Poetry and God

Dear Readers,
It's hard writing to poetry with any religious tint. Yes, references and allusions are acceptable and even can enrich poetry, but any poetry written directly to God seems old and out-dated, or even just simply over-played. The songs on the Christian radio stations sound all alike (although I can't make much more of an argument for pop music; they just focus on a different subject). Christian poetry isn't any different. We have the whole book of Psalms; how could you beat that? Then there's the fact that every writer of Christian poetry wants to slip into using the dozens of cliches that have developed over time. For example: "struggle", "wrestle", "joy", "peace", and "speaking to me" are all words or phrases that I have heard a thousand times. They have become meaningless sayings that people rely on to get their point across. My problem with them is that they don't convey what I'm trying to say, but they're easy to use and Christians react to them because they are similar to what everyone else says. Maybe its the fact that these words unite the whole Christian culture is why they are so popular.

One conversation about poetry that has impacted me was with the director of the Phoenix this year. I was asking her about the kind of poetry submitted; she said that a lot of it was directed as praise toward God. That surprised me, although maybe it shouldn't have. A Christian school should have tons of students writing poetry to praise God. The problem was, they were relying on the phrases and cliches that every Christian uses to explain their life, situations, and faith.

So I've decided to make my Christian poetry decidedly different. It may not be good, technically or creatively, but its an attempt to break away from the formed rhetoric of faith and to forge a new path ahead into the pagan culture that surrounds us. I don't want to forget my Christian roots, but I don't want to make them blatantly obvious. I think that my poetry is trying to be a meditation on the words that God has given us instead of a song to God, which is comforting to me since I think that faith should be based on the mind and not on emotions. Which is definitely hard for me, since I'm a feeeeeler.