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.

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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.

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Accidental Grace: Poetry, Prayers, and Psalms

In his new book, Accidental Grace, poet-rabbi Rami M. Shapiro transforms Psalms, Jewish prayers, and Bible poetry into fresh lines that send us thoughtfully reeling into spiritual realms.

Published by Paraclete Press, who kindly sent me a copy to review, this highly recommended book brings wisdom, humor, and spiritual insights into ancient biblical truths, which the poet reveals as relevant today.

Take, for instance, Psalm 1, which many of us know in the King James Version (KJV) as beginning: “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.”

Notes in newer translations of the Bible often acknowledge that the word “Blessed” at the beginning of Psalm 1 is not the same Hebrew word that’s usually rendered “blessed” but, instead, is more akin to saying, “Oh, the joy!” or “How happy.”

In his smoothly written lines running roughly parallel with Psalm 1, Rabbi Shapiro wakes us up with this rendition:

“Do you want to be happy?

Ignore the counsel of the selfish;
avoid the path of the cruel;
refuse the company of nihilists.

Do you want to be happy?

Delight in life unfolding;
immerse yourself in what is as it is, from morning to night.”

In considering a Psalm that’s even better known, Rabbi Shapiro begins his poetic version of “Psalm 23” like this:

“You alone shepherd me,
lessening my needs and fulfilling them.

Lying delighted in lush green pastures,
I know You are all.”

Then he closes the poem with these thought-inducing lines:

“When I walk with You and know it is You who walks as me,
I leave only goodness and mercy in my wake,
knowing every place is Your place, and every face is Your face.”

Following the section of contemporary psalms we find a group of insightful “Poems” to welcome such as “Welcoming Angels,” which contains these lines:

“In the deeper quiet
I sense the greater Life that is my life.
I do not live only; I am lived.
I do not breathe only; I am breathed.
I am not only the one I appear to be
but also the One who appears as me.”

Another poignant poem, “I Am Loved,” begins:

“I am loved.
Too easy to say, perhaps.
Too fleeting a feeling upon which to anchor a life.
And yet it is so.
I am loved. Though not always by me.”

To give you one more example of the meditative moments that arise with each reading, I’ll print “One Without End” in full:

“Below the birth of becoming
There was the Source of Being.
When all is ended, that Source remains.
Alone without second, the One is all.
This One is my God, my redeemer, my refuge, my shelter.
This One is the cup of life from which I drink daily.
When I wake, as when I sleep, I rest in This.
One Substance in infinite manifestation,
One mind in infinite variation.
Know this and fear not.”

Amen! Then, the last section of the book, entitled “A Parable: Reenvisioning the Book of Job,” is set as a script or screenplay centered on Job’s encounter with God. Although the story ends shy of redemption, the dialogue between God and Job shows a sense of humor, which our One God and Creator of All Types and Seekers, surely has.


© 2015, Mary Harwell Sayler, reviewer of traditionally published poetry books and new editions of the Bible, is also a freelance writer in all genres.


Accidental Grace, French flap paperback


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Review of St. Peter’s B-List

Recently I reviewed Seeing Beauty and Saying Beautifully on my blog, In a Christian Writer’s Life as the book includes essays on three major poets and writers who wrote from a strong perspective of faith in Jesus Christ: George Herbert, George Whitefield, and C.S. Lewis. So, when I received a review copy of St. Peter’s B-List, I expected to review this highly recommended anthology on that blog too. However, these “Contemporary Poems Inspired by the Saints” fit better here as written by creative seekers whose views occasionally come across as bleak.

Besides making this collection a sign of our religious and literary times, the darker overtones contrast well with the approach taken in the previous review, showing poets and readers the wide range found in religious poetry. As stated in the Introduction, “For a work of art, be it a novel, drama, or poem, to be a ‘good’ work does not mean that the characters are drawn to be morally good but that their speech and actions follow the laws of probability in the human, or natural, world. Good works of literature have intrinsic artistic merit because they avoid sentimentality – the depiction of moral innocence at the expense of qualities of character that remind us of our need for redemption.”

While I see sentimental poems akin to greeting card verse at one extreme end of the spectrum, these poems approach the opposite end, which my poems sometimes do too. As the Introduction explains, such poems “remind us of our need for Christ, regardless of whether the poets themselves explicitly profess this concept in their poems.”

Edited by Mary Ann B. Miller and published by Ava Maria Press, each of the poems in St. Peter's B-List deals honestly with problems and concerns most of us can recognize in ourselves or relate to readily. From homemaking and mothering to showering or lying supine in prayer, the poems speak of a lifetime of topics with words that soothe, shock, amuse, or “put my foot on that first step” in “Desert Ascent.”

Equally commendable is the consistently high quality of the poems, whether written by people I’ve never heard of or by such acclaimed names as Pulitzer poet, Franz Wright, whose poem “Say My Name” ends with the uplifting word of the “Word that means you are loved.”

Ironically, the very quality of the poems keeps me from wanting to single out examples of the situations described, metaphors used, and fresh perspectives found. So, I’ll skip to the back where James Martin, S. J. , wrote an “Afterword,” I wish I’d read initially.

As he says, “The lives of the saints are poems./ In other words, one cannot fully understand a saint’s life from a purely rationalistic point of view. Strictly speaking, they do not make ‘sense’.” He goes on to explain how Mother Theresa, St. Damien, St. Francis, and others responded to God in mysterious ways that often seemed foolish. Or, as Rev. Martin puts it, “The saint’ lives shock….” He then ends with this challenge: “The most important truths about God are not reached with definitions and proofs but by poems and stories…. You are called to be a saint, too. What will your poem be?”


© 2014, Mary Harwell Sayler


St. Peter’s B-list: Contemporary Poems Inspired by the Saints, paperback


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