I have a confession to make—I used to hate poetry. When I started college as an English major, I dreaded the many poetry classes I knew I’d have to take to graduate. Why did I hate it? Because I’d had the same experience with poetry that I imagine many people have had—where they’re told to read a poem and then figure it out. What does it mean? What’s the controlling metaphor? What did the poet mean when he chose this particular symbol? Not that those aren’t important questions sometimes, but they can ruin the experience of poetry by dissecting and picking a poem apart until there’s nothing left of it.
In my first college class on poetry, on the first day, the professor read us a poem. I’d never heard poetry read like he read it—it sounded like music. I was intrigued. And as I worked my way through the poetry classes that an English degree required, I discovered a whole new way of reading poetry. Most of my professors still taught poetry by dissection, but there were a few who talked about a different way to encounter a poem. I learned to read a poem and enjoy it simply for the beauty of the words, the sound of it as I read it out loud, or even one simple image or phrase that enraptured me.
Then one night, my halting steps towards liking poetry changed into a headlong fall into love. My husband and I went to an outdoor poetry reading on a hot July night. The emcee announced that the next poet was Dorianne Laux, and a woman with long curly hair, dressed in a flowered broomstick skirt and flowy blouse, walked up to the podium. She paused, waiting until the audience was completely silent, then began to read her poem “Pearl” about Janis Joplin. I hung on every word. Ms. Laux’s poem brought Janis Joplin to life—I could almost see Joplin’s spirit hovering around Ms. Laux as she read, rocking back and forth to the rhythm of her words. And I realized that if certain words are put together in a particular order, they have the power to create a beautiful and unique experience. I wanted that experience again and again. I went home that night and got out my poetry anthologies from college. And so began my journey into poetry.
Now, I have hundreds of favorite poets and poems. I read poetry every day, and I still marvel at the way ordinary words can be elevated from the prosaic to the poetic. Poetry changes me when I read it—one perfect line can transport my soul to a place of ecstatic beauty. I will be sharing poems that have such lines with you, my readers—and my dearest hope is that you, too, will begin your own unique journey into poetry. And maybe, just maybe, fall in love with it, too.
Collaborations With The Departed
I love hymns, though I don’t have much of an opportunity to sing them. They comfort me and point my heart and mind to Jesus. Over the years, they’ve often become prayers for me, and I’ve used them to have written conversations with God. I call these my “Collaborations with the Departed.” I add my own words to those of the hymn composers, long dead, whose words still move me so. I feel like there is a very comforting bridge across time between them and me—they experienced then, to some extent, what I’m experiencing now. And there’s tremendous solace for me in that.
“Most Holy Night” with Placide Cappeau
“One Day at a Time” with Lina Sandell
“The Story of My Life” with The 23rd Psalm
“Even So” with “It Is Well”
“Our Waltz” with “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus”
“Poiema” with “Amazing Grace”
“Testimony” with “Blessed Assurance”
“Giving My All” with “I Surrender All”
“With Gratitude” with “Great Is Thy Faithfulness”
“My Only Answer” with “The Lord’s Prayer”
“Just As I Am” with Charlotte Elliot
“In the Shadow of the Cross” with Isaac Watts
“Nearer Still” with Sarah Adams
“Gracefull” with Haldor Lillenas
“A Really Different Story” with Thomas Chisholm
If I was forced to choose my favorite book, I would choose “Autumn Journal” by Louis MacNeice. He’s an Irish poet who wrote “Autumn Journal” in the autumn of 1938. He was living in England at the time, and the poems in “Autumn Journal” are his observations and responses to what was happening in the world at the time. One of my favorite sections is IV—I think it’s the most beautiful love poem ever written. I’m sharing it with you, hoping you might find a line or two you like—or even the whole poem!
Autumn Journal, Section IV
– Louis MacNeice
September has come, it is hers
Whose vitality leaps in the autumn,
Whose nature prefers
Trees without leaves and a fire in the fireplace;
So I give her this month and the next
Though the whole of my year should be hers who has
rendered already so many of its days intolerable or perplexed
But so many more so happy;
Who has left a scent on my life and left my walls
Dancing over and over with her shadow,
Whose hair is twined in all my waterfalls
And all of London littered with remembered kisses.
So I am glad
That life contains her with her moods and moments
More shifting and more transient than I had
Yet thought of as being integral to beauty;
Whose mind is like the wind on a sea of wheat,
Whose eyes are candour,
And assurance in her feet
Like a homing pigeon never by doubt diverted.
To whom I send my thanks
That the air has become shot silk, the streets are music,
And that the ranks
Of men are ranks of men,
no more of cyphers. So that if now alone
I must pursue this life,
it will not be only
A drag from numbered stone to numbered stone
But a ladder of angels, river turning tidal.
Off-hand, at times hysterical, abrupt,
You are one I always shall remember,
Whom can’t can never corrupt
Nor argument disinherit.
Frivolous, always in a hurry,
forgetting the address,
Frowning too often, taking enormous notice
Of hats and backchat – how could I assess
The thing that makes you different?
You whom I remember glad or tired,
Smiling in drink or scintillating anger,
Inopportunely desired
On boats, on trains, on roads when walking.
Sometimes untidy, often elegant,
So easily hurt, so readily responsive,
To whom a trifle could be an irritant
Or could be balm and manna.
Whose words would tumble over each other and pelt
From pure excitement,
Whose fingers curl and melt
When you were friendly.
I shall remember you in bed with bright
Eyes or in a cafe stirring coffee
Abstractedly and on your plate the white
Smoking stub your lips had touched with crimson.
And I shall remember how your words could hurt
Because they were so honest
And even your lies were able to assert
Integrity of purpose.
And it is on the strength of knowing you
I reckon generous feeling more important
Than the mere deliberating what to do
When neither the pros nor cons affect the pulses.
And though I have suffered from your special strength
Who never flatter for points nor fake responses,
I should be proud if I could evolve at length
An equal thrust and pattern.
Prairie Song
– Renee Adele Phillips
How did I get here?
To this hundred-year-old house, in this small town, on this prairie?
Where grain elevators drying corn
and the cruising of pickup trucks on main street
are the soundtrack of a summer night,
where a whistle wakes us for work
and only the water tower scrapes the sky.
I am here,
looking out my window at maple trees
heavy with leaves and branches,
so old they’ve witnessed generations
coming and going from my house;
trees that come alive at night
with cicadas playing their tiny fiddles.
And just beyond the trees, the open prairie
where men and women far stronger than I
forged lives from dirt and grass with horses and lanterns.
In the city the trees outside my window
were tethered to metal stakes, bare saplings
trying to grow in patches of grass
placed neatly in concrete medians.
And just beyond the trees, the county prison
with its rows of tiny, uniform windows
barred to the outside.
I am a city girl no more; not a small town girl, either—
my soul is at home on the prairie:
summerlit, endless, free.
Here, I am a cicada, singing unafraid in the face of darkness
Here, I am a pioneer, making a life with my words.
Pulsing with music, lit up with language
I am alive, abuzz, aglow—
I will sing my soul’s song here.
I will write my life’s poem here.
Here, I can grasp the light from Heaven.
Listen to “Prairie Song”:
Echoes of Eden
– Renee Adele Phillips
“They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the
Lord for the display of His splendor.” – Isaiah 61:3
Out on the patio this summer morning
In the pale first flush of dawn
My spirit stirs and wakens to You.
How could it be, that before this morning
I could have missed seeing You everywhere?
You are in the mountains, outlined
In inky blue against the lightening sky:
Their permanence a testament
To Your faithfulness.
You are in the waking birds
And whispering leaves on the trees above me:
They are the music that is You.
I want to raise my hands to heaven,
Close my eyes,
And breathe You in.
Oh, Father, let others see
A tiny bit of this in me:
A small echo of Eden,
And let them be drawn to You
As I am to the beauty I see this morning.
Let me be a part of this display of Your splendor
In all the seasons of my life
And the way I live them:
Let me be rooted so deeply in You
That as I grow, I display You
In all the summer mornings of my life
And every day in between
Until that final winter evening
When You welcome me home.
