Poetry has fallen on hard times.
Articles with titles like, “Who killed poetry?” (1988) and “Is Verse a Dying Technique”? (1934) long ago were highlighting what any careful observer of our culture can tell you: Poetry as a common art form has been disappearing for some time.
Poet Dana Gioia’s book, Can Poetry Matter?, laments that while more poetry is being written and published than ever before, it is read less than ever before. Poets seem to be writing to and for themselves as a literary subculture rather than for the general public, whose attention is tuned more towards MTV, sitcoms, sports, and video games than literature of any type.
Even avid readers are reading novels, news, travelogues, and blogs, but when was the last time you saw a book of poems in someone’s hand? Or had one in your own?
We’ll save the question of how things got to be this way for another time, but for now let’s ask why this might matter. Why should a Christian care whether or not Americans are reading poetry? Why should a Christian be reading (and maybe even writing) poetry?
First, because the Bible is full of poetry, and without at least a nodding acquaintance with poetic devices and conventions (that is, how poetry works), we are not going to appreciate or even understand all God wants us to know.
Second, because we were made in God’s image, with an imagination, and poetry is the most imaginative of all linguistic expressions. Good poetry, in the Bible and outside it, nourishes the capacity to imagine what could be and should be and will be.
Finally, because we learn through analogies (in which one thing is compared to another). The Bible contains thousands of them, and these figures of speech are the stuff of which all good poetry is made. When Jesus says, “I am the Vine,” and “I am the Good Shepherd,” and “This is my body,” He is speaking the language of metaphor, the language of poetry, and our souls are filled with joy and hope and encouragement and comfort.
Even David, the Warrior King, spent much of his life composing and praying some of the best poems. We call them “psalms.”
Today, will you make time for a poem?
“The oracle of David, son of Jesse,
the oracle of the man who was raised on high,
the anointed of the God of Jacob,
the sweet psalmist of Israel.”
2 Samuel 23:1