I pray in poems: Meditations on Poetry and Faith

Good morning and Happy Advent!  I write this morning to announce that the title of my forthcoming book has been slightly modified to:

I pray in poems: Meditations on Poetry and Faith.

I love this new title, and I’m getting really excited as the production process had begun to pick up steam!

In the meantime, several folks have asked me to share some background on how I generated the idea for the book, and so I offer the following excerpt from the first draft of the Foreword: 

“In Fall 2013, some good folks at my parish, the Church of the Holy Family in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, invited me to give a couple of talks about poetry with themes appropriate for Advent. So I chose some poems, wrote up discussion topics for each, and distributed all the material to the participants in advance. We gathered on the appointed Sundays, and near the end of the conversation about each poem, I threw in a relevant Bible verse.  This strategy invariably precipitated additional layered discussion about the poem’s beauty and meaning.

These sessions were quite wonderful, a combination of brief “professorial” remarks, lively layperson insight, and spiritual meditation.  We filled our classroom to overflowing each time, and several kind participants expressed the hope that I would soon lead another series.  A year later I was asked to do so during Lent.  If anything, the Lenten sessions attracted even more people. Given the strength of the response in my own parish, I wondered if a wider audience might exist for a collection that consisted of meditations or reflections upon poetry and scripture placed side-by-side.  I pray in poems is the answer to that question.

The details above explain some of the choices I’ve made in the book; for instance, I’ve organized the poems according to the liturgical seasons of the year because of the idea’s origin in an Advent (and Lenten) discussion series. I have also included a set of discussion questions for each poem. I encourage brave church leadership to organize gatherings perhaps along the lines I describe above . . . . I hope, among other things, that this book will serve as a sort of “out of the box” resource for Christian Formation programmers. You have everything here you need to put together seasonal poetry offerings!  Yeah!

. . . to aid those folks who might be less familiar with some of the terminology of literary analysis, I’ve pulled together a list of poetic terms and placed it near the end of the book. I’ve kept it short, including only terms I felt necessary for understanding and appreciating the poems in this volume.  Finally, I include an early chapter sharing some tips for reading poetry.  Again, I’ve endeavored to keep it brief and accessible . . . .

Yet I also hope that I pray in poems will become more than just a set of resource materials. Much study, prayer, and conversation have gone into each meditation. A teacher and student of poetry, I know that some of the observations I’ve made are original and unique, products of the unusual approach I’ve adopted of exploring each poem through a spiritual lens, even those works that seem resolutely secular. To explore the theme of resurrection through the chiasmic structure of Heron Rises from the Dark, Summer Pond or to interpret Those Winter Sundays as a poem about foot-washing is to enter new interpretive territory, so I hope that all readers and lovers of poetry will find something to excite and inspire in the three or four pages of analytical reflection I’ve written for each work . . . .”

If you have any more questions about the book, I’d be happy to answer them. Leave a reply here on the website or contact me directly at dwworster@aol.com.

Next: some Advent poetry!