The Soul of Poetry

A Sermon by the Rev. James R. Bridges

UU Congregation at Rock Tavern

May 8, 2005

 

Dedicated to Jim Elsaesser

Last December I read the following news account from Brookfield, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago:

Brookfield Zoo Gorillas Mourn Death Of 'Babs'

30-Year-Old Suffered From Kidney Failure

BROOKFIELD, Ill. -- A 30-year-old Brookfield Zoo gorilla died Tuesday morning following a four-month-long battle with kidney disease, and zookeepers allowed the surviving gorillas to mourn her death in a special way.

            After Babs the gorilla died, keepers decided to allow surviving gorillas to mourn the death of the most influential female in their social family.

 

            One by one on Tuesday, the gorillas filed into the Tropic World building where Babs' body lay, arms outstretched, in an event that primate curator Melinda Pruett Jones called a "gorilla wake."

            Babs' 9-year-old daughter Bana was the first to approach the body, followed by her mother, Alpha, 43. Bana sat down, held Babs' hand with one of her own and stroked her mother's stomach. Then she sat down and laid her head on Babs' arm.

            "It was like they used to do in the exhibit, lying side by side on the mountain," keeper Betty Green said. "Then Bana rose up and looked at us and moved to Babs' other side, tucked her head under the other arm, and stroked Babs' stomach."

            The other animals, including Binti Jua, 16, Nadaya, 3, and Koola, 9, also approached Babs and gently sniffed the body. Only the silverback male leader, Ramar, 36, stayed away.

            Keepers said the display wasn't surprising, because Babs had been a beloved leader of the gorillas.

            "She was the dominant female of the group, the peacekeeper, the disciplinarian, the one who kept things in a harmonious state," Pruett Jones said.

            Koola brought her infant daughter, whom Babs had showered with attention since her August birth.

            "Koola inspected Babs' mouth for a while, then held her baby close to Babs, like she loved to do the last couple months, letting Babs admire her," Green said.

            The keepers decided after the 30-year-old gorilla was diagnosed last September with an incurable kidney condition that she would be euthanized if she suffered too much. Then at a workshop in Columbus, Ohio, keepers saw a videotape of a gorilla wake and decided they would do the same for Babs.

            "We don't know if there is any benefit to the animals for doing this or not," lead keeper Craig Demitros said. "In the wild, gorillas are known to pay respects to their dead in a similar fashion."[1]

 

            My reaction to the news account, as I pondered it, was that this is the beginning of religion.  Right here.  Non-humans were demonstrating religion, a concern with death and loss, of connections to and with those that they love, and perhaps the beginnings of stirrings or hope for an afterlife.  It is a sobering thought that this is religion.

 

            This morning’s sermon is entitled “The Soul of Poetry,” which at first glance seems to be the opposite idea of a gorilla funeral.  But is it? 

 

            First things first.  We may have a glimmering of what we mean by religion from the news account, and by that I mean – the ability to see the connections that bind us together, but what do we mean by soul?   The dictionary provides us a number of definitions, including:  “the immaterial essence, animating principle, or actuating cause of an individual life; the spiritual principle embodied in human beings, all rational and spiritual beings, or the universe; in Christian Science, God; a person’s total self; the moral and emotional nature of human beings; the quality that arouses emotion and sentiment; spiritual or moral force.[2]

             

            These different definitions seem too abstract for me.  Returning to the news account, were these gorillas, in their paying of respects to the dead female, acknowledging the absence of soul in Babs?  To me, the soul is spirit, perhaps the divine spark carried within each of us.  It is breath – and it is that which moves us.  Is that what the gorillas were noting and missing?  We have no way of knowing for certain, but I believe it is worth pondering.

 

            I might even agree with the Christian Science definition of soul – one’s soul is God.  And poetry – good poetry at least, the kind that moves you and opens up new vistas, and perhaps even a God consciousness – again, one that helps us see the inter-connectedness between all that is.  That is, the soul of poetry may be God moving between and within us – making us aware of the connections between us – and everything else….the inter-dependent web of all existence of which we are all a part.

 

            Let us listen to the words of Edna St. Vincent Millay, an American poet who lived through the mid-1900’s.

 

Hymn No. 3 by choir

 

“and let the face of God shine through.”  “The soul can split the sky in two and let the face of God shine through”…..is this what the soul does?  Is it always through the sky – or can it come through the face of another person, or of a tree, or in the sparkles of light erupting from a stone skipping across the water.  Can all of these let the face of God shine through?  Then maybe this poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay is indeed a clue, about the soul, and perhaps about poetry as well.

 

            We Unitarian Universalists have often believed that revelation continues today and that scripture is not closed.  One of the ways poetry speaks to me is by referencing and triggering sensual memories – visual scenes, kinesthetic movements, perhaps olfactory senses, and yes, even sound.  It stirs and moves me in both familiar and new ways.  At times, such poetry can lead me to new insights, both about myself and about the world.  Some would say, like Joseph Campbell, that such poetry is tapping into archetypes, or archetypal memories, memories of places, things, and people.  It calls forth myths of living, both current as well as those of history, as seen in the ancient myths. 

            The soul of poetry, if you will, is that part of the poetry which connects with me, with you, with the poet, which allows those myths and memories to be called forth and relived by us.  It is the divine breath blowing a cooling, or even chilling, wind, around and between us, making us shiver with recognition.  It is the archetype contained within the listeners mind and soul, that when struck by the words of the poem, resonates as a bell within.  This is the soul of poetry.

 

            Henry Wadsorth Longfellow, a 19th Century Unitarian poet, penned these words:

 

THE DAY is done, and the darkness

 

  Falls from the wings of Night,

 

As a feather is wafted downward

 

  From an eagle in his flight.

 

 

 

I see the lights of the village

        

  Gleam through the rain and the mist,

 

And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me

 

  That my soul cannot resist:

 

  

 

A feeling of sadness and longing,

 

  That is not akin to pain,

  

And resembles sorrow only

 

  As the mist resembles the rain.

 

  

 

Come, read to me some poem,

 

  Some simple and heartfelt lay,

 

That shall soothe this restless feeling,

  

  And banish the thoughts of day.

 

  

 

Not from the grand old masters,

 

  Not from the bards sublime,

 

Whose distant footsteps echo

 

  Through the corridors of Time.

  

  

 

For, like strains of martial music,

 

  Their mighty thoughts suggest

 

Life's endless toil and endeavor;

 

  And to-night I long for rest.

 

  

 

Read from some humbler poet,

  

  Whose songs gushed from his heart,

 

As showers from the clouds of summer,

 

  Or tears from the eyelids start;

 

  

 

Who, through long days of labor,

 

  And nights devoid of ease,

  

Still heard in his soul the music

 

  Of wonderful melodies.

 

  

 

Such songs have power to quiet

 

  The restless pulse of care,

 

And come like the benediction

  

  That follows after prayer.

 

  

 

Then read from the treasured volume

 

  The poem of thy choice,

 

And lend to the rhyme of the poet

 

  The beauty of thy voice.

 

  

 

And the night shall be filled with music,

 

  And the cares, that infest the day,

 

Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,

 

  And as silently steal away.[3]

 

 

            To me, these words, though simple, convey images.  They speak to me in volumes, and I’m sure they do to most of you too.  They are rich in depth and meaning – and communicate masterfully in a variety of senses.  They connect with us – they can be called living words, vital, carrying spirit – and stirring the spirit within us, for how else does the sense of sadness at evening arise within the listener.

 

I see the lights of the village

  Gleam through the rain and the mist,

And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me

  That my soul cannot resist:

 

            Joseph Campbell notes that “poets are simply those who have made a profession and a lifestyle of being in touch with their bliss.”[4]  Elsewhere, Campbell notes that his use of the word bliss is synonymous with “rapture.”  He adds, “The religious people tell us we really won’t experience bliss until we die and we go to heaven.  But I believe in having as much as you can of this experience while you are still alive.” (p. 120)  Here is the same hint – about God consciousness, about rapture, and poets.  And if poets are in touch with their bliss, does not this get conveyed through their poetry?  I believe it does.

 

            Then too, the soul of poetry is that which reaches inside of us, that directs our attention inward, deeply so, exploring that which lies within.  Indeed, we Unitarian Universalists also believe that revelation and inspiration come from within, and not only from without.  William Wordsworth, neither a Unitarian nor a Universalist, nevertheless wrote,

 

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar:

Not in entire forgetfulness,

 

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home:[5]

 

            Now if Wordsworth is correct, our soul exists before and after time – and so too might the soul of poetry.  It is as if we are tapping into another dimension in space-time, one which intersects with all other dimensions and with our lives, transcending all – and connecting all in that continuing web of existence.  The poets and their poetry tap into this underlying web through the use of words and meaning – and the underlying web serves as – and perhaps is – the soul of poetry.

 

            Mark Jarwin is a poet who won the 1998  Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, which is awarded annually for the most outstanding book of poems published in the United States by an American.  Parenthetically, the prize is co-administered by the Academy of American Poets and The Nation.  In an interview, Jarwin quotes with approval Robert Frost's statement that poetry is "the philosophical attempt to say matter in terms of spirit, or spirit in terms of matter, to make final unity."   To which Jarman adds, "The attempt to discover and represent meaning and value is, I believe, nearly always a search for transcendent meaning and value."

            Still another contemporary poet, Charles Simic, writes of Jarman’s comment: 

 

This, in a nutshell, is what our poetry has believed since Emerson. God died and we were left with Whitman and Dickinson. Even a religious poet who employs the iconography and mythic structures of traditional faith, as Jarman usually does, shares in that tradition. All poems ask about God through their metaphors as they apprehend a resemblance among unlike things. Secret nostalgia for the absolute is the greatest theme of even our most secular poems, with the accompanying melancholy realization that there's no lasting formulation of the truth. The moment of visionary clarity is fleeting. After it is over we are left with ourselves and our own mortality.[6]  

 

        “All poems ask about God through their metaphors as they apprehend a resemblance among unlike things.”  Is this not still another way of describing the soul of poetry?  “All poems ask about God through their metaphors as they apprehend a resemblance among unlike things.”

 

        From a religious viewpoint, even an extremely liberal religious viewpoint, I believe that the soul of poetry does indeed tap into both the immanence and transcendence of divinity, into the connectedness between all that is in the web of existence, the archetypes carried by us in our minds and genes, the hidden architecture in the universe of physics, and the transcendent power of spirit.   While reading or listening to poetry, we may find ourselves silently singing our familiar hymn, Spirit of Life, inviting that spirit to come unto us, to stir us, to move us, to hold us close while yet setting us free.  And yet, we may also remember

 

There is a great emptiness

In the space that frames each word.

An intrusion of eternity,

Misunderstood, forgotten,

Yet felt

Air gathers strength in the circling wind.

Space lends each word its power

Gives form and substance to thought and sound.

In the quiet storms of our thoughts

Lie memories of silence

Solitary as fields of drifting snow.[7]

 

An intrusion of eternity, misunderstood,

Yet felt.

 

        So wrote Jim Elsaesser, a member of my Stroudsburg congregation several years ago.

 

        To me, it is in that misunderstood eternity that spirit exists and flows.

 

        In closing, I offer you this poem by another of our Unitarian Universalists, Walt Whitman. 

 

There was a Child went Forth

 

THERE was a child went forth every day;

 

And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became;

 

And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part of the day, or for many years, or stretching cycles of years.

 

 

 

The early lilacs became part of this child,

 

And grass, and white and red morning-glories, and white and red clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird,

 

And the Third-month lambs, and the sow’s pink-faint litter, and the mare’s foal, and the cow’s calf,

 

And the noisy brood of the barn-yard, or by the mire of the pond-side,

 

And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there—and the beautiful curious liquid,

 

And the water-plants with their graceful flat heads—all became part of him.

 

 

 

The field-sprouts of Fourth-month and Fifth-month became part of him;

  

Winter-grain sprouts, and those of the light-yellow corn, and the esculent roots of the garden,

 

And the apple-trees cover’d with blossoms, and the fruit afterward, and wood-berries, and the commonest weeds by the road;

 

And the old drunkard staggering home from the out-house of the tavern, whence he had lately risen,

 

And the school-mistress that pass’d on her way to the school,

 

And the friendly boys that pass’d—and the quarrelsome boys,

  

And the tidy and fresh-cheek’d girls—and the barefoot negro boy and girl,

 

And all the changes of city and country, wherever he went.

 

 

 

His own parents,

 

He that had father’d him, and she that had conceiv’d him in her womb, and birth’d him,

 

They gave this child more of themselves than that;

  

They gave him afterward every day—they became part of him.[8]

 

 

 

        Whitman’s poem continues to describe the people, objects, and events in our lives – each of which become a part of us – again, reflecting the interdependent web of existence of which we are all apart.  We are this flaming chalice; we are this room; we are the chair we sit upon.  Their separateness is illusory, for all have become a part of us, and we all have become a part of them.  Them is us, in a continuing, never ending and inter-connected web of existence.

 

        Thank you for listening.  And now it is time for this morning’s offering.  May your souls give vibrancy to your gifts and pledges today.  And please, be aware that your vibrancy of generous contributions will continue to inspire the soul of this, your beloved congregation.  Thank you.


[1] NBC5.com Channel 5 News, http://www.nbc5.com/news/3979093/detail.html.

[2] Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10th Edition, 1993.

[3] “The Day is Done,” from The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,  (Cutchogue, NY:  Buccaneer Books, 1993), p. 64.

[4] The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers.  New York:  Doubleday, 1988, p. 118

[5] Wordsworth, William.  From Ode: Intimations of Immortality.  Taken from The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 3rd Edition, 1989.

[7] Elsaesser, Jim.  Unpublished manuscript.

[8] “There Was a Child Went Forth,”  Walt Whitman, The Complete Poems, ed. by Francis Murphy (New York:  Penguin Books, 1987),  p. 386.

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