“When St. Philip asked our Lord to ‘show us the Father’ (John 14:8), he was an example of what St. Anselm called ‘faith seeking understanding.’”
From Father George Rutler
Today, we start looking at poetry in my Intro to Lit course. I typically have students survey five or six poems about God and love respectively as they start to get a feel for how to read a poem.
Fresh off of a class about interpretation and paradigms, the poems we look at today concerning God should get some discussion started. Poetry intensifies our interpretations of and emotional reaction to the world. These poems are pitched high emotionally as they seek understanding about some aspect of God.
In “Batter My Heart,” John Donne feels trapped. The fact that he needs God means that he needs God to help him do what’s right. If he good choose God on his own, he wouldn’t need God in the first place. Donne is intensifying language from the Old and New testaments, from the laments of the Psalms and some of Paul’s most despairing cries in Romans.
In “Love (iii)” George Herbert offers an allegory for the gospel. Christ offers the speaker a chance to eat with him. While the speaker finds himself unworthy to either be a guest, the Lord offers grace and love in the form of food and fellowship.
In “The Lamb” and “The Tyger,” William Blake reflects on how different creatures reflect their creator. If God is like the lamb, then we see Jesus. If God is like the tiger, then he is terrifying.
In “Battle Hymn of the Republic” Julia Ward Howe gives us a God who actively participates in human affairs and, with war-like proficiency, advances His cause on the earth.
Finally, Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “Pied Beauty” tries to not only represent but give us the experience of witnessing God’s beauty in nature.
I’m excited to see if one of these poems resonates with my students more than others. We’ll spend time on Donne and Blake, but I will call for them to re-examine Herbert and Hopkins in light of our discussion.