The Poetree Worldview

The blog was my space for cultivating conversations about Judaism; I assumed, not entirely consciously, that anyone who gravitated toward those conversations wouldn't be interested in poems. At some point in the last several years, that policy shifted. I think it was around the time when I committed myself to writing a d'var Torah -- a short commentary -- on the Torah portion each week, and in week two of that new discipline, the d'var emerged as a poem instead of prose.

In recent years I've posted a fair bit of poetry at VR: Perhaps because Judaism is the stuff of my professional life these days -- I work halftime as a rabbi, and the other half of my time is dedicated to writing, with parenting of course woven in to all of the above -- many of the poems I write these days have Jewish subject matter, Jewish references, Jewish ideas. So does all of this make me a "religious poet"? I quail a bit at the term, because it so immediately suggests to me someone who writes the kind of saccharine devotional verse one might find on a cheesy greeting card.

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And yet there's no arguing with the fact that I am both religious by my own lights, anyway and a poet, and that my poetry often arises out of or wrestles with my experience of religious life. Sometimes this takes the form of poems which double explicitly as prayers -- for instance, my poem Without Ceasing , published in the online journal Qarrtsiluni. Sometimes it takes the form of poems which arise out of praying the psalms -- for instance, my poem series Six poems of praise: Hallel , which is a variation on the themes and language of the psalms which Jews recite on festival days.

And sometimes this takes the form of poems about a religious experience -- which I hope are evocative enough to speak even to people who don't share my tradition or my experiences. I'll share one of those below -- brand-new, so this is a world premiere of sorts! This is a poem about the religious practice of wearing tefillin and it's actually the second poem of this sort that I've written -- a while back I posted Ode to my tefillin in response to a prompt from the now-defunct Big Tent Poetry.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy. MORNING PRACTICE When I turn my head the rigging creaks faint scent of tack shop as though I wore new boots competing sensations clamor, wool sleeve versus bare skin and even when I unwind the faint spiral will remain a reminder that I overcame the presence on my shoulder who ruefully reminds me how long my to-do list looms -- she missed the item I reinscribe on my hand and between my eyes, my leather headlamp lighting the morning with its supernal beam. Flat Top-Level Comments Only.

Dissertatio Literaria Inauguralis de Euripidis Supplicibus () pdf

Link Reply Thread Hide 1 comment Show 1 comment. Link Reply Thread from start Parent. It really speaks to the experience of wrapping tefillin. So glad this speaks to you, my dear, and glad it mirrors your experience too! Last year I read "T. Thanks for sharing your love of poetry, Victoria!

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It is hard to understand, but entirely worth it, I think. My English teacher speaks very highly of his work, and I really want to read more of his poetry. Thanks for reading, Joy! This is such a wonderful post! I love poetry, although I don't read nearly enough of it. In fact, I don't write enough either. When I do write poetry, I often feel as if I'm pouring my soul onto a page -- I'm not constrained by rules or expectations, and so I just write.

That is what poetry is to me sometimes.

Truth, Beauty, and Goodness Reframed

Pouring out all my emotions and my heart onto paper, a type of catharsis. Recently I have been as well trying to craft it more into a work of art rather than just ranting. People think they need a whole novel to show a theme to readers, but poets can do it in the space of several lines. This is one of the reasons why I enjoy both reading and writing poetry. I have an amazing friend, Victoria, who I have spent countless happy hours with discussing literature, writing, and movies.

She writes an absolutely fantastic blog which you'll want to check out, and has greatly expanded my horizons on thinking deeply abut Christianity and classic literature. Very sweet and extremely smart, with a beautiful knack for writing poetry herself, she's sharing her thoughts on the importance of poetry with us on the blog today. Without further ado, I'll hand it over to her! I feel like one thing so many young people nowadays are missing out on is poetry.

We read novels and watch movies, and it ends there. But the truth is, poetry holds as much worth and meaning, if not more, than other forms of literature. Let me get one thing straight. Fortunately throughout high school I have been blessed with teachers who have taught me to love it. And poetry definitely deserves more attention than it receives. People call poetry crystallized thought, and that is exactly what it is.

Dissertatio Literaria Inauguralis de Euripidis Supplicibus (1840)

It is truth and emotion all packed into just a couple stanzas, and that is the beauty of it. Arnold achieves this vibrant this with only about fourteen short lines. Then he continues, telling us about Sophocles and his view of the world, and how on this evening we can understand him. Thus in two-hundred and fifty-eight words, Arnold not only paints a picture of Dover Beach at night, but also laments or informs us?

Who am I kidding.

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And honestly, not all poetry exactly holds with Christian worldview. Also poetry is a fantastic way to understand the different worldviews in the different periods of time. The depression of the Great War poets. The memory of my ancestors and their story resides in part with the high, dark mesa. For as long as the mesa stands, people within the family and clan will be reminded of the story of that afternoon long ago.

Thus the continuity and accuracy of the oral narratives are reinforced by the landscape Silko As Lakota scholar Vine Deloria observed, it is landscape that shapes specific worldviews in Battiste ; this means that ecology informs Indigenous languages, teachings and practices, and defines Indigenous consciousness which is rooted in the interaction with a specific space. The Okanagans, who have inhabited the land currently identified as British Columbia before it was named as such by Queen Victoria in Harris , believe that the language of the land is an ancient voice coming from the trees and from all the features of the landscape.

It tells the stories on the origins of the world to the people who are entitled to be its interpreters. As diverse local ecosystems shape different worldview patterns, Indigenous languages are the expression of the relationship that First Peoples have with specific local ecosystems. As a matter of fact, Indigenous worldviews, languages and knowledge are embedded in ecological sensibilities: Not to learn its language is to die.

Howard Gardner

In the part of me that was always there grandmothers are speaking to me the grandmothers in whose voices I nestle and draw nourishment from voices speaking to me in early morning light glinting off water speaking to me in fragile green For the Okanagan people, the Grandmothers are the elders and the ancestors who preserve and transmit the cultural memory of their people from one generation to another. Okanagan cultural memory includes what is usually referred to as traditional ecological knowledge, that is a body of teachings passed down through storytelling Johnson ; Deloira The stories rooted in the land structure the identity of the Okanagan people: As the rest of the poem suggests, the search for stability can only be accomplished through the restoration of a sense of origin and belonging 3 The Okanagan language has been classified by linguists as a Salish language with no written form until the late 19th century , traditionally spoken by the people centred around the Okanagan Valley and the Okanagan River Basin in British Columbia Roed As many other Indigenous languages, Okanagan has undergone a slow process of cancellation due to the imposition of English in residential schools throughout Canada.

What emerges from the last verses of the poem is a sense of urgency and a call for a reconnection with the land Okanagans have been deprived of as a consequence of a violent process of colonial de-territorialization. As Donnelle Dreese notes, part of the postcolonial condition is a sense of emotional and physical dislocation involving a loss of the self and a consequent cultural alienation causing the eradication of traditions This becomes especially meaningful if we consider the cultural importance given to the land by the Okanagan people.

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The verses seem to imply that only when listening to the voices of the Grandmothers the I is able to re-root her identity back to the land and be part of the vastness of the landscape as a mote of dust held together by the very memory of her nation. The I also refers to herself as a seed, thus recalling the power of poetic words that can be seeded into new generations in order to restart the cycle of life. On the contrary, there is no such thing as an untouched wilderness to the Okanagan people, because, as Armstrong herself points out: