 |
| Sunday, August 16, 2009
Book > This Art: Poems About Poetry (anthology) edited by Michael Wiegers Writer : Annabelle Ang-Bok Why would anyone read poems about poetry? Perhaps for the same reasons people explore what it means to be human, ask what it means to be curious, or discuss the value of discourse. Or perhaps because there is something about poetry that invites the idea that we have touched something outside time and broken off for our consumption a fragment of eternity. The more than one hundred poems in this anthology are fascinating gems in and of themselves. Sixty poets from around the globe present their various takes on the value, effects and even the very concept of poetry, in manner ranging from the serious and direct to the oblique and subtle, or even irreverent. Interestingly, their combined effect - enticing the reader into analysing his own interest in poetry, and This Art itself - has the power to lead the believer further, into queries on the Christian walk, and the calling of every Christian artist. I quote from the blurb on the back cover: Editor Michael Wiegers writes in his introduction, "Often the loudest arguments on behalf of poetry are made in prose. Meanwhile, the more convincing arguments are sung in poems." It is interesting to note that Percy Bysshe Shelley, although either an atheist or pantheist, believed that poetry "redeems from decay the visitations of the divinity in man”, that it is "indeed something divine", and that it ...is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted according to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, "I will compose poetry." The greatest poet even cannot say it; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power arises from within, like the colour of a flower which fades and changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of our natures are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure. How many Christian artists are familiar with Apostle Paul's seemingly inconsequential little comment in 2 Corinthians 3:2-3 (Amplified Bible), which calls all believers "letters of recommendation" or "credentials" of their spiritual parents/guides as well as "a letter from Christ"? Or Ephesians 2:10 (Amplified Bible), where believers are called "God's [own] handiwork (His workmanship)" - in the original Greek text, the word used here is poiema, from which we eventually get the word "poem"? Surely we would do well to remember that our arguments for our faith will never be as effective or convincing to the cynical, hardened world as the authenticity of our lives and the inimitable (though sometimes subtle or "hidden") fragrance of Christ in our art.  References/Useful links: A Defence Of Poetry by Percy Bysshe Shelley Strong's Exhaustive Concordance Of The Bible. Strong, James. Hendrickson Publishers (Peabody, Massachusetts, USA). Publications date unknown. ISBN 0-917006-01-1.
|
|
|
 |
 |