Many people who pray don’t envision a clear image of whom or what they’re praying to. When it happens spontaneously in poetry or prayer-Allen Ginsberg's 'First thought, best thought' ideal -it feels like a miracle, as do all the moments when I manage to get out of my own way as a poet. We seldom match what we think or feel with what we actually say. Perhaps the unmixed attention Weil wrote of is a unity of intention and utterance that’s far too rare in our own lives. In a church or a temple or a mosque, such prayerful lamentation is viewed as a form of expression for its own good, even when it doesn't lead immediately to a change of emotional state. Help me, save me, take this pain away-I am in agony. We mostly use words in the practical world to persuade or communicate, but prayers in various religious traditions can be lamentations of great sorrow. And it broadens the possibility for poetry as prayer, regardless of content, since writing poetry is an act of acute mindfulness. Quite a few authors in A God in the House (Howe, Gerald Stern, Jane Hirschfield, Christian Wiman) invoke the spiritual writing of Simone Weil, including her assertion that 'absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.' This sounds like the Zen concept of mindfulness. Doubt is a given, but we do get to choose what it is we doubt. But both poetry and prayer are things humans have learned to do in order to go on. Sometimes I think that there is a heaven for poems and novels and music and dance and paintings, but they might only be hard-worked sparks off a great mill, which may add up to a whole-cloth in the infinite.Īnd here, you could easily replace the word 'poetry' with 'prayer.' The penny falling to the bottom of a well is more often what we experience. Poetry could be spoken into a well, of course, and drop like a penny into the black water. 'I never think of a possible God reading my poems, although the gods used to love the arts,” writes ***** Howe in her essay 'Footsteps over Ground.' She adds: Sometimes, when I get an answer in the form of an acceptance, I'm stunned. I'd even go so far as to say that submitting my work to a journal often feels like this, too. You could replace the word 'prayer' with 'poetry' with little or no loss of meaning. You'll either get what you want or you won't. I have written that prayer is a form of panic, because in prayer you don't really think you're going to be answered. You can ask for something completely irrational. In prayer you're allowed to be as purely selfish as you like.

speaking to someone you know is not going to be able to speak back, so you're allowed to be the most honest that you can be. Kazim Ali, who was raised a Shia Muslim, observes in his essay “Doubt and Seeking”: In the 2012 collection A God in the House: Poets Talk About Faith, nineteen contemporary American poets, from Buddhist to Wiccan to Christian, discuss how their artistic and spiritual lives inform one another. Writing hasn’t brought me the Poetry Jackpot I once pursued, but it draws on the same inner wiring that flickers when I pray. I’m a not-quite-lapsed Catholic with Zen leanings, but I’ll always pray-and I’ll always write poems. In all these ways, it's like prayer for me. Poetry is marginal, thankless, untethered from fame and fortune it's also gut level, urgent, private yet yearning for connection. These are the central filaments burning through my life, and the longer I live, the more they seem to be fused together. When I retire for the day, I move into a meditative, solitary, poetic space. Poems are written on screens and scraps of paper. No procession.Įvery day, all over the world, these sparsely attended ceremonies still happen. Approaching the front of the church, my plastic book bag rustling against my winter coat, I felt as if I were nearing the seashore at sunrise: the silhouettes of old widows on their kneelers at low tide, waiting for the priest to come in, starting the ritual in plain, unsung vernacular. So few people attended at that hour that the priest turned on only a few lights near the altar. It was part of my offering-the sacrifice I made to honor the impending birth of the Savior-along with giving up candy at Lent. I was raised a Roman Catholic, and though I don’t go to Mass regularly anymore, I still remember early mornings during Advent when I went to liturgies at my parochial school.

'Poetry is useless,' poet Geoffrey ****** said in a 2013 interview, 'but it is useless the way the soul is useless-it is unnecessary, but we would not be what we are without it.' I've given poetry readings where less than a handful of people were present.

Forgotten souls jackpot