The Old Testament is about one third poetry, though none of it looks like traditional western poetry, with our familiar stanzas and rhyming. When is scripture poetry, and why? Why so many symbols and allegories and metaphors? Why not just tell us what we need to do and get on with it?
Poets themselves find it a challenge to define poetry. William Wordsworth said, "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: emotion recollected in tranquility." John Keats maintained that "poetry should… strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance." Emily Dickinsen watched for a physical response: "If I feel physically like the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry." Dylan Thomas felt it in the other extremity, defining poetry as "what makes my toenails twinkle." Geraldine Brooks summed it up in four words: "Poetry is life distilled."
Sometimes ordinary prose doesn't quite capture our emotional and spiritual response. When Jesus knelt and prayed among the Nephites they couldn’t find words to describe it. “No tongue can speak," they said, "neither can there be written by any man, neither can the hearts of men conceive so great and marvelous things as we both saw and heard Jesus speak; and no one can conceive of the joy which filled our souls at the time we heard him pray for us unto the Father.” (3 Nephi 17:17)
Faced with the challenge of expressing the inexpressible - our deepest love, gratitude, sorrow, grief or faith - we turn to poetic language. This overflow of feeling (and twinkling of toes) resulted in the Psalms. Though many of the psalms were probably used in temple worship and for other ritual purposes, many of them seem to be a simple overflowing of the heart toward God. We might try writing a psalm that expresses our own personal love for the Lord. Doing so will be meaningful for those we love, as we dig into the details of our daily walk with the Lord.
Here is a modern psalm from a Korean Christian writer named Ku Sang:
Mysterious Wealth
Feeling today like the Prodigal Son
just arrived back in his father’s arms,
I observe the world and all it contains.
June’s milky sky glimpsed through a window,
the sunlight dancing over fresh green leaves,
clusters of sparrows that scatter, chirping,
full-blown petunias in pots on verandas,
all strike me as infinitely new,
astonishing and miraculous.
My grandson, too, rushing round the living-room
and chattering away for all he’s worth,
my wife, with her glasses on,
embroidering a pillow-case,
and the neighbours, each with their particularities,
coming and going in the lane below,
all are extremely lovable,
most trustworthy, significant.
Oh, mysterious, immeasurable wealth!
Not to be compared with storeroom riches!
Truly, all that belongs to my Father in Heaven,
All, all is mine!
