Category Archives: poetry

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Jesus’ 30th birthday

Here’s an interesting fact: The English Romantic poet John Keats died when he was 25 years old, but not before he’d written some of the greatest odes in the English language.  I sometimes share this fact with my students, with a mild joke to the effect that they’d better get busy over the next few years.  Although I’m not trying to make my students feel like they’ve wasted their lives up to this point, I sometimes feel that way myself when I look at what I’ve accomplished and compare it with the accomplishments of luminaries in various fields.  The disparity is particularly striking when I compare myself with people, like Keats, who died very young.  Heath Ledger, for example, was only 28 when he passed away back in 2008, and he’d delivered a few stunning, even epoch-making performances in the few years prior.  [Did his Dark Knight tour de force usher in the dominance of the mischief/chaos-making villain in present film?  I think so, but that’s another blog post.]  And then, if you went to Christian school like me, you also have some big-name servants of God (I hesitate to call them rock-star martyrs) with whom to compare yourself, like David Brainerd, who died at 29 after wearing out his health in service to the Native Americans back in the 18th century.  It’s hard not to look at people like that and think, “Basically, I’ve accomplished nothing so far.”

I’m going to turn 30 next month.  So I took notice this morning when I read Luke 3:23a: “Now Jesus Himself began His ministry at about thirty years of age.”  Until that point, Jesus had been living in obscurity, probably working alongside his adoptive father Joseph in the “secular” profession of carpentry.  During that time, we can assume that his heavenly Father was quietly preparing him for those crucial–and short–three years of ministry that would follow.  God the Father didn’t look down at Jesus on his 30th birthday and say, “You’ve been messing around building tables long enough; now it’s time to do some real Kingdom work.”  In fact, because we know that Jesus was sinless and that his whole life was directed toward a mission, we can confidently say that the tables were not a waste of time.  Backed by Colossians 3:23, we can go so far as to say that they were an act of worship to his Father.  Building tables was part of what Jesus was born to do and part of how he readied himself for the history-shattering events to come later.

It may be helpful to ask from time to time, “Have I accomplished anything that’s made an impact?”  It’s a tricky question, though, because our actions have effects that we don’t see and that we can’t control.  I think it’s more useful to ask, “What kind of person am I becoming?”  That, with God’s help, we can control.  So as my birthday approaches, I’m trying to tell myself that it’s okay that I haven’t written a poem to rival “Ode to a Nightingale.”  Here’s what I should really be asking myself: Am I loving?  Am I joyful?  Am I thankful?  And am I ready for whatever big things may come later?

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Born to raise the sons of earth

It’s that time of year again when we celebrate the founding of this blog (thanks for another great year, dear readers!) and–far, far more importantly–the advent and incarnation of Jesus Christ.  If you’re new to my blog, I should tell you that each December I write several posts about my favorite Christmas music, movies, experiences, etc.  This year I’m thinking of doing one on Stevie Wonder’s “Someday at Christmas,” but first, I want to tell you about my favorite Christmas hymn.

What’s the Christmas song you’ve known the longest–maybe one associated with your earliest memories of Christmas?  Mine is “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.”  I’m pretty sure there’s a video of me singing snatches of it as a toddler.  It’s really an odd song for a little kid to be singing, because it’s full of weighty doctrine and includes some archaic language.  My understanding of it at the time must have been far from perfect.  I think A Charlie Brown Christmas was the reason I knew it.  Remember how near the end of the show the kids all stick their noses up in the air and “loo, loo, loo” to the tune (all lowering their heads and breathing at exactly the same time)?  Then during the end credits they actually sing the lyrics.

I still love “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” both for the music and for the lyrics.  The tune, by the well-known classical composer Felix Mendelssohn, is the perfect vehicle for the song’s strong message.  It’s both joyful and stately; it’s complex and wide-ranging yet very singable.  You won’t find any creative young worship leaders trying to write a new tune to this song.

And the lyrics, by Charles Wesley, are even better.  In just three verses, this song elucidates the paradox and mystery of Christmas: God, who has no beginning, was born.  The eternal Christ became a human baby named Jesus, yet he remained God at the same time.  The end of the song also tells why he came.  If you want to know what Christmas is all about, you can ask Linus and get a very good answer from the gospel of Luke, chapter 2.  You can also fast-forward to the end of A Charlie Brown Christmas and listen to this song.

Hark! the herald angels sing, “Glory to the newborn King;

Peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled.”

Joyful, all ye nations, rise, Join the triumph of the skies;

With angelic hosts proclaim,” Christ is born in Bethlehem.”

Christ, by highest heav’n adored, Christ, the everlasting Lord;

Late in time behold Him come, Offspring of a virgin’s womb.

Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, Hail, th’ incarnate Deity!

Pleased as man with men to dwell, Jesus our Emmanuel.

Hail the heav’n born Prince of Peace! Hail the Sun of Righteousness!

Light and life to all He brings, Ris’n with healing in His wings.

Mild He lays His glory by, Born that man no more may die;

Born to raise the sons of earth, Born to give them second birth.

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“The last scud of day”

I think what stuns me the most about Walt Whitman’s poetry is how old it is chronologically, and how new (or young?) stylistically.  He wrote much of his audaciously hubristic, rhythmically unrhymed, New Agey but never fuzzy poetry before they had electric lights, before he saw the Civil War tear up America.  England was just warming up to the Victorian period, man.  This’ll blow your mind: the first edition of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass was published in 1855; that’s just five years after William Wordsworth died.  Wordsworth was the guy who called for poets to write in the language of the common man, and tried to follow his own advice.  Before Wordsworth, poets were pretty much still writing like John Milton.  Too bad Wordsworth couldn’t have lived a little longer to see Whitman do this:

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me,

he complains of my gab and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,

I sound my barabaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me,

It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds,

It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,

I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift in in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,

If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,

But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,

And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,

Missing me one place search another,

I stop somewhere waiting for you.

(from “Song of Myself,” 1855)

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Two texts that inquire into the moment just before death

“If I Only Knew”

a poem by Nelly Sachs, Holocaust survivor  and Nobel laureate

If I only knew

On what your last look rested.

Was it a stone that had drunk

So many last looks that they fell

Blindly upon its blindness?

Or was it earth,

Enough to fill a shoe,

And black already

With so much parting

And with so much killing?

Or was it your last road

That brought you a farewell from all the roads

You had walked?

A puddle, a bit of shining metal,

Perhaps the buckle of your enemy’s belt,

Or some other small augury

Of heaven?

Or did this earth,

Which lets no one depart unloved,

Send you a bird-sign through the air,

Reminding your soul that it quivered

In the torment of its burnt body?

“The ’59 Sound”

a song by The Gaslight Anthem, the greatest presently active band in any genre

Well, I wonder which song they’re gonna play when we go.
I hope it’s something quiet and minor and peaceful and slow.
When we float out into the ether, into the Everlasting Arms,
I hope we don’t hear Marley’s chains we forged in life.
’cause the chains I been hearing now for most of my life.

Did you hear the ’59 Sound coming through on Grandmama’s radio?
Did you hear the rattling chains in the hospital walls?
Did you hear the old gospel choir when they came to carry you over?
Did you hear your favorite song one last time?

And I wonder were you scared when the metal hit the glass?
See, I was playing a show down the road
when your spirit left your body.
And they told me on the front lawn.
I’m sorry I couldn’t go,
but I still know the song and the words and her name and the reasons.
And I know ’cause we were kids and we used to hang.

[Chorus]

Young boys, young girls, ain’t supposed to die on a Saturday night.

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Fraternitas

Last night, as part of my recent Robert De Niro fascination, I watched Raging Bull, an unrelenting film about the humiliating self-destruction of a boxer who has Othello-esque jealousy issues.  I don’t necessarily recommend that you watch it for fun.  It is a great piece of film-making, though.  It was directed by Martin Scorcese, who is good at stripping attractive Italian-American actors of their dignity (cf. Leonardo DiCaprio in The Aviator).

I’ve been ruminating since last night on the final scene of the movie, in which De Niro’s character, Jake LaMotta (a real person, BTW) is preparing himself for an event in which he plans to recite from a variety of authors including Shakespeare and Tennessee Williams.  (Don’t ask how that happened; it’s complicated.)  While looking in a mirror at his ravaged face and rapidly aging body, he quotes at length, and with proper attribution, from the “I coulda been a contender” scene in On the Waterfront, starring Marlon Brando (who, along with De Niro, played Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather I and II, respectively–irrelevant movie nerd fact).  In that scene, Brando’s character is essentially blaming his brother for the failure of his prize-fighting career.  So when LaMotta quotes those lines, he is not only commenting on his own downfall as a fighter but also touching upon his fraught relationship with his own brother, who was his manager until they had an ugly falling-out.

Anyway, I didn’t plan to say that much by way of introduction to a poem I wrote this morning, but I always say more than I plan to say.  The poem, which is called “Fraternitas” (brotherhood), includes allusions, some more overt than others, to not only the two above-mentioned sets of brothers but also some other pairs you might recognize.

I coulda been a contender

But I’ve been walking around my whole life with your hand grabbing my heel.

I could have been king

But you were born first

And Dad liked your noble deeds better.

You said, “Let us go out to the field,”

And you beat out my brains

My manhood

My heart

And you left what was left over

A bad imitation of a man

A second son

Even if I came out of the womb first.

I blamed it on our parents

I blamed it on a woman

But it was you

It was you

You were the one who shot me in the back

And sucked out what nourished me.

But we’re brothers.

Of course I love you.

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Charlie Chaplin and Peter Pan

This evening I watched probably the saddest comedy I’ve ever seen.  It had a happy ending, but only after the protagonist had survived a great deal of physical danger, loneliness, and mockery.  The film, a selection from my PhD candidacy exam “reading” list, was Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush (1925).  It was only an hour and nine minutes long, and it was originally a silent film, though Netflix sent me a 1942 version that had a cheesy narrator and some dubbed-in dialogue in the narrator’s voice–even the female voices.  (If I were a silent film purist, which I’m not, that probably would have ruined the experience for me.  Fortunately, the narrator knew when to keep his mouth shut.)  Despite what might sound like obstacles to good storytelling (short running time and characters who don’t talk–even at the ending; you hear that,The Artist?), this turned out to be a hilarious comedy at times (I LOL-ed when the protagonist trashed the cabin in his joy after the girls promised to come over for New Year’s Eve dinner) and at other times a heart-breaking tale of man’s inhumanity to man.  Actually, it was mostly woman’s inhumanity to man; the men had guns and axes, but the women had cruel laughter, which the resilient “lone prospector” (Chaplin) was able to shake off less easily.  (Spoiler: The girls don’t show up for dinner.)

Other fun things about The Gold Rush: The special effects were pretty darn good for 1925.  (I didn’t even know they had special effects in 1925!)  Also, and perhaps most importantly, this is the movie from which Johnny Depp’s character in Benny and Joon draws his impression of the “dance” of two rolls on the ends of two forks.  Now I realize how stunningly accurate the homage is, right down to the facial expression.  If only for that reason, you should watch this movie.  But see if you can get the original version.

And now for my other, unrelated topic.  You know I love Peter Pan, the character, right?  You know how excited I was to see him at the Melbourne Zoo; you saw the picture I took as proof.  (See the post “Fairies in Melbourne.”)  I want to establish this because I’m going to share a poem I scribbled down Sunday night after watching the Alluvion Stage Company production of the musical Peter Pan.  The poem is rather critical of Peter, the character.  But my love for someone doesn’t mean that I can’t see the point of view of other characters who may not have such a rosy outlook on said person (eg. Harry Potter, Snape).  You can probably guess easily enough which character is speaking in this poem.  I’m probably reading more animosity into the story than is actually there, but I enjoy pulling out subtexts.  This poem isn’t great; I need to work more on the vocabulary and sentence structure because I want the voice to start out sounding like an adult (or someone who wants us to think he’s an adult) and descend gradually into childishness.  But, for now, here it is.

A clever chap, I suppose.

A good swordsman, you’d be a fool to deny it.

Very smart at plotting, and that sort of thing.

But really, what English young person doesn’t know the ending of Cinderella?

But he isn’t English, after all.

He’s some sort of heathen.

Probably doesn’t even know what the British Empire is.

And doesn’t understand how a shadow works?

Ridiculous, really.

Not as clever as Wendy thinks he is.

Not as clever as he thinks he is.

A horrid boy, actually.

Always has to be the father.

Always has to be the chief.

Always has to be the hero.

A horrible selfish boy

Who never,

Never

Lets anyone else be the leader.

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Another Penelope

After grading a student’s paper about Tennyson’s poem “Ulysses,” I thought it would be nice to give a shout-out to another great Penelope, she of the never-ending tapestry in Homer’s Odyssey.

I’ve never done any research on critical responses to the Odyssey, but I’m guessing that Penelope is not a favorite character among feminist theorists, since she’s gone down in history for nothing more than being faithful to her husband, who’s out there having adventures with the boys and spending time with gorgeous sea witches.  But Penelope isn’t a brainwashed, bovinely loyal house-slave.  She’s smart, for one thing–note the brilliant weaving idea.  And her faithfulness to Odysseus is perfectly rational.  After all, the men she’s trying to fend off are coarse-talking, booze-swilling idiots who can’t even string a bow, let alone shoot an arrow straight.  I suppose she could give up men entirely and go off on adventures of her own, but she has a good reason for staying home: the man she’s waiting for is worthy of a brave, intelligent woman.  Odysseus is clever (he came up with the Trojan horse plot), resourceful (having survived Circe, Calypso, Charibdys, the Cyclops, and other obstacles, not all of which begin with C), and pretty obviously in love with his wife.  He’s clearly worth waiting for.  So in Penelope’s case, faithfulness and personal fulfillment go hand in hand.  They aren’t always mutually exclusive, something feminist theorists (at least of the knee-jerk variety) seem unwilling to understand.

Penelope is such a great character that Tennyson’s easily overlooked reference to her in “Ulysses” is insulting.  Telemachus, the son, gets a couple of lines, but Penelope only gets three words: “an aged wife.”  Come on, man!  Not even her name?  In general, I love Tennyson’s stirring and wistful interpretation of Odysseus’s last great speech, but the treatment of Penelope is disappointing.  Better for her not to be mentioned at all than for her significance to be tossed aside in such a demeaning way.

Well, if Tennyson won’t give Penelope the respect she deserves, I will.  Penelope Clearwater salutes you, Penelope of Ithaca.

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Meanwhile

While I’m trying to think of a way to revive my readers’ (and my own) interest in my blog, here’s some good writing by someone else: William Wordsworth.  I pulled my Romanticism anthology off the shelf in order to start working on the extensive revisions necessary for my essay “Shelley’s Queen Mab: The Medium versus the Message,” which currently makes me want to shoot myself in the eye.  Instead of shooting myself in the eye, I’ve decided to share with you my favorite Wordsworth poem.

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:

Little we see in nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for every thing, we are out of tune;

It moves us not.  Great God! I’d rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

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Planning ahead

Have you ever thought about what you want to be said at your funeral?  I have.  I don’t mean what I want people to say about me.  Of course I want people to say nice things about me.  I’m talking about the program–the message, the readings, the songs.  I look at it this way: it’s one of the few times, perhaps the only time, a captive audience will be gathered to hear exclusively about things that I care about.  So I might as well take advantage of it.

Along with I Corinthians 15 and “I Know That My Redeemer Lives” from Handel’s Messiah, I want my funeral to include a reading of John Donne’s Holy Sonnet 6.  And since I happen to have the Norton edition of Donne’s poetry sitting here at my desk, I thought I would share that sonnet in its entirety here.

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

            Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so.

            For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep which but thy pictures be,

            Much pleasure; then, from thee, much more must flow,

            And soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.

Thou’rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

            And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell.

            And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well,

And easier than thy stroke.  Why swell’st thou then?

            One short sleep past, we live eternally,

            And Death shall be no more.  Death, thou shalt die.