation!

Lloyd Harold

At our (state) high school in the 1950's we had a keen young English teacher (later an Anglican priest) who introduced me to G M Hopkins whom I still love. A later university lecturer (not a Christian) introduced me to T S Eliot and Donne. Both are still part of my readings and reflections.

MaryLouise

Timo Pax wrote: »

This moved me much: http://rmadisonj.blogspot.com/2006/04/lachrimae-amantis-geoffrey-hill.html

I found it in Before the Door of God: An Anthology of Devotional Poetry, an incredibly well-chosen collection to this perhaps-naive reader.

So pleased to see Geoffrey Hill mentioned. I found his Mercian Poems and The Mystery of the Charity of Charles Peguy in my 20s and have read him ever since, although I have't yet tackled his last work The Book of Baruch.

He reminds me at times of a more cerebral, ironic even despairing George Herbert. His later poems are much happier than his early work, but I prefer the early poems.

Here's a favourite of mine from the Poetry Foundation website, Tenebrae.

MaryLouise

Coming from a different place, I wanted to just mention some poetry that is 'secular' rather than 'spiritual' and how it has challenged and comforted me in my own life.

For some time I've been working through issues to do with the poetics of disability and questioning what I believe I am doing when I pray for healing in intercessory prayer. For some years now, I have lived with visual disability, with numerous sight issues and complete blindness in my right eye (rubeotic glacoma). I don't pray for healing of my own disability because I have found that acceptance of this limitation is more helpful for me. And I don't feel less than whole because of being partially sighted.

Larry Eigner wrote over 3 000 poems on a manual Royal typewriter with the thumb and index finger of his right hand. Disabled by a forceps injury at birth, Eigner lived with cerebral palsy his whole life. His poems are unsentimental, oblique, tough-minded. Larry Eiger's great preoccupation was motion observed from a place of not moving, how to respond and interact without being able to get up and go to someone, reach out a hand or dance with a loved one.

Larry Eiger's to make myself a world

PDR

I find a lot of the old Office Hymns stick with me more as poetry than as song because I usually read the office privately. The richness of their imagery and their abundance of Biblical allusion gets the spiritual side of the brain ticking over quite briskly.

George Herbert is another perennial favourite, and I have a soft spot for John Keble's Christian Year in its "Wordsworth-and-water" way. A couple of Wilfred Owen's poems - Abraham and S.I.W. have remained etched on my brain since I was 17.

Other than that poetry is a reasonably hopeless cause with me.

Golden Key

Galilit wrote: »

Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ and queer * ... he was forced on us at school when we were 17 and I've never forgotten him or his work ...

*like the honour of "DFC and Bar"

I loved his "The Windhover (to Christ our Lord)" for the sheer sound of it.

MaryLouise

Bumping this up because I'm just getting back into my favourite Modernist visionary, David Jones and his Anathemata.

Jengie Jon

I am returning to Mary Oliver's poem Wild Geese. It is one of those poems I go back to again and again knowing I have not yet learnt the lessons it would teach.

Not it is not particularly Christian nor is much of Mary Oliver's work but it speaks to my journey.

ECraigR

MaryLouise wrote: »

Bumping this up because I'm just getting back into my favourite Modernist visionary, David Jones and his Anathemata.

David Jones deserves to be constantly mentioned, as often as possible, and the Anathemata particularly so. My taste aligns very much with yours on this.

MaryLouise

@ECraigR as I was posting, I thought that somebody here would have wrestled with The Anathemata and I'm happy to know another reader of Jones! I bought a copy of Anathemata before In Parenthesis, but couldn't understand the later epic until I had read Jones' poetic and demotic account of his service in the trenches of WWI.

There's s brief biographical mention of how he survives the Somme and is dodging about during a lull in bombardment collecting firewood and looks into a small cattle byre hoping for dry wood. Inside he sees a Catholic priest saying Mass with ammunition boxes for an altar, silent men kneeling in the cramped darkness. For Jones, this glimpse of an act that would not end the war or win the war, that was unnecessary and 'useless' except in a symbolic sense, would be the impulse leading to his conversion and insight into what is 'set apart' as art and sacrament, what will continue on through war and the collapse of civilizations, the need for worship.

MaryLouise

@Jengie Jon that poem is one of my favourites and meant a great deal to me working through difficult times in my 30s. With Kathleen Jamie, Oliver is also an amazing nature poet.

The poem I thought about when I heard Mary Oliver had died was The Summer Day with its famous closing lines:

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

BabyWombat

@MaryLouise Yes regarding Mary Oliver! for any of her poems. Since her death I now read one of her poems, chosen at random, as the entry into Morning Prayer. I have walked the beaches and dunes and scrub oak glades of Provincetown, where she did much of her writing. Her simple seeing and naming blesses me.

Ohher

For me, this poem by Louise Gluck gathers all the complicated feelings I've ever had about the Divine, about church, about God-if-she-exists and offers them up in one desperate moment: https://poets.org/poem/vespers

Lamb Chopped

Oh, that was awesome. That's all the crankiness with God I get when things are going wrong (as they do so freaking often) and I can't fix it and God seems to be sitting on his behind. Augghh.

Ohher

I'd love to meet this poet. To me, she "gets" everything.

MaryLouise

@Ohher, that is a powerful and moving poem: Louise Glück wrote several Vespers poems as well as poems about the dusk, and I sometimes think of her as being like Anne Carson in that she is more influenced by classical Greek and Roman poetic traditions (Sappho and Pindar) than by Christian poetry or thought. Her questions are always so probing and unanswerable. This poem just goes on echoing in my head.

And because I grow tomatoes from seed in egg boxes each spring, I know all about the trepidation of nurturing tiny seedlings facing frost or mildew...

Zappa

Stunning, @Ohher

BroJames

Climacus wrote: »

I'm a sucker for Donne.
<snip>
And finally, if this is not read at my funeral I will haunt everyone present for eternity...I hope I have some chains. It ends:

But swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore ;
And having done that, Thou hast done ;
I fear no more.

Oh I do agree - even though that post was months ago. That poem makes my scalp prickle and my eyes moisten every time. And although the pun on his name does not work for mine, my consciousness of it is an important part of that appreciation.

The fact that it is a succession of quite short statements with stopping stresses makes the flow of ‘But swear by thyself…’ run like a fanfare before coming home to rest in ‘I fear no more.’

Lily Pad

I listened to a radio article on William Blake this morning. I'm afraid I've not studied any poetry for a long time and I certainly don't remember much from when I did. Is his work something that everyone else knows about and I am late to the party? Do you have the same sense of transformation when reading Blake? Do you agree that his work is luminous? I guess I am really asking if I should spend some time investing and if I do, just where might I find a starting point?
Link to radio article: https://cbc.ca/radio/thesundayedition/the-sunday-edition-for-november-3-2019-1.5344138/the-luminous-companionship-of-william-blake-1.5344173