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Poetry and hymnody are both gifts to the Church in which authors compress and combine images and words to form the barest number of syllables to form the richest of portraits. Designed for hearing more than reading, the words of the poet and hymn writer give us forms that beg for a voice and whose voice continues long in the fabric of our memory.
I long to be one but am happy enough to enjoy their work. It is almost an intrusion, of sorts, like a little boy listening in to what adults speak in muffled voices, but that makes their gift even richer still.
small minor thing but of interest to me... often when I read mine and others poetry, people say that I read (the criticism is of my preaching also) too fast... Eliot reads with a quick pace, doesn't he-- too slow and the irony and all flag. Harvey Mozolak
ReplyDeleteIt is also interesting that Eliot, while he is one of the fathers of what we called in the 1970's "Modern Poetry" and indeed many of his pieces are shattering and his images grating and scathing, his own vocational life was quite standard, his home life quite besieged by a sickly wife... he was not a Bohemian type at all. Ah, Donne the clergyman (whom Eliot reintroduced to the world). Harvey Mozolak
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