The Wild and Wise World of Poetry
A Feature Review of
Word Made Fresh: An Invitation to Poetry for the Church
Abram Van Engen
Paperback: Eerdmans, 2024
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Reviewed by Christian Lingner
In the last few pages of Word Made Fresh, Abram Van Engen reflects on Gerard Manley Hopkins’s classic poem, As Kingfishers Catch Fire, finding in it a symbol of “all that poetry can do” as well as an articulation of “the special purposes and powers of poetry in the life of faith” (249). Van Engen notes how his initial response to the poem, when he encountered it as a teenager, was a mixture of confusion and delight: confusion regarding what the poem meant, and yet, deeper than that worry, a welling sense of intuitive understanding that “the music alone made possible” (250). After a short literary analysis, Van Engen returns to what has become the refrain of the book: poems enact thoughts “through the shape and sound of words, so that an idea and an experience become indistinguishable” (253).
Yet Hopkins’s poem does not just stand as a salutary reminder of how poetry precludes paraphrase. By Van Engen’s reading, Hopkins is seeking in this poem to illustrate the idea that “things are what they do” (251). Kingfishers reveal their harbored spark when they fly, and even lifeless stones are shown to be themselves when tumbling “over rim in roundy wells,” sounding in musical descent. In a word, the world defines itself in action, just as poems do: the nature of a thing is defined and understood more by its effects than a list of essential characteristics. The purpose of a string is clear only in action: “the plucking–like the tossing and tumbling of stones–makes them what they are” (251).
As with the poem and the string, so also the human being. If poems are understood in their saying, and strings with their plucking, human beings are known, at least in part, by their ubiquitous–if somehow inexplicable–tendency to write poems. The writing of poetry reveals that humans are, essentially, wordsmiths. Van Engen traces humankind’s poetic impulse to the Garden of Eden, where God delegated to Adam the task of naming creation. Importantly, a name is not a mere description or definition, but a brief, appropriate form of reference. As Auden once wrote, “A Proper Name must not only refer, it must refer aptly” (159). This giving of names to things, this act of differentiating reality through divinely-ordained onomatopoeia, is, according to Van Engen, precisely the task of the poet. The poet carries on Adam’s task of observing reality and giving names to things by embodying them in speech.
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Thus, when we write a poem, we are “dealing out”–to use Hopkins terms–our own nature, for it is in our nature to differentiate the world through speech. In the same breath, though, the poet is also seeking to deal out the divine nature within the kingfisher, the dragonfly, the stone, the string–whatever the subject might be. Through this act of naming, we renew ourselves by making the world new to ourselves. We are, in some small way, making new through speech what God made through speech in the beginning. Just as God’s “let there be light” was both word and deed, poets seek “to convey, so that the conveying is the living, the saying is the doing” (250). Our words make his Word, his creation, fresh to us.
This notion, that poetry is the kind of speech that merges saying with doing, is the central idea unifying the two main sections of Van Engel’s book. The last half of the book is devoted to the Christian account of poetry outlined above. However, due to poetry’s reduced place in contemporary culture, Van Engel understands that “An Invitation to Poetry for the Church” will require, first and foremost, an introduction to poetry in general. Thus, the book’s first section amounts to a sort of “Poetry for (Christian?) Dummies,” where Van Engen offers a refreshingly common sense approach to poetry newcomers.
How do you start reading poetry?
Well, just read a poem.
Which poem?
Honestly, any poem will do.
What if I don’t like it?
Keep reading until you find one you do.
Though this advice may raise eyebrows among poetry novices and experts alike, it is hard to argue with Van Engen’s rationale, which is grounded in Robert Frost’s famous dictum that poetry “begins in delight and ends in wisdom” (89). If we are to unearth the wisdom in poetry, just as in any particular poem, we must first fall in love with it, and falling in love with it requires that we stop overthinking it so much. Van Engen insists that if readers will stop seeking to extract esoteric “meaning” where they should instead allow the experience of the poem to wash over and seep into them, then that falling in love is much more likely to occur.
Van Engen is, of course, anything but opposed to the study of poems. In fact, the final two chapters of the book, in which he offers a series of instructive close readings of well-chosen, thematically arranged works, may be worth the price of the book for anyone wishing to learn how to engage deeply with a poem. Van Engen is clear from the start that he is neither an active poet nor a scholar of poetry, but rather a “layman” who loves to share poems with others, and especially with Christian congregations. Therefore, it comes as little surprise that this book’s ultimate value is not so much to be found in his interesting (if ultimately fuzzy) theological reflections on the art of poetry, but in the spiritual and contemplative close readings of his favorite poems. Other than a couple of overlong waylays with William Carlos Williams “This is Just to Say” and Archibald MacLeish’s “Ars Poetica”, Van Engen successfully directs our attention to spiritually-enriching poems from a diverse array of poets, ranging from John Donne and Anne Bradstreet to Gwendolyn Brooks and Li-Young Lee. Though Van Engen recommends several anthologies for those new to poetry, this book itself clearly intends to serve, and succeeds in serving, as a sort of introduction and beginner anthology in one.
Still, there were points at which I wondered whether Van Engen has taken Emily Dickson’s oft-repeated imperative to “The tell the truth but tell it slant” too much to heart. Slant may serve poetry well, but not always prose about poetry–or theology. While his exuberant style and quote-happy explanations may charm intimidated beginners, it will likely frustrate those looking for a clear and concise treatment of what makes poetry unique, and what its unique function and fruit may be in the church. As he recognizes in passing, the idea that poetry “should not merely refer, but refer aptly” could also be applied, quite aptly, to prose.
Air-tight definitions are not the business of poetry, according to Van Engen, and neither are they Van Engen’s. Yet this hardly undermines the book’s ability to carry out its intended goal–namely, to introduce beginners, and especially those of faith, to the wild and wise world of poetry. If Van Engen likes to quote, the quotes are invariably profound, and if he fails to define poetry, the experience of reading his selections will no doubt help readers gain an intuitive sense of what differentiates poetry and prose. And, in that way, I suppose Van Engen’s approach reflects both his poetics and theology.
Christian Lingner
Christian Lingner is a poet, songwriter, and teacher living in Nashville, TN. He is pursuing his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of St. Thomas-Houston.
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