I’ve really been digging Rumi lately (13th century Sufi poet). I really feel a bond with him. I love how he weaves language into a beautiful expression for the love of God.

‘I’m not sure what this question means since so much of the OT & NT is in fact poetry I can’t say I know what distinction you are making here.’ I think the distinction I was aiming at was the same one you highlight a little later in your response, which is that that Mormon culture has a prosaic relationship with scripture (thus scripture=prose poetry=non-scripture). In addition in #3 I mentioned a shift in literary style when it comes to receiving revelations, what may have caused this shift?

“The Bible itself is proof that figurative language is a favored tool of the divine.”

I am not sure this is accurate, it seems like a circular logic. It may have been that poetry was the way of that culture to express their highest experiences whereas the shift away from that in Mormon Culture is sympotmatic of a wider cultural shift. I like the idea of God being a poet and caring about using beautiful language but I am not sure that it is a defensible position.

Your question about community laments is interesting? This poetic style may be reflective of a shift in thinking. The Hebrews at least viewed the community as the subject, the community sinned or was obedient; whereas there is a much greater emphasis on the individual as subject. To answer your question I think she, and in fact we, probably struggle with really feeling that sense of community accountability.

But again thanks for your comments. I will have to look up Finally Comes the Poet.

The poem above seems to describing a religious idea using common Christian imagery and language its the kind of thing I shy away from, its pretty one the nose. The great thing about modern poetry is that it does an excellent job of exploring the spiritual nature of human experience without needing to be overtly religious. Robert Frost and William Stafford as well as the Russian Arsney Tarkovsky are three examples of poets who doe this very well. Further, the poetic need not be limited to written form. Its more difficult for other forms of art to be poetic, but I think that the Cinema has an easier time that other forms of creating its own poetry. Andri Tarkovsky (som of Arsney) was the master of this, certain passages in his films the Mirror & Stalker are without questions visual spiritual poems.

“Does poetry, or other literature, do things for us that ‘sacred’ texts cannot?”
I’m not sure what this question means since so much of the OT & NT is in fact poetry I can’t say I know what distinction you are making here. One of the things that is so marvelous about the Biblical text is all the different ways it communicates to us about the condition of humanity and the nature of the divine and the relationship between the two. The Bible itself is proof that figurative language is a favored tool of the divine. That’s one of the things that makes contemporary Mormon culture a bit disappointing to me, it thinks in prose, preaches in prose, only draws from poetry to buttress ideas always already expressed in prose. Broadly speaking my experience of being in church on Sunday suggests that contemporary Mormon culture does not trust the poetic or believe in the way it works. the spiritual / literary possibilities of the poetic have been traded in for a prose of certainty that relies upon ideology, economy, technology and so on. I do love those rare moments when prose is ruptured by poetry.

“Are poetry and scripture closely tied together? Is the influence of scripture linked to the aesthetic of the words as much as the truth of their content?”

The distinction between form and function is not universally embraced. Literary criticism of the last 40 – 50 years is critical of this distinction. Ferdinand de Saussure famously said there is no distinction between and idea and the language used to expressed it. There is a lot to that idea but on the most simple level he was at least suggesting that if you change the words you change the idea. “Listen closely” and “let my words sink into your ears.” do not mean the same thing, even if people who are dulled to the power of language want to believe that they are both equivalents for “I’m talking here, pay attention!.”

“The purpose of both scripture and poetry becomes the examination of the individual‘s relationship with God or the divine… That God is present in [poetry] is indisputable. What is created here is not only a conversation of how man is like God, but how the individual is like God—how the reader can relate to a being who is all things, who is in every way so unlike him/her that the only way to understand is to find those similarities.”

This feels like a straight jacket to me. Walter Brueggemann has shown that there is a great deal more to it than this. at the very least look at his book Finally Comes the Poet. Granted the topic is a bit difference but the necessity of poetry in scripture, prophetic address, and in the preaching moment has multiple sources and many purposes. Also what would this BYU grad student do with community laments found in the book of Psalms? They might be articulated by an individual but these poems give expression to the needs of a community, and I would also say that in such Biblical poetic forms, the relationship between the community and the divine is already established. Such texts take their form because the author is working within an already existing and known structure.

re 4: I wonder if there are poets who have been skipped or dropped, or re-written because they were not poetic enough. We do not hear of them now because they were prosaic in style? Also, although, IMO, there are elements in the D&C and BoM that are poetic I do not see that as common. For the most part I find the language a bit dry. So was Joseph poor at this?

also, are there modern GA’s that do this well. For my part, I enjoy immmensely Jeffrey Holland.

re 5: does anyone know why Joseph did that with 76 but not with the other ‘visions’ he had? I like the idea of demanding experiences requiring demanding style?

On a personal note,since being ill I find myself almost unable to endure the intensity of experience communicated in both scripture and poetry.That is hard to endure.

Further, now that poetry in many ways is a dying art form, whereas in the past it used to be regarded as the highest form of literary writing, according to Stephen Fry, will this reflect a change in the nature of scripture. Is the stylistic literary shift between the bible and the D&C reflective of a changing view of the value of certain forms of literature? In fact the newest revelations we have in the Church, if my memory serves me correct, are visions and public manifesto’s. Is this important?

I am particularly fond of San Juan de la Cruz’s mystic poetry, and that of Santa Teresa de Avila. They manage to take our physical yearnings for satisfaction and translate them very well into spiritual terms:

¡Oh noche que guiaste!
¡oh noche amable más que la alborada!;
¡oh noche que juntaste,
Amado con amada,
amada en el Amado transformada!
—San Juan de la Cruz, “En una noche oscura”

One of the poems that touches me spiritually is The Chambered Nautilus, by Oliver Wendell Holmes. It has the same theme you mentioned above, of growing in size. Holmes speaks of a sea creature which, as it grows, builds new and larger chambers onto its shell then leaves the smaller and moves into the larger room. The first part of the poem describes this process poetically and declares that it holds a heavenly message for the author. The last verse goes:

“Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!”

That really gets me.

PS — The pic of Morri Creech is nice. Can someone introduce me?