A post from two years back, which pretty much word for word ended up in The Everyday Catholic's Guide to the Liturgy of the Hours.
Most of us are not huge fans of poetry. Even if you enjoyed studying it during high school and college, chances are you don't keep Keats or Byron or Frost on your nightstand along with the latest spy thrillers and those well-worn Jane Austens. Chalk it up to the decline in the culture, or the impatient modern personality that doesn't have time to ponder meter and metaphor. But unless poetry is in the kids' homeschooling queue this year, iambs and trochees are probably not a huge portion of your literary diet.
On the other hand, we all like songs. Hymns, pop tunes, Broadway stuff. We turn up the radio and sing along when a favorite comes on. We post lines of song lyrics that strike us as funny, nostalgic, or in any way meaningful on our Facebook status. Showing that we do have some patience yet for verbal furbelows after all.
Those lyrics are poetry. I'm not here to argue the merits of Bono over Gerard Manley Hopkins. My point is that we do like poetry that has been taught to us painlessly through aural repetition and the addition of music which helps us feel the rhythm that is inherent in the words.
You know what I'm going to say next.
The psalms are poetry. A particular type of poetry that remains poetry no matter what language it is translated into, and even remains poetry despite he worst modern translations. Here's why:
1. The Psalms speak to every condition of the human heart: joy , anger, despair, mourning, exaltation, confusion, hope, love. And all these in relation to God and to ourselves.
2. The Psalms rely on a poetic device that works no matter what the translation. It's called parallelism. That means (in extremely non-scholarly terms) that the poem says something, and then says it again in a different way for emphasis. Here's a few random examples from today's liturgy, with letters a.&b. added to make the parallelism clear.
Psalm 144
Blessed by the Lord my rock,
a. who trains my arms for battle,
b. who prepares my hands for war.
a.He is my love, my fortress;
b. He is my shield, my place of refuge.
Psalm 88
a. For my soul is filled with evils;my life is on the brink of the grave.
b. I am reckoned as one in the tomb:I have reached the end of my strength
a. Lord why do you reject me?
b. why do you hide your face?
Psalm 101
a. I will walk with blameless heart within my house;
b. I will not set before my eyes whatever is base.
a. I look to the faithful in the land that they may dwell with me.
b. He who walks in the way of perfection shall be my friend.
Next time you read a psalm, look for the parallelism. I guarantee, it will heighten your enjoyment of the psalms. And help you to feel the poetry that is there.
Most of us are not huge fans of poetry. Even if you enjoyed studying it during high school and college, chances are you don't keep Keats or Byron or Frost on your nightstand along with the latest spy thrillers and those well-worn Jane Austens. Chalk it up to the decline in the culture, or the impatient modern personality that doesn't have time to ponder meter and metaphor. But unless poetry is in the kids' homeschooling queue this year, iambs and trochees are probably not a huge portion of your literary diet.
On the other hand, we all like songs. Hymns, pop tunes, Broadway stuff. We turn up the radio and sing along when a favorite comes on. We post lines of song lyrics that strike us as funny, nostalgic, or in any way meaningful on our Facebook status. Showing that we do have some patience yet for verbal furbelows after all.
Those lyrics are poetry. I'm not here to argue the merits of Bono over Gerard Manley Hopkins. My point is that we do like poetry that has been taught to us painlessly through aural repetition and the addition of music which helps us feel the rhythm that is inherent in the words.
You know what I'm going to say next.
The psalms are poetry. A particular type of poetry that remains poetry no matter what language it is translated into, and even remains poetry despite he worst modern translations. Here's why:
1. The Psalms speak to every condition of the human heart: joy , anger, despair, mourning, exaltation, confusion, hope, love. And all these in relation to God and to ourselves.
2. The Psalms rely on a poetic device that works no matter what the translation. It's called parallelism. That means (in extremely non-scholarly terms) that the poem says something, and then says it again in a different way for emphasis. Here's a few random examples from today's liturgy, with letters a.&b. added to make the parallelism clear.
Psalm 144
Blessed by the Lord my rock,
a. who trains my arms for battle,
b. who prepares my hands for war.
a.He is my love, my fortress;
b. He is my shield, my place of refuge.
Psalm 88
a. For my soul is filled with evils;my life is on the brink of the grave.
b. I am reckoned as one in the tomb:I have reached the end of my strength
a. Lord why do you reject me?
b. why do you hide your face?
Psalm 101
a. I will walk with blameless heart within my house;
b. I will not set before my eyes whatever is base.
a. I look to the faithful in the land that they may dwell with me.
b. He who walks in the way of perfection shall be my friend.
Next time you read a psalm, look for the parallelism. I guarantee, it will heighten your enjoyment of the psalms. And help you to feel the poetry that is there.
