The Language of Poetry

Poetry and Words

Dr. Michael Flinn

Poetry (and this is true of all literature) makes use of words. If there were no words, there would be no poetry. The reason why there are words is because God himself is the Word (John 1:1). To use a title from one of Francis Schaeffer’s books, He is There and He is not Silent, God speaks. In Genesis 1:3ff we read that God created the world by speaking words. Of course, God’s ability to create something out of nothing merely by speaking words is something that is unique to him. As human beings, we cannot create in this way. But this is not the only way in which God uses words. As Schaeffer indicates in his book, God reveals both himself and his plan of redemption for the world by speaking to his image bearers in language that can be understood by them.

This last sentence needs an important qualification. Although God’s words to man are clear and true, and able to be understood in and of themselves, man has chosen to deny and suppress God’s clear revelation of himself (cf. Romans 1:20,21). The sinful mind is hostile to God and does not (in fact: cannot) submit to God’s laws (Romans 8:7) and it cannot understand the things of the Spirit of God without the Spirit’s enlightenment (1Corinthians 2:14).

Because we human beings are created in the image of the One who made us, we also possess the ability to communicate with others by means of words. God has made us with the ability to express thoughts in language. We can articulate emotions, instincts, concerns and needs. We can speak of beliefs and aspirations and we can express theories and viewpoints. We can express with words not only what is happening in our lives, or what the world is like, but we can also explore why it is happening or why the world is the way that it is and how we feel about the answers we have given to these questions.

In the following post, we’ll explore some of the ways in which poetry uses words.

Poetry and Word Choice

In a novel or even a short story, the author has more time to develop his or her ideas or to “paint a picture” using words. By contrast, in poetry, there is a premium on words. Words are chosen very carefully by the poet. They often evoke or picture something that the reader is expected to think about and “fill in” rather than describe or express something in great detail, leaving nothing at all to the imagination.

As an example, have a look at this well-known sonnet by Percy Shelley, called Ozymandias of Egypt:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal those words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Ozymandias is another name for Ramses the Great, Pharaoh of the nineteenth dynasty of ancient Egypt. The central theme of the poem is the inevitable decline of human empires and dictators no matter how intimidating, perpetual, and enduring they might appear when at the height of their power. Ramses the Great had a monument built to his own greatness. Calling himself “king of kings”, a title reserved for Christ in the Scriptures, he wanted all other great men to look with wonder and awe at his works, knowing with despair that they could never compete with him.

Notice the way in which Shelley describes the scene and the words that he chooses. Egypt is not an ancient land, but an antique land. Antiques are ancient things of rarity and value. The “antique” that is presented in the poem is the monument that was constructed in order to perpetuate the memory of this ancient king and his greatness. But this monument, once a thing of splendour and greatness, is now a “shattered visage”, “lifeless”, a “colossal wreck”. It is a thing of death and decay, broken and worthless. Notice also that what remains upon the statue, etched in the stone itself, is the attitude and demeanor of the king. His “frown and wrinkled lip” and his “sneer of cold command” have been carved in stone by the sculptors who “well those passions read”. These are the things that survive, on the “half sunk” and “shattered visage”. In this way, it is not the king’s greatness that is commemorated in the broken statue, but his futile human pride and the disdain he showed for others. Now the king and his empire are no more. And the only “companion” that the statue has is the “lone and level sands” that “stretch far away”, “boundless and bare”. The sand has survived unchanged across the centuries; the monument, however, is a lonely, pathetic and broken relic.

With his careful choice of words and his graphic word pictures Shelley has expressed in 14 lines of poetry what historians, philosophers and theologians might take chapters or even volumes to describe and discuss. His poem asks us to think carefully about the ideas that it expresses and to interact with them.

Words are also carefully chosen in biblical poetry. As an interesting contrast to “Ozymandias of Egypt”, take, for example Psalm 102:3,10. Here the psalmist writes:

For my days vanish like smoke; my bones burn like glowing embers...
My days are like the evening shadow; I wither like grass.

The reader is being asked to think about these verbal pictures: smoke vanishing quickly in the breeze of the day; shadows lengthening as the sun goes down in the evening; glowing embers gradually flickering and dying down; grass withering in the hot sun - and then apply these pictures to the psalmist’s awareness of his life and the passage of time. These verbal pictures are much more evocative and beautiful than a simple description using prose, which might go something like this: “I am not happy. I am discouraged and depressed. There is nothing in the day to interest me. I feel old. I am sick. I feel sad, weak and small.”

Interestingly, even in the midst of his sadness and distressing circumstances, the psalmist can still express himself and his feelings in beautiful poetic language, which in itself is a positive and edifying thing. Ultimately, however, the psalmist’s comfort is in God and in his perfect plan for his people. For this reason, the psalm moves away from contemplation of self to focus instead on the Lord (vss. 12ff). This is the biblical answer to the problem posed by Shelley in his poem. Man’s comfort and consolation in the face of his transience and finitude lies not in self-glorification, but in the eternal Lord and in his sovereign purposes.

Poetry and Word Art

We have already seen how words are carefully chosen in poetry in order to express ideas and evoke (sometimes very beautiful) images in the mind. Further to this, poets often use words, and even carefully place words in a sentence, in order to express their ideas clearly and powerfully. I like to call this word art. For some examples let’s look first at these lines from S.T. Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around;
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,
Like noises in a swound!

These lines are part of a long poem describing the experiences of a sailor after he shot an albatross at sea. Notice how the words have an accent and rhythm that carries the reader along: “The ICE was here, the ICE was there, the ICE was all AROUND… Notice also the way in which some of the words chosen sound like what is being described. “Cracked” and “growled”, “roared” and “howled” all sound, when spoken, like the sounds made by the ice as it shifts. This is a literary device called onomatopoeia. Finally, notice the rhyming scheme. In every stanza the last word of the second line, rhymes with the last line of the fourth. This explains in part why the word “swound” was chosen. It’s an archaic word for “swoon” or “faint”.

In Hebrew poems, although there are some examples of word play in which the word is chosen for its sound, much more prominent is the use of parallelisms to express ideas. That is: an idea will be stated in a line of poetry, and then restated in the next line in order to show either a similarity of idea or a contrast. Here are a couple of examples:

The cords of death entangled me;
The torrents of destruction overwhelmed me.
The cords of the grave coiled around me;
The snares of death confronted me. (Ps. 18:4,5)

Notice how line 3 expresses a very similar idea to line 1 and the same is true for lines 2 and 4. This is an example of what is called synonymous parallelism.

The wicked borrow and do not repay,
But the righteous give generously. (Ps. 37:21)

Here the lines express a contrast. The wicked do one thing; the righteous, by contrast, do the opposite. This is an example of what is called antithetic parallelism. (Antithetic parallelisms are very common in the Proverbs that express a contrast between the behaviour of the wise person on the one hand and that of the fool on the other, or the righteous on the one hand and the wicked on the other.)

Derek Kidner makes the interesting point that this type of poetry is more readily “transposed” into other languages than other types that require an exact correspondence of rhythm and form in order to retain the poetic element.

It is the striking fact that this type of poetry loses less than perhaps any other in the process of translation. In many literatures the appeal of a poem lies chiefly in verbal felicities and associations, or in metrical subtleties, which tend to fail of their effect even in a related language. The programme notes of any Lieder recital are enough to prove the point! But the poetry of the Psalms has a broad simplicity of rhythm and imagery which survives transplanting into almost any soil. Above all, the fact that its parallelisms are those of sense rather than of sound allows it to reproduce its chief effects with very little loss of either force or beauty. It is well fitted by God’s providence to invite ‘all the earth’ to ‘sing the glory of his name’. (Kidner, Derek. The Psalms, Vol. 1, p. 4.)

Ultimately, we can understand and appreciate this word art because we are made in the image of God, who is the great Creator and “Artificer” of this world.

Poetry and Words of the Soul

More than any other form of literature, poetry often puts into words the thoughts and feelings that are experienced at the level of the heart or the soul. Take a look at this typical selective list of categories in this anthology called the Library of World Poetry (edited by William Cullen Bryant):

Poems of the Affections
Friendship
Compliment and Admiration
Love
Marriage
Home
Filial and Fraternal Love
Parting
Absence
Disappointment and Estrangement
Bereavement and Death
Poems of Sorrow and Adversity
Poems of Sentiment and Reflection
Poems of Fancy
Personal Poems
Humorous Poems

This anthology runs to nearly 800 pages!

The Hebrew poems in Scripture also depict and express a vast array of emotions including joy, sorrow, fear, longing, anger, reflection, praise, etc. These poems, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, clearly and powerfully express what the poet was thinking and feeling at the time:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, and am not silent… (Ps. 22:1,2)

How many of us, going through some difficult or challenging experience, have found great comfort by turning to the psalms? The psalms put into words exactly what we are thinking and feeling, in both a beautiful and compelling way. Moreover, the psalms take us through the challenging experience and help us to refocus our thoughts on the Lord and to find peace and comfort in him:

All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord,
and all the families of the nations will bow down before him,
for dominion belongs to the Lord
and he rules over the nations (Ps. 22:27,28)

Precisely for this reason, the psalms are a veritable goldmine for those seeking to offer pastoral comfort and encouragement to others.

Conclusion:

In good poetry, words are never wasted. The poet thinks long and hard about which word to choose, and even where to place it in the line or sentence in order to express his ideas and the beauty of his art. This is true of poetry in every language, including the Hebrew poems that are found in Scripture. Poetry is also the language of the soul, often expressing in a few words, and in a very telling way, feelings and experiences that others can readily understand and identify with. I hope this article has inspired you to read more poems, especially the poems in Scripture, with a new appreciation, and maybe even have a go at writing some poems for yourself.