On Poetry Writing written late at night

I think the temptation of a lot of people, including myself, is to perceive poetry itself as an amalgamation of general thoughts and feelings regurgitated into terse, jumpy sentences on a page. Usually incorporated with the ever-tired image of blue wispy cigarette smoke (seriously blue is not original anymore) or stars and probably a sexual encounter mixed with alcohol.

But poetry is much much more than simple lines about life experiences written vaguely on a page. It should mean something to you and about you. It should open up experiences of the soul, rather than experiences of the flesh or lusts of the heart. If the phrase “What we think about God is the most important thing about us” (Tozer) has any meaning whatsoever, then why aren’t there more Christian poets out there delivering the Truth of the Gospel? Why aren’t we packing lines, stanzas, pages, books with images of hope and resurrection, or of the Joy of our Risen Savior? Why is the Christian poet so silent?

Why am I so silent? I am a Christian, for sure. I love Jesus. But does poetry tend towards the secular and the melancholic? Of course, because the flesh delivers us to misery and despair. We write to much from the heart muscle than the heart spirit. What drives us? What motivates us? What is the primum mobile of our being? What gives the poet meaning?

Even if you aren’t a Christian and are reading this, and don’t agree with me about Jesus, some of this must resonate with you. Is the goal of your line to ejaculate some experience that has been shared by 6 billion other people or to reveal some gear of your heart, to formulate an idea of your beliefs and identity. Even if it is the amoral selfishness of Nietzsche, he wrote lines I envy. He beautifully portrays selfishness and freedom many times. Or if it’s the theosophy of Yeats’s gyres of “The Second Coming” it points to something they believe in that is transcendent to their person. Even their identity is transcendent to their person. Truths about the self can even speak volumes about the identities of every man who walks this planet.

So, I implore anyone who wishes to be a poet, write from the heart of the heart before you write about your experiences in a pub or watching a sunset while smoking a blue cigarette.