Calvin Ross, 1960
Diane Zinn has asked about my inspiration for writing and what I enjoy about composing poetry. In response I think of my indebtedness to other writers. Their artistry teaches me. It’s an extensive delight to learn about structures and sounds of language and about poetry’s surprise gifts of unexpected insights for both writer and reader.
In Finally Comes the Poet, for instance, Walter Brueggermann points to the singular prominence of the poetic word:
“We have only the word, but the word will do…because it is true that the poem shakes the empire, that the poem heals and transforms and rescues, that the poem enters like a thief in the night and gives new life, fresh from the word and from nowhere else. (P. 142)”
I’ve also found poetry has candlepower for light across one’s darkness. To borrow a phrase on narrative from Urban Holmes, “Poetry is a way of seeing in the dark.” (Ministry and Imagination, P. 165) Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is an example of this poetic vision. Frost’s words and rhyme sometimes sway the trees as I look into my Tennessee woods for tranquility, reflection on the journey ahead, and for a glimpse into unknowns. (Incidentally, a highlight in college was to hear Frost read his poetry in Stanford’s Memorial Auditorium in 1961.)
Additionally, I’ve benefited as a writer from the wisdom of Mary Oliver. In “Wild Geese” she reminds us of our astounding existence in the grand scheme of time and space:
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine….
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
When Dylan Thomas urges his father “Do not go gentle into that good night,” I hear a sobering, astonishing note on dying. Seamus Heaney’s pride for his Irish father and grandfather in “Digging” prompts me to pick up my pad and pencil to write about my Kansas dad and granddad.
Over my career I’ve written sermons, meditations, research papers, a dissertation, and a book. Only lately since retirement in 2008 have I “finally come” to write poems. I’m grounded enough to know I’ll never reach the heights of the gifted writers who inspire me. In my own way, though, I trust the magic of sonnets, villanelles, and free verse to reveal more nuances of who I am, my reverence for first century Good News, and ways to share it with others — especially my nine grandchildren.
Walt Whitman is not my most favorite writer, but as a final comment on my inspiration for writing and its pleasures, I cite his vaulted view of the poet in “Passage to India.”
After the seas are all cross’d,
(as they seem already cross’d)
After the great captains and
engineers have
accomplished their work,
After the noble inventors, after
the scientists,
the chemist, the geologist,
ethnologist,
Finally shall come the poet
worthy of that name…
come singing his songs.
