Anthology of Christian-Themed Poetry

Too often contemporary Christian writing is cloaked in religious cliche, filled with abstractions. Christians write about a life-changing experience, but they don't recreate that experience for their readers. C. S. Lewis wrote that "the most remarkable power of Poetic language . . . [is its ability] to convey to us the quality of experiences which we have not had" (Lewis 133), and when writers write well, they convey to their readers experiences which their readers may not have had. While Christians frequently write with religious fervor, their writing remains unconvincing because it lacks authenticity.

As Christian writers hoping to make an impact on our society, there is a danger that we will limit our writing to "safe" topics. Too often Christian writing is fervently optimistic, but divorced from the realities of everyday life. In our efforts to be evangelistic, to be spiritual, we portray Christianity as a panacea for every ill, especially our own. We are afraid to take chances, risk censure. We cut ourselves off from half of human existence--doubt, despair, fear, loneliness, desire, hate--as if these are things we never experience. And because we avoid them, our writing drifts into platitudes and complacency: "God's in his heaven, All's right with the world."

In the Bible, life is never that simple or easy. Much of the Scriptures record the realities of human experience, the successes and the failures of real human beings facing the real dilemmas of living. The Scriptures touch every aspect of human life from the joys of sexual love to prostitution, from grief at the loss of loved ones to murder, from worshipful adoration to despair and disbelief. Rather than a religious treatise or a collection of theological debates, the Bible reveals its truths in the context of the human situation, in story and poetry, letter and proverb, vision and song.

What makes writing real is reality--the felt experience, the moment shared. Poetry, or at least modern American poetry, "should not mean/ But be" (MacLeish qtd. in Foerster, et al. 895). In "The Circus Animal's Desertion," William Butler Yeats reviews the "masterful images" that "grew in pure mind" of his earlier poetry, his attempts at transcendence, and drawing on the image of Jacob's ladder, reminds himself that poetry must always begin with "A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street/Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can," that transcendence begins where "all the ladders start,/In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart" (Rosenthal 185).

Avoid pedantry. If your purpose is presenting a message, write a homily or an essay. Art should not be an excuse for presenting a message, but rather present life as it is lived. Write authentically, and the reader will live vicariously through the words. A poem like "Ikon: The Harrowing of Hell" by Denise Levertov reimagines the crucifixion and resurrection, revealing the mystery of both. Elizabeth Spires' poem "Good Friday. Driving Westward" uses the language of the apocalypse as metaphor for a failure of empathy, depression, and isolation as the speaker drives alone through rain on "this endless road with all the others/Night and night's eternity coming on." And Mark Jarman's "Questions for Ecclesiastes" chronicles the struggle of a minister trying to comfort a family after their daughter committed suicide--and fails. These poems avoid religious cliche, instead writing of the realities of life lived.

Finally match language to the mood. Most modern American poetry relies on irregular rhythms, line and stanza breaks, slant rhymes, assonance, and most of all, imagery. Lyrics often rely on regular rhythms, true rhyme, and repeated phrases, both within verses and through refrains, but even song lyrics take advantage of variation. Keep in mind the value of formal and informal language, the range of experience from existential to devotional to confessional to exclamatory to liturgical. Keep in mind the rhythmic value of emjambment versus end-stopped lines. Listen to the language, and match the music of the words to the experience. Leverrtov in "Ikon: The Harrowing of Hell" uses long formal sentences full of parallel patterns that pull the reader through the mystery of Christ's resurrection and his care for his disciples. Spires uses fragments, the broken pieces emphasizing the separation the speaker feels from others, herself, and God. And Jarman in "Questions for Ecclesiastes" has long stanzas, most questions that reveal the minister's failed efforts to comfort before coming home troubled by his failure. The poem ends as the son hears his father "finding the strength to say he had visited these/grieving strangers" while the son questions why God "who/could have shared what He knew with people who/needed urgently to hear it . . . kept a secret."

The following poets demonstrate the complexities of the Christian life in language that is fresh and compelling, honest, at times, despairing, but always with authenticity and heart. Some, like Hardy, explore the loss of faith. Others like Hopkins express their joy in the revelation of God through nature. Others struggle with doubt and despair and personal failure. Still others explore imaginative re-tellings of Biblical stories and events. These poems speak of human experience and Christian experience in all of its many facets. (See also this Instagram video by Kate Boyd on the problems evangelicals have in creating art)