Words Against Despair

[Music] thank you Campbell uh and thanks to all of you for joining us today on behalf of all of us here at the Trinity Forum welcome to this online conversation with Christian Wyman uh on the theme words against despair we're delighted that so many of you uh approaching 1200 uh have registered for this conversation and would especially like to welcome our more than 140 First time guests and are more than 120 International guests from at least 20 different countries that we know of from Ireland to Australia and from Panama to the Philippines uh across many miles and many time zones uh welcome if this is your first time joining us or you're new to the Trinity Forum I'll note that we work to cultivate curate and promote the best of Christian thought leadership and provide a place where leaders can wrestle with the big questions of life and come to better know the author of the answers so we hope today's conversation will provide a small taste of that our guest today is Christian Wyman a poet who's pursuing meaning through words as Marilyn Robinson has written of Christian he has been given the gift to say new things in Timeless language Christian is the author editor or translator of more than a dozen books he was the longtime editor of poetry magazine the premier magazine for poetry in the englishspeaking world and he now teaches religion and literature at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music mus and yel Divinity School one part of Christian story is his childhood with a volatile family in volatile churches in West Texas another part is his unexpected return to Christian faith in adulthood and entwined with these is another story that of a terminal cancer diagnosis one that he has against all expectations now lived with for almost two decades uh Christian is joining us today from Connecticut where he lives with his wife the poet and memoirist Danielle Chapman and their twin daughters and as we talk I I will say to Christian we encourage you to read or recite a poem anywhere along the way that you'd like to Christian welcome thanks so much for having me Tom it's great great to be here well your latest book zero at the bone which you can see over my shoulder here is subtitled 50 entries against Despair and you've included in it poems and Pros written by you but also written by many other people living and dead in all kinds of different forms and all organized into to 50 entries plus two bonus ones so what exactly is this book how do how does this form reflect who you are and and why did it make sense as as the vehicle for you to convey what you what you wanted to say well I published a lot of books and they come out one by one discreetly and and but I always have thought of my work as being kind of seamless is it all been it's all raveled together and I haven't felt the kind of distinctions that the public publishing industry requires you to fall into and I wanted to write a book that included everything that I did and I write poetry I write personal Pros I write critical Pros um I translate I also edit and and I wanted a book that did all of that and so I found myself writing a bunch of things that seem to constellate around forms of disp and and ways out of that ways of fighting Despair and once I had that I was probably about Midway through the book then I'm always Midway through a book before I have any idea what I'm doing and then I I had that and I um began to write towards it I actually went and sold the book first and and that gave me some impetus some some confidence that it could work and then I and then I began to write towards it but putting yourself in the shoe shoes of your readers how would you read this book I mean how yeah how would you how would you approach reading it well I guess there's two ways I mean I the book is very carefully arranged and is meant to be read from first to last it has an arc uh it's arranged in groups of 10 sections and each each section has a major essay and I mean of 10 chapters and each section has a major essay and a group of quotes and and uh it mov moves in a way that I perceive I hope others would perceive if they go all the way through it to to an end and also some of the entries refer back to other entries and so you kind of need them in order to be able to understand the later ones however I do know people who simply open a book and read wherever and I am one of those people myself so if you want to read it that way you can okay it's a judgment free zone thank you for that so so you're I noticed your opening line in the book is to write a book against despair implies an intimate acquaintance with this otherwise with it otherwise what would be the point so I'm wondering as you delved into this theme what are some of the varieties of Despair that you have lived or or seen in others and what are some of the responses that you've explored in your life and now and now in this book well I think I fought against existential despair my whole life I write a chapter about a poet named William Bron who says um I deal with despair because I think it's part of the human condition I don't know how not to and it would be an evasion not to and I think if you don't feel it then um you're not paying attention um that said um we are also called to uh to rejoice and there is a way of treasuring dispair be a luxur and a luxur a luxurious and treasured Gloom of choice is how the poet William Wordsworth defines it a luxurious and treasured Gloom of choice and we all know what that looks like and and that's a sin and um I can certainly fall into that in my life as well um so existential despair was the main thing I was I was fighting against but there are other forms of Despair I have suffered from cancer for 19 years for 19 years now and three times have been on what I thought was my deathbed and and that engenders a different kind of Despair it can be existential but it can also simply be the be the despair of losing the people that you love and and leaving your kids alone and and that particular despair there's environmental despair in the book I'm often in despair about what we're doing to our world there's political despair um so yeah all all different kinds um I have often found poetry to be a great source of relief from despair even poems that are about despair can free you from despair because they articulate the issue they put it in front of you they speak of it as a thing that can be spoken of and often in despair we feel mute so so to zero in on one episode of Despair you you've explained that about two decades ago you had kind of achieved Renown in your profession as a poet and and an editor um Living Art or pursuing Art For Art's Sake and then found yourself in despair so I'm wondering if you would um tell the story of of that and what transformed it and and what your understanding now is of what was what was happening then um yeah I wouldn't say I ever pursued Art For Art's Sake I've never really believed in that I always always thought art was a means to something but it wasn't clear to me what that was for a long time but I um when I was I was 39 years old and I had gone three years without being write able to write a poem and I'd spent my whole life really uh organizing my life so that I could write and uh it's hard to describe if you are not familiar with poetry it's hard to describe exactly how much of an apprenticeship there is um it took me 10 years to write a real poem and it just took me for ever to discover a voice that hadn't been in existence before something that was truly mine anyway I spent a long time in that and then it dried up and and I was just in despair over not being able to write and and a couple things happened in quick succession I met my wife and and um we began we almost went into a church I wrote about this in a book I published 12 years ago or so but we we almost went to church the the day that we got engaged we paused outside the doors and didn't go in even though neither of us had been to church in years and didn't consider ourselves Christians and then we began to say prayers just sort of um it just happened one night we just found ourselves praying before the meal and then we would do it every night and it started out like a joke and then it wasn't a joke and and then shortly after we got married um when we got married very quickly after we met but shortly after we got married I got diagnosed with this cancer which they said was going to kill me and um it made both of us need some form for for the faith that we felt uh I never felt like I had a conversion I felt like I ascented to a faith that was latent within me already and had been expressed by poetry but not not expressed enough or had been halted somewhere and and so we went to church one day right down at the end we only went to the we went went to UCC Church I didn't even know what that was it was just at the end of the street and um it turned out they had a great Minister a young guy who was just on fire you don't always find that in uccc churches I've learned but that this one you did and and um I came home that day and wrote a poem um for the first time in three years and and and the poem was complicated formally and and um I can read it for you real quick um and that was a great I mean an incredible thing for me because I hadn't written in all that time and I came home and I wrote this in 45 minutes it's called every Riven thing and it has a line that repeats but um changes the the punctuation changes so it changes the meaning God goes belong let me Riven means broken or torn God goes belonging to every Riven thing he's made sing his being simply by being the thing it is Stone and tree and Sky man who sees and sings and wonders why God goes belonging to every every Riven thing he's made means a storm of Peace think of the atoms inside the stone think of the man who sits alone trying to will himself into the Stillness where God goes belonging to every Riven thing he's made there is given one shade shaped exactly to the thing itself under the tree a dark or tree under the man the only man to see God goes belonging to every Riven thing he's made the things that bring him near made the mind that makes him go a part of what man knows apart from what man knows God goes belonging to every Riven thing he's made and so I felt like I was given this great gift all of a sudden and sort of everything I wrote flowed from that thank you for sharing that so so focusing um on on your your um relationship with your wife perhaps you you've written there is in human love both a plea for and a promise of the love of God and I imagine in your life in the circles you're in uh and and perhaps with us today on this on this discussion we have um folks who value human love but perhaps have not made that further connection the love of God what what do you say to when this this comes up in conversation with such folks well there's a great line from the novelist Elizabeth Bowen uh to turn from everything to one face is to find oneself face to face with everything beautiful line so if you turn to a particular person you find that everything else in your life has got your attent more of your attention to it's not a zero SU game and my experience at that time was of a love that was um very much directed towards Danielle but it everything else was lit up too it went through her and lit up the world around me and it seemed to be um very much bound up with faith it seemed to demand a love Beyond this human love it seemed to it seemed to to include and demand that and yeah so that's what I mean by that quote I think I think it's important uh not to think of it merely as romantic love I think that the love that can do that um can be for our children can be for the world can be for our work uh it it it can can take all kinds of forms it's not merely romantic love some people aren't good at that some people don't get it you know they don't they don't get it in their lives uh it there but but we all I think are given some kind of chance at love and joy in our lives and then if I can um then mention Another Part Of Your Story that you alluded to your your um cancer Journey how are you today from from a health standpoint Point how what where are you on that on that Journey now and is it a surprising place to be well I mentioned three times I've been close to death the last one was a year exactly a year ago I um had what's known as carti cell therapy and they take out your te- cells in your immune system and um uh in your bone marrow I mean and and um they genetically re-engineer them and then put them back into your body and it's an experimental treatment I was the first person I believe in this country to have it with my disease although other other forms of cancer people with other forms of cancer have had it it was first it was invent five years ago um and it worked on me so it has worked completely so yeah I'm in great health today I'm running and in really good health wow that's a we're all grateful grateful to to uh to know that Christian um you know a book that you you mentioned your book my bright Abyss meditations of a modern believer which um is from 2013 and so I guess I'm interested in how your that book and your life at that time relate to this book and your life at this time uh although I realize when you writing even the the current book you were in a very different place than you are today based on what you just told us M yeah well let's see my bride AB came out um just as I was leaving poetry magazine I edited poetry magazine in Chicago for 10 years and that's the largest poetry magazine in the English-speaking world the oldest and the largest and and um it's kind of a long story how I happened into that but but that was uh 10 very important years and wonderful years in my life and that's where I met Danielle and and uh I decided I need to make a change and um after those 10 years and so I did a lecture at Yale at the Divinity School and I really liked the students I got to spend time with the students and so I wanted I really wanted to do something where my faith was more forward it was more involved with what I did and the the literary world is an absolutely secular World um and and so I wrote them a letter and said they needed to hire a poet and I mean it was a really uh strange thing to do and right now that I'm here I can see exactly how strange it was because I don't even I don't have any graduate degrees or anything and and um but they they eventually came around to the idea so it was it worked out and and uh so I came here I've been here 11 years now and so that's just a complete change in my life not only had I never I mean I had taught before but it had been in in uh English departments and creative writing departments and um and this is utterly different in the Divinity School um so yeah that's a that's an enormous enormous change and what were you with my bright Abyss uh announce trying to explain to the world it has a bit of that that um Dimension to it doesn't it it does I guess I mean there were two I mean I'm always only writing because there's something in me that is burning to get out and uh I mean I'm a writer and you can't go through a huge existential change in your life like that and then not want to articulate it you know not want to somehow um figure out what's happened to you and so that's that's what that book was was an attempt to to figure that out to figure out what what what do I mean when I say faith and you know faith in what and what does what do I mean when I say God what in the world do we mean when we say that um it's not at all evident people have been trying to answer those questions since the beginning of time and uh so yeah that's what that book was at the same time I began to be asked to speak around the country to a lot of different groups and I just realized that I kept meeting people who um and this was actually before my brother abys I published another a book of poems that led to this and that that poem was in it um and I kept meeting people who had a real hunger for God but felt utterly disconnected from religion and um sometimes they had been raised religious and Fallen away sometimes they hadn't and but just had this hunger for uh truer existence and I wanted to say something to those [Music] people well if to to focus in a bit on on poetry and and your vocation I'd like to read um a quote from you I'll preface it by saying we all use words all day every day um but the world is uh pretty inhospitable for going deep uh and it's probably getting worse and so poetry is not something that's part of live our lives from many of us so so you you write in the book sometimes the mystery of existence that we exist at all that we feel so homeless at home in this place gets embedded so deeply in life that we no longer feel it as mystery language 2 partakes of this sterilizing sameness becomes in fact as solid and practical as a piece of wood or a pair of pliers something we use during the course of interchangeable days poetry can reignite these dormes of both language and life send a charge through reality that makes it real again and of quote so I'm wondering is there a poem you'd like to share and perhaps unpack a bit that sends a charge through reality in the way you're you're talking about uh yeah yeah you know the one that does it for me is a poem by carolan Duffy um it's called prayer and um I often I mean I think like a lot of people I often find it difficult to pray I do pray but I often find it difficult to pray and and feel at times as if there's no point to it as if I'm simply speaking into a void um and then there come magical moments when um I feel something like a prayer released from me or almost as if I'm praying without knowing it I was praying without knowing it I often feel like that writing I'll write something that turns out to be a prayer or but it can happen in the world too uh and and carollyn Duffy has this poem called prayer where the landscape seems almost to pray for us or with us and the only thing you need to know is um if you've ever spent time in England some people uh regulate their lives by the shipping forecast which is on the radio and and uh you'll you'll simply hear the names of it's It's the weather forecast and you'll simply hear the names of these towns along the coast and she ends the poem with th those names of the shipping the shipping forecast some days although we cannot pray a prayer utters itself so a woman will lift her head from the Sie of her hands and stare at the minims sung by tree a sudden gift some nights although we are faithless the truth enters our hearts that small familiar pain then a man will stand stock still hearing his youth in the distant Latin chanting of a train pray for us now grade one piano scales conso the lodger looking out across a Midland's town then Dusk and someone calls a child's name as though they named their loss Darkness Outside Inside the radio's prayer Rockall Malon dogger finair I find that just unutterably beautiful and has these perfect lines like um hearing his youth in the distant Latin chanting of a train you can almost hear that train there the distant Latin chanting of a train and then that beautiful ending finished AA means Land's End so this prayer is coming from the very end of the land it's like um it's it's a sort of the ultimate despair this prayer is reaching into ultimate despair it's beautiful it is and and you've written how how for you sound is really the beginning of of encounter with poetry but so so there's a real a real blessing to us in hearing hearing it aloud I think yeah well you know Christianity and poetry are are uh very much linked God speaks the world into being and and of course at the beginning of the book of John you know in the beginning was the word and the Word was with God and the Word was God um language is bound up with Christian faith uh and I I think I read a wonderful book recently actually wrote a review of it by a scholar named Michael Edwards called The Bible and poetry which argues that um Christianity has in some ways become distorted because it has lost its connection with poetry because it hasn't and he he goes through and talks about the ways in which if we read these things poetically um uh will understand our own faith better I found it very convincing but then I would so it you you in this book you talk about the Bible's poetic Dimension is one that we often Overlook um and some of the passages that that that you refer to are the Book of Job um and also the story of Jesus writing in the sand um and uh yeah these are wide- ranging passages that I think most of us don't aren't obviously poetry to us so what what what difference do you think it makes if we can Embrace this perspective that you're that you're describing um well job I think is obviously poetry because it begins in pros and then it ends in pros and then the meat of job what we think of is the book of J main part of the Book of Job is all verse and it's very clearly marked in most Bibles um so clearly the writer wanted to say something different there and it's interesting when God speaks he speaks in verse speaks in in in Job that it comes to us in verse um yeah I think I think the Book of Job is trying to get in a different order of experience there um when God finally appears to job after all of his suffering um he doesn't give him any answers what he gives him is this blast of beauty and basically says you know where where were you when I made the the whale and the horse and the lion and all you know these all one thing after another and and part of the effect of the Book of Job is being overwhelmed by that sort of rhetoric uh there um and it it has to happen in poetry and and and and it needs the Poetry to have its effect and um another part of the Book of Job and what makes it I think one of the greatest works in Western literature is uh that you can never pin down the meaning of the Book of Job the minute you think that you've understood the Book of Job you can read some other part of it that slips free and you can argue that the devil wins the bet in the Book of Job you can argue that God that that God wins the bet you can argue that job is faithful he's Unfaithful that it the the book contains it all and it does it because of the way that it exists as poetry um there's a wonder I mean it's I find it very instructive you mentioned that passage of Jesus writing in the sand I find it very instructive and maybe even a hermeneutical lesson meaning that a lesson for interpretation or how to interpret the Bible um Jesus never writes anything down and the one time he writes something not only does he never write anything down he seems not to care if anything is written down and the one time that he writes something he writes in the dust and we have no idea what he wrote absolutely no idea he could have been dood like we have we have no idea it seems almost triumphantly perishable and uh it's a kind of lesson I think um um for how for the imperishability of things the transient of things and learning to be at ease with that and to think of Jesus as also as a way perhaps and not a Ser of Christianity not not as a series of doctrines which are written down there's a great um I was talking to a class the other day that at the end of the psalm 148 I believe it is the um we are enjoying to praise God which is familiar from the Psalms but then the uh animals are enjoying to praise God and rocks praise God and rivers praise God and and and so you know what is going I as my class you know what's going on there Augustine thought that um that of course this couldn't be right and so what what must be meant is that these things praise God when we see them with the right Vision or they they manage they praise through Us in some ways because of course they're not conscious but what if we simply read it as the poem it is because it it sure looks like the world is praising God like these things are sentient almost and more and more of what we learn about reality is that real Consciousness is much more widespread than we thought and the world is close to some kind of sentence and so that's what I mean by reading these things as the Poetry they are I think I think the Bible is just much more um much Wilder and um more multivalent than we allow it to be and that's what that's the Poetry of it let me let me mention to our audience we'll turn to some audience questions in a few moments thanks for um sending them I see we have some good ones coming through so let me ask one more and then we'll turn to those um one of the poets that you a Christian poet actually that you reference quite a bit is George Herbert um you you referen for example one a poem of his called Bittersweet and um your book reminds me of that in the sense that it is full of both praise and lament sometimes hard to tell where one ends and the other begins so it it seems to stem from a a view that Despair and Joy are really Inseparable um am I am I getting that right is that is that how you how you experience things and and does one find that in your in your work I think they often are inseparable I think uh even Joy is is shadowed with sorrow in this life um CS Lewis in surprised by Joy you know says that it makes us homesick makes us uh feel homesick for a home we didn't realize we had which I think is a great way of putting it there's a poet I love Richard Wilbur and he looks at a brook and at the end of the brook he he describes it perfectly all the way through and at the end he says Joy's trick is to supply dry lips with what can cool and slake leaving them dumb struck also with an ache nothing can satisfy so that feeling of being absolutely fulfilled all of a sudden and yet also um uh not destitute but but there's a lack there's some lack that you're aware of which I think is God I think what what we feel in in a moment of joy is the call of God and and it can be a destabilizing and troubling thing if we don't know what to do with the moment of Joy Jurgen molon says it's that compassion is the other side of a living Joy so that A Moment Of Joy should make us wonder why other people don't have joy or why don't I have joy in my life more often um yes and I also think think that uh in the midst of great despair it is still possible to feel Joy and um uh not happiness happiness is a temporal quality whereas Joy is an eternal quality cutting in like this from vertically um chological um but we can feel uh happiness I mean joy in the midst of great suffering uh you know I remember my kids coming into a hospital room when they were 3 years old and it was when we first moved to New Haven this was the second time that I thought I was at the end of my rope and we're in this hospital room and first of all they were just uh thrilled that I had ordered an extra pudding and I gave them my two puddings I have twins and and then they were just amazed at the Machinery that was some of which I was hooked up to and not just amazed but amazed to the point of uh Joy you know it just seemed to them they didn't realize why I was there you know they didn't they couldn't take that in at three years old but they felt joy and their Joy gave us joy I mean they for a minute that you know you know the way that you respond to kids they it's like Joy is the default setting of existence for them because they just they feel it they feel it over nothing and and I think it's quite possible to to feel Joy in the midst of great suffering the great gift of God well let me turn to uh some of the questions from our from our um guests one of them comes from Sarah pickle and she she asks it seems the great poets and other artists exemplify a particular form of attention which stretches us out attender toward the world itself how would you think about the relationship between attention and hope or at least end during despair that's a great question I mean the question almost answers itself um uh Simon V said that you know any absolutely unmixed attention is prayer and you could quibble with that but I find it a helpful notion that um to think of prayer as being us giving our whole attention to something no matter what that is that could look like poetry for one person it could like look like carpentry for another um it could look like this it could look like paying as much attention as you can to these questions or to any you know to to what they are doing in your life um I had not thought to connect that with hope I don't think and that's what I really like about the question um because it's true that um and I'm going to read a poem at the end of this for the last word which which is about this it's true that um often Hope and Faith too is a matter of turning simply turning your attention in the right direction that that is you feel like you're not believing maybe or I don't really ever not believe in God but I often feel like I can't feel God and and and um if I am able to turn my attention in the right way uh I find that reality gets activated and that is Hope yeah so we we got an interesting question and I'm gonna combine it with with something you've you've written that uh I I thought was interesting that an anonymous tendy asked not too many people read poetry nowadays how might we encourage more poetry reading and make it as accessible as possible for an average reader now something you've written I'll quote here is institutionalized efforts at actually encouraging the overc consumption of poetry always seem a bit freakish ill conceived and peculiarly American like those Mythic truck stops where anyone who can eat his own weight in rump roast doesn't have to pay for it um I'm very grateful to this questioner for giving me an opportunity to read that quote which I think is a great one but how do how do we get it right well you know I I wrote that when I was in the midst of working for the Poetry Foundation they're the publisher of poetry magazine and that's a big institution they they got a a grant of $200 million and now it's grown to I don't know what some huge amount and so the foundation exists to get poetry in front of people to make it more present in American life and I was originally um very much at the Forefront of that and helped to create uh like the national recitation project with Dana Joya that um has well over a million people million kids doing it now where they they recite poems that it at every state level and it ends up in DC for a national competition um and I'm proud of that I think that was a great thing but some of the efforts at uh getting poetry in front of people I think involve dumbing it down and and I don't like that I think I think it's better to lift people up um to teach people that the difficulty that they think they're experiencing in poetry is often not there A lot of times I will read a poem and I don't understand it but I love it and there are poems that I have listened to I've had in my head now for 30 years um that I still don't don't fully understand I in the second chapter of my book I quote Wallace Stevens is domination of black which is a difficult quote difficult poem I don't fully understand it and I talk about that in that chapter but it's a very great poem and it operates like a a kind of spell or a charm and uh as some of the Bible does too actually and you can't which is the reason you cannot reduce it to some sort of message um if you can learn to let poetry happen to you like music happens um not all poetry but some and not think that it is simply um rational discourse prettied up you know made made sort of made sort of uh prettier um uh that can free you that can free you a lot um I find that there are a lot more people in this country who read poetry than you think um I mean I just went to a conference where I don't know thousand people there to hear poems um there were a lot more than that at the conference but this was at just at the this one event um so that's the first thing I think learning to learning not to be thwarted by the ways that poetry has been taught um which is often teasing out this these tiny meanings from lines rather than simply listening to it appreciating the whole thing take what you can from it sometimes a poem is just a feeling or a sensation that you take away and uh not not some uh articul articulable message you know so that's the first thing the second thing is that I think there are tons of poets out there who are perfectly clear I that poem by Caroline Duffy there are lines there that you would have to read you might pause and think about and but but the poem itself is just not that difficult it's pretty clear you know and there's a lot of that out there um for people who are interested another question comes to us from John Barber and um John says we all have those Comfort TV shows movies albums Etc the things we repeatedly turn to at our lowest what are some poems that you keep coming back to when despair is at the door well I do read George Herbert quite a bit he's somebody that I've been reading most of my life and and um I find he really articulated um some things that helped me over and over and over um sorrow was all my soul I scarce believed till grief did tell me roundly that I lived I mean this is back in the 16th century somebody saying that they're so sorrowful that that only their grief could keep him alive or um um so that's one honestly there's so many I'm reading a poet David Ferry right now he died at the age of 100 I think a year ago maybe two years ago and he wrote a handful of just absolutely beautiful poems that I returned to over and over my wife and I did an event to inaugurate the Robert Frost room at Yale two nights ago and so I was we were both reading Frost together and we realized how much those poems um have been with both of us for all these years and that's something I return to I mean Shakespeare is always something we're always talking about when you're young you know you read if you're a poet there there can be something predatory in how you read you you you want to get something from it and you're often competitive with it um as you get older you read to make connection and I found I've become a much more sympathetic reader as I get older and I I read to make connections with people so my wife will read something and I will definitely go read it so that we can have a conversation and or or um uh you mentioned Miroslav Miroslav wolf and I are always passing things back and forth and um so yeah there there are a lot of poets that I that I keep returning to what uh just since you mention mention it what's what's life like in a two- poet family well I I've heard some bad stories and people certainly gave me warnings but it's always been great for us in all honesty um we share poems not often but she's basically the only person I show my poems to uh before I publish them and um it's hard for me to imagine living with someone who didn't understand and the the exigencies of making poems the loneliness of it um uh and also the raptures of it and so I've always found it great you know I I've always found I have I have no bad things to say about that but I've heard some terrible Stories the um uh and I guess I'm I'm also curious uh you talk a lot about your childhood in the books and and clearly there were some difficult things um and now you have children how do they engage with your poetry are are they aware of it and so how does it affect their their Consciousness oh well they came to that conference with us few days ago they were bored out of their skulls that's how they engage with it they don't they don't like it at all they're 14 um they used to memorize poems and uh they still have some poems memorized and they are both probably I mean they're so intelligent both of them I expect they're going to poetry will be a large part of their lives but when you're 14 you turn away what your par away from what your parents do you know so it's as if I'm a I mean I is I could be a stock broker or something anything you know they don't it doesn't register with them really and they're so used to like they're so accustomed to being around people who write books because everybody they know writes books and and um it's just nothing to them they just think that's the most normal thing in the world that that people have published all these books and we we actually got a question on on the theme of children um from Mike Ford who just mentions throughout the book The anecdotes regarding your children and the way in which they saw or see or inhabit the world for for example um and something you mentioned with a butterfly stuck versus clinging to to a door I I think uh often touched him why why is it that what children can often reorient us in our despair I think it might have something to do with what I said earlier it's like Joy is the default setting for a child I mean it what's so amazing is that like even if a child becomes Disturbed when they're older there is a time when they're young for almost all children when Joy is just like I say it's just all the it's just there I mean of course there's they cry all the time and all that but if you think of the times that you experience joy in your life like if you go through a day today you know have you had a moment of rapturous Joy maybe not probably not but but if you're a little kid you don't go through a day without that there's always something that is just so shocking that it it just you know I was reading this book the other day and this woman was describing her little kid and and he was uh in their yard and he he found an earthworm and the earthworm was crawling over his hand and all of a sudden he shouted I can't believe this is happening to me and it's just wonderful you know and and so that's I think that's why that they um they are not uded yet by um all of the Nets and veils and traps that fall around us as we get older I mean what if we could retain that there's something in every poet that that they that is what being a poet is and some way is retaining some element of that Vision um I once a friend of mine once said he'd never met a decent poet who wasn't just an adult child he he was saying that negatively actually he was saying it negatively but but I think there's a positive side as well that um there is something that you retain that enables you to see the world as children do does your does your own poetic practice give you access to those elements of your childhood to and and even to elements moments of Beauty in your childhood that that maybe you wouldn't be accessing if if you weren't digging in so deep definitely yeah things I I don't I would say that I remember almost nothing of my childhood but then uh what I do remember has come up through poem that the language releases it in some way yeah okay another another question that uh raised raised something that you refer to quite a bit is um it comes from Kendra Thompson who asks can you talk about the theological notion of the apophatic how is this not despairing I say a apophatic was a word I wasn't super familiar with until uh reading your book and I think there's a lot there so I'd love to hear you unpack it a bit well apophatic just means um thinking about God in terms of what we can't say about God it's the notion that we can't you can't ever say anything positive about God because we don't know anything about God we don't even know what it means for God to exist you don't know we don't know what existence means for God and so apophatic theology tries to um um go at the problem of God by um unsaved or negatively saying uh things um um so it's an attempt to my reart uh says we pray God to be free of God we pray God to be free of God so we pray to God most of all to free us from that word God to free us from the notion of God and to somehow get beyond that that's that's what apophatic theology is Simon V is perhaps the greatest modern Expositor of it though she didn't she wasn't really aiming at that um but her work has been really important to me um I find it very useful I don't find it um a place to rest in that is I don't I don't I don't think of myself as having an apophatic Faith but it but it is um I find it very helpful in um thinking about God another interesting question comes to us from Esther Kim who asks a question that I I don't think um you should take personally but how does writing poetry walk the line between glorification of the self Naval gazing desire to express oneself and glorification of God which might be more like being forced to look outside the self yeah great question I think uh um uh there's there's a the feeling that a lot of poets have Keats once articulated this very beautifully that when he was writing he was the least poetical thing in existence because he felt like he took on the existence of things outside of him um I think it's a real uh misunderstanding of poetry to think that what you're doing is articulating yourself you may be dealing with autobiographical elements but often you're not I wasn't in that poem I read didn't have anything nor in Caroland duffies they didn't have any autobiographical elements in those um but often the feeling what poetry does is actually erases the self you feel like if you're going to write a real poem you've got to get yourself out of the way and let that move through you that energy move through you and be what it will be and um the feeling is is of yourself being obliterated and the weird thing is that like that poem I wrote that I read I don't really feel like I wrote it it felt I don't have a memory of writing it and and I don't I don't take any pride in it like if you tell me you hate it I don't care it was just it was just a huge moment in my life and and um very important and and I don't and I felt like myself was obliterated and there was the poem um so I think I think poetry is not is often not about the expression of the self the modernists were very adamant that it was about the extinction of personality and uh they went too far in that direction but but you're not pouring your feelings on the page necessarily somebody uh has asked about mirav wol whom you mentioned and whom we uh had an online conversation a few weeks ago and just a simple question do you think you and Miroslav are working on the same question how to live well well we're writing a book together actually we're um we've been exchanging these letters for the last year and a half and it's just about done um maybe we certainly talk about these things a lot Miroslav is is much more socially focused than I am he thinks of social things in the world and and problems in the world and and my mind doesn't go there to tell you the truth I mean I am an artist and I I uh I feel very much committed to um honestly just language at the level of at at the most primary level and I find that if I do that sometimes these questions get answered but I don't aim to aim to answer them in the way that mirav does um but it's possible it's certainly possible I know he's helped me he's helped me enormously mirav is a wise man one I'll ask one more question then I'll have a few announcements and then and then the last word this one comes from Katherine helmer's uh she quotes you often in despair we feel mute you said wrting uh that poems about despair can mitigate it by naming it as a thing that can be talked about how would you encourage a mute person in this sense to break their Silence of speechlessness in dealing with the overwhelming weight of of life um well I don't I'm not quite clear if that question has to do with poetry or not um you know one thing I did have done throughout my life when I was in despair is memorized poems and I found that they gave me a voice and they gave me uh these kind of the kind of ballast for my emotions and so that I had them there and so they gave me speech when I didn't have speech and so that's one thing I've I've um I encourage my students to do and I've done it very very deliberately when I've been depressed or in Despair and those are different things uh um but if the question is you know you feel mute how do you get out of that I'm not the best person to answer I don't think I don't I don't know okay well well thank you Christian a few a few uh brief comments and then as I said we'll go to for the last word um and thanks to everyone who's been participating um with us today um for our for our guests immediately after we conclude on your screen you'll see an online feedback form and we're very grateful for your thoughts on how we can make these conversations even more valuable to you and as a small token of our appreciation to you for participating we'll give all of you who participate a um gift uh of of a free digital download of one of our Trinity Forum readings some of the ones we particularly recommend that relate to today's are include people like Gerard Manley Hopkins uh Emily Dickinson John Dunn um and uh who's another one that uh you mentioned who's uh oh Simone V we have something something featuring her we'll also send you tomorrow a video link to this conversation that you can share with uh friends and would love for you to do that and we'll include recommendations uh on some related readings we'd love for you to get involved with us and become a member of the Trinity Forum Society uh by doing that you help us put on events like this uh you can join today online at our website which is tf. org and as a special incentive uh we are offering a free signed copy of Christian's latest book zero at the bone when you join or the society or with a gift of $100 or more and if you'd like to sponsor a future online conversation we would love to hear from you about that we have a few exciting events coming up we would like to mention one is next Friday please join our discussion with John Mark comr you may know him from his previous B the ruthless elimination of hurry you've got a new one called practicing the way and we'll be we'll be delving into that uh for those of you in Nashville we'll be having an evening conversation there uh a live event with John inazu on May 8th on his book learning to disagree and then looking ahead to June we'll have some online conversations with people like Amy low Elizabeth Oldfield and David Bailey with Mia chungy and you can register for all of them on our website now you can also find all our past ones on our website or our YouTube page um and for those of you who are podcast fans you can find our Trinity Forum conversations podcast uh at your at your favorite podcast platform okay that said over to you Christian for the last word so this is a short poem um about those moments when we do feel in despair or overwhelmed by the kind of despair of the world and and uh what happens if we can turn that into attention it's called when the times toxins when the times toxins have seeped into every cell and like a salted plot from which all gra all rain all green are gone I and life are leeched of meaning somehow a seed of belief Sprouts the instant I acknowledge it little weedy Hardy wouldbe greenness tugged upward by light while deep within Roots like Talons are taking hold again of this our only Earth thank you all very much thank you Christian thank thanks to all of you have a great weekend

Channel: The Trinity Forum

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Id: eU1I_8TE-FU

Length: 59min 50sec (3590 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 26 2024