"and though we had fallen into despair, you did not abandon us"

Today I thought I would share with you some of what I've been working on for my senior honors project. Not my own work -- but I am supposed to find an influence who will be the deep subterranean river under my understanding of poetry. For Elizabeth Bishop, that was George Herbert (you'll remember him, maybe, from Easter Wings fame).

Oddly enough, I am drawn to someone of a similar time period: John Donne. Maybe you'll remember me talking about how sketchy some of his sonnets are. Well, Donne is a fascinating character, because he does those extremely sketchy love sonnets (calling them sex sonnets would probably be more accurate)and then he does these extremely moving (but no less shocking) divine sonnets. He writes poems which exalt a woman as his angel and poems which deny the possibility that a woman could truly love. I'm trying to learn his idiom -- familiarize myself with it. Memorize a few poems. Take enough time with him to form an opinion of him which is entirely outside the academic understanding of his worth.

That means that you, gentle readers of this blog, may get dragged along a little bit for the ride. I'm still thinking liturgically from the alternate chapel this morning (remind me later to write in amazement at a clergyman who would come to Messiah every two weeks and lead a service and serve the host for just five or six students, and look as joyous as if he was serving an entire congregation of hundreds). That means that I am going to reproduce here two of his holy sonnets. I'll clean up the spelling a little as I go, where it doesn't affect the rhythm or sound. Ready? OK. Go.

I. Thou hast made me, And shall thy work decay?
Repair me now, for mine end doth haste,
And all my pleasures are like yesterday;
I dare not move my dim eyes any way,
Despair behind, and death before doth cast
such terror, and my feeble flesh doth waste
By sin in it, which it t'wards hell doth weigh;
Onely thou art above, and when towards thee
By thy leave I can look, I rise again;
but our old subtle foe so tempteth me,
That not one hour my self I can sustain;
Thy Grace may wing me to prevent his art,
And thou like Adamant draw mine iron heart.

[You know what I like most about that one? It's incidental, but his spelling of only: "Onely." I didn't clean that one up because I feel like it's interesting. I feel so schizophrenic about God myself sometimes that I love the contrasting idea that he is one. Also, I love that the way he will be sustained is by an adamant blade plunging in and drawing out his iron heart. It's so against common sense. It's the same sense of paradox I get from the Bible itself, you know? In death is life. Draw my heart.]

XIV. Batter my heart, three person'd God; for, you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurpt town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemie:
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

[This one makes me think of a baptism service I saw last Sunday. . . . Everyone had such different stories, different reasonings, except many of them said that they found God as a present help in times of trouble. Emmanuel, right? But I don't think anyone really understands the way that those those five minutes of anecdote and the promise of water dripped on the head, the slight commitment we are able to make, are taken and changed and lead us into strange places.]

OK. That's all. You're free to go, now. Maybe someday I will post my faith integration paper in installments, too. But don't count on it. I'm not such a huge fan of the academic mode of thought. What's more interesting to me is experience with something in which I do not feel mediated, for just one moment.

Thanksgiving? Oh yeah. It's only five days away. = D