Poetry has a bad reputation. If it’s not known for being obscure and difficult to understand, then it’s thought of as silly, sing-songy, and trite.
Yet good poetry gives words to the unsayable. It expresses our deepest fears, our highest hopes, our shared humanity–like this poem by Maggie Smith in which she continues to remind herself that the world is, indeed, a place worth inhabiting.
We Christians should know the power of poetry better than anyone. On Sundays we come together to hear and recite it. Those psalms of praise, those prophetic declarations of the Old Testament, even that famous, Genesis 1 retelling of how the world began. Those are poems!
Poetry gives us language to express what we may not otherwise be able to. It can connect us. It can free us from the burden of the feelings we don’t have language to communicate.
This message is excerpted from “Poetry gives us language to express our feelings” by Sarah Carson from the August 19, 2019, blog of the Women of the ELCA.
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Yes, me too!
Looking for Maggie Smith’s poem.