Found Poems and the Bible

 

A Found Poem can be found anywhere an arrangement of words or interesting thoughts pop out at you. Some poets scramble and reassemble lines from a magazine ad, a speech, an article, or a favorite book. Since my favorite book is the Bible, I often find Found Poems there, and this week they reflect next Sunday’s readings.

To explain, many church denominations use the same Lectionary each week with readings from the Hebrew Bible (aka Old Testament), a Psalm, an Epistle (letter) from the New Testament, and a Gospel. Our multi-denominational church does this too, and when I saw the readings for the first Sunday in October, I thought, “Wow! I found poems in each of those scriptures: Psalm 137, Lamentations, 2 Timothy 1, and Luke 17. So, to give you examples and encourage your poetic findings, here they are!

Harps On The Willows
based on Psalm 137

By Babylon's waters,
we sat down & wept.
By Babylon's rivers,
we lingered.
Remembering Zion,
we hung up our harps.
We hung weeping harps
on the willows.
We flung our lyres onto
the poplars.

  May peace come to us.
  May songs come to us.
  May God come to us.

  Shalom, Zion. 

"Give us a song!"
our tormentors sang.
"Sing us your songs
of Zion."
But how shall we sing
with our lives out of tune?
As we mourn,
shall we croon over Zion?
Shall we sing the Lord's song
out of Zion?

  May peace come to us.
  May songs come to us.
  May God come to us.

  Shalom, Zion.

Jerusalem!
May we never forget!
May we never forget God's city.
If we do not recall,
surely God's wrath will fall
over every song sung
not of Zion.
Shalom will not rest
outside Zion.

  May peace come to us.
  May songs come to us.
  Oh, God!  Come to us!

  Shalom!  Zion!

from my book A Gathering of Poems

…

Found in the prophet Jeremiah’s
entire Book of Lamentations

I.

Lonely sits the city
once full of citizens.
Bitterly she weeps
in the silence of night.
Even the roads to her
mourn softly. The
priests groan. Young
girls grieve. The city’s
enemies prosper.

Precious things filled
the past. She took no
thought for the future.

Look, Lord, and see
how worthless she’s
become, and no one
comforts her.

II.

The Lord has done this!
God has destroyed her
without mercy. Her
prophets see no visions.

People! Cry aloud to God!
Pour our your hearts like
water. Lift up your hands
for the children, who
faint from hunger.

III.

I am the one who sees
this affliction. In the
dark, I sit without light.
Chains weigh me down.
A wall holds back my
prayers. My soul has
found no peace. Yet

Hope returns as I call
to mind the steadfast
love of the Lord, Whose
mercies never cease.
They are new every
morning. Great is Your
faithfulness. Therefore,
I will still hope in You.

How good to wait in
silence for salvation
from the Lord as I turn
the other cheek to the
Smiter. Let us test and
examine our ways,
and return to God. Let
us lift up our hearts and
our hands to Heaven.
When I call to the Lord,
He says, “Do not fear!” 

IV.

In vain we watched for
help from a nation who
could not save us.

V.

Now we must buy wood
for warmth. We must
buy water to quench our
thirst. Music has ceased,
but God orchestrates
everything! Restore us,
O Lord! Restore us, and
we shall be restored.

… 

Haiku from 2 Timothy 1:7

God does not give us
a spirit of fear, but love,
power, and sound mind.

...

Mastering Servants

prose poem from Luke 17:7-10

“If your servants do only as you ask and nothing more…”
Do we praise them profusely? 

Picture the people we hired – dragging themselves in,
wearily sweating and reeking of dirt and sheep after
plowing a field or keeping watch over the flock. Do we
hop up to wash their feet or cook their dinner and serve
them while they rest? No way! Instead, we might say,
“Hey, get my dinner, then get your own.” So when
we only do as God commands, and the Lord Himself
gets up to welcome us and wash our feet and give us
rest, it might be best to say, “Oh, Lord, I am not worthy
of such attention and affection! I’ve merely done the 
minimum required to keep my job.”

…

Haiku humor based on Luke 17:6

I’ll be more likely
to tell that mountain to move
than find faith to climb!

…

Hopefully, my examples encourage you to search the Bible for Found Poems and maybe find more than that! As you look through scripture, especially notice verses that speak to you and your readers today.

May blessings and poetry abound!

 

Mary Harwell Sayler

 

Metonymy: A Colorful Way of Saying Something

 

Poetry has always spoken in figurative language as the Bible and early manuscripts show, usually by way of metaphor (this IS that) or simile (this is LIKE that), but metonymy also speaks figuratively (opposite of literally.)

Every region has its own way of adding color to conversation.  If you grew up in the Southern U.S.A., as I did, you probably heard people talk in metonymy, which uses a word or two to replace something else.

For examples:

breeze – easy to do

collar – priest (noun) or (verb) arrest a suspect

crown – reigning king or queen (noun) or (verb) whack someone over the head

dish – deliciously good-looking woman

dough – money (unless you’re a baker)

foxy – sensually attractive person

frog – obstruction in throat

glitch – not working as smoothly as hoped

hot rod – super speedy automobile

hunk – good-looking, well-built man

lines – dialogue in a script, parts of a poem, or a pleasing shape

lip – sass, backtalk

nailed it – successfully accomplished

peachy – all is well – or pretending to be

pedal to the metal – go fast!

ride – car or other vehicle taking somebody somewhere

slice – wedge of pizza

star – actor whose work shines

suit – business person suitably attired

tub of lard – an insensitive, unkind slur for a very overweight person (Avoid these!)

tube – TV (or maybe an MRI machine that feels like a thermos.)

windows to the soul – eyes

Similar to metonymy is synecdoche, which uses part of something to refer to the whole thing. For instance, wheels as a synecdoche represents the whole vehicle or car.  

Teens and young adults often create synecdoche or metonymy as their private code with imaginative variations according to the locale. With that in mind, you see why the successful use of metonymy works in a poem or other manuscript mainly if your targeted readers understand that particular word or phrase.

This potential glitch in comprehension makes it trickier to come up with your own new ways of saying something. Even so, the context can make your meaning clear. So, invent. Have fun. Make up new words and phrases – just because you can!

 

Mary HarwellSayler

 

Hearting the Love Sonnet

 

Haiku has been my go-to form of poetry for so long, I’ve seldom given thought to the lasting value and versatility of the sonnet. Then recently, a poet-friend said she planned to focus on studying and writing sonnets, which turned my attention to the subject too. (Thank you, April.)

Shakespeare immediately comes to mind, of course, and also John Milton, John Donne, George Herbert, and numerous other poets who wrote in a variety of poetic forms but with a romantic aside to sonnets. To provide you with some study-worthy examples of this timeless form, most often written in iambic pentameter, I’ve selected sonnets where love poems between two people have elevated into love poems to the Lord.

 

Leave Me, O Love, Which Reachest but to Dust

Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)

 

Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust,

And thou my mind aspire to higher things:

Grow rich in that which never taketh rust:

Whatever fades, but fading pleasure brings.

 

Draw in thy beams, and humble all thy might,

To that sweet yoke, where lasting freedoms be:

Which breaks the clouds and opens forth the light,

That doth both shine and give us sight to see.

 

O take fast hold, let that light be thy guide,

In this small course which birth draws out to death,

And think how evil becometh him to slide,

Who seeketh heaven, and comes of heavenly breath.

Then farewell world, thy uttermost I see,

Eternal Love, maintain thy life in me.

…

 

Easter

by Edmund Spencer (1552-1599)

 

Most glorious Lord of Life, that on this day 

Didst make Thy triumph over death and sin;

And having harrowed hell didst bring away

Captivity thence captive us to win:

This joyous day dear Lord with joy begin;

And grant that we for whom thou didst die 

Being with Thy dear blood clean washed from sin 

May live forever in felicity!

 

And that Thy love we weighing worthily 

May likewise love Thee for the same again;

And for Thy sake that all like deare didst buy 

With love may one another entertain.

So let us love, dear Love, like as we ought. 

Love is the lesson which the Lord us taught.

…

 

Earth has not anything to show more fair

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

 

Earth has not anything to show more fair:

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by

A sight so touching in its majesty:

This City now doth like a garment wear

The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,

Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie

Open unto the fields, and to the sky;

All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.

Never did sun more beautifully steep

In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill;

Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!

The river glideth at his own sweet will:

Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;

And all that mighty heart is lying still!

..

 

God's Grandeur

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1841-1889)

 

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

    And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

 

And for all this, nature is never spent;

    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

…

 

As you can see, each sonnet includes the standard 14 lines with a volta or turning point, usually on the eighth line or the twelfth.  

For additional discussions on the form, visit this previous post. Also, you’ll find below a contemporary (as in, written last week) example of a sonnet in tetrameter with four beats per line instead of five and four rhyming sounds (a personal challenge since I’m a rhyming-minimalist.)

 

Sonnet Awakened at 3 a.m.

Mary Harwell Sayler  

 

If independence boasts its reward,

when will we dare depend on the Lord?

And if God’s Word calls for accord,

why do we wield it like a sword?

 

Let us, as One, world’s ways despise,

but see each person as God’s prize

and look for Love through Spirit eyes.

Such love will heal us and surprise.

 

Begone, you selfish, sightless core!

If need be, grope for Jesus’ door.

Unlatch your tethered thoughts. Explore

the words of Christ Whom you adore.

 

God’s Own Spirit bids us, “Come!

Live Christ’s Love. Be Whole. Be One.

…