2012 Lent 16: On Poetry and Faith, ctd

April is National Poetry Month, and some of my old friends (including this blog's Official Poet) have started a website for all the poems they write this month. It's pretty great, and the poem posted for today, aptly titled "Triduum," is not to be missed.

As I said in the comments on that blog, the following excerpt - words, sounds, images - is as Good Friday as it gets -

Now? The two are carrying
his corpse, ruddy flesh
spotted maroon, brown
primordial clay mottled
with drying blood still wet.
The grinding mash
of leathered feet against gravel
mimics memories of the crunch
of kernels between his teeth.

Check it, then read the rest of the poetry my smarter-than-me friends have brought into the world.

I should add that my relationship with poetry has generally hovered near ambivalence. I skipped the poetry section in my college literature class - seriously, I didn't go to class or do the reading or write the paper, figuring I could still pull off a grade in the B-something range - and have always had to work really hard to find poetry meaningful. Or, that is, I haven't had to do that at all; instead I've mostly let poetry take its own course, my own path going elsewhere.

But of course I am vain, and I'm not comfortable labeling an entire vast realm of culture as "too smart for me." And lately, curiously enough, I've become more interested in poetry. The poem above speaks my language, or enough of it at least that I can connect with the words and images, and the sounds feel right in my mouth on a day like this one.

Anyway, poetry. Don't hate on it just because it's challenging.  Give it a chance to open your mind to connections that can't be seen any other way. Let it illuminate unspeakable mysteries like, for instance, the death of God on the cross. I don't think technical, rational, discursive writing is going to solve that one.

Poetry, on the other hand, has a chance to point us in the direction of truth, the kind of truth that can't be grabbed or wrestled away from its holder. The kind of truth we can't own, but maybe we can live into.