Thou Shalt Open My Lips
Nudging the Silver Door open to find...
I’m looking for a way forward.
The digital terrain we traverse, across channels, through streams, into inboxes, affords both glorious and hellish encounters, whether with fellow human travelers, “transpersonal beings,” or low-level spammer bots.
In my article Rupi Kaur: Destroyer of (Literary) Worlds I discuss profilicity, a concept created by Hans-Georg Moeller and Paul J. D’Ambrosio which identifies profile building (now primarily online) as the ascendant “identity technology” which has usurped the old age of authenticity (think “true self”/me me me culture). I believe that profilicity solves one piece of the puzzle which will reestablish poetry’s “return” as a major cultural influence. I put return in scare quotes because poetry is never not a major cultural influence, but what we see, or rather do not see, is the subterranean and darksome influence of poetry sans beauty with a capital B.
Many younger poets have already latched onto, at least intuitively, the importance of profilicity; I won’t rehash my position but you can find it in the Kaur post.
At the same time, let’s be real. The Western Canon, safeguarded for centuries within the University, has been dismantled. The citadel has been stormed, the family crest burnt and stamped out, replaced by a stuffed unicorn, and the buffoons are now serving dinner (it’s vegan). Sucks.
No matter.
Whether or not the University system is recaptured, along with the stewards of literature and the classics it once produced, Shakespeare, Milton, and the King James Bible aren’t going anywhere. It’s not the end of the English literary world.
I recall seeing a Twitter post that remarked that the home-schooled children the poster knew who grew up reading the KJV and Shakespeare were more literate than the people who graduated with him from his college English department. I have no doubt he’s right. If you have even a passing familiarity with the majority of the above authors’ texts you are more literate than 99% of the English-speaking world. In that case, you get a cookie.
But seriously, I’m looking for a path forward, remember? I am a serious man. Now, for myself, as much as anyone, I’d like to suggest the book of Psalms as a training ground for poets today.
To bolster my case, I’ll bring in an excerpt from Donald Sheehan’s book The Shield of Psalmic Prayer:
“In making our approach to the subject of psalmic poetics, three points are important at the outset: First, psalmic poetics are aural and oral—in the ear and mouth—sung (chanted), not silently read. Second, psalmic poetics are communal, holding the meaning of the entire Israelite community. Third, psalmic poetics are actions of blessedness, actions that secure whole communities from demonic human violence: “God is…working salvation in the midst of the earth” (Ps 73:12). I once read a story about a Polish village during World War II in which an old man chanted psalms continuously. For some reason the German army had never touched the village. Though others all around it fell. Then the man died and that night the village priest learned from an angel in a dream that the village had been saved because of the old man’s prayer. The following day the Germans invaded the village.”
In light of my proposal, I’ll tackle Sheehan’s points one at a time.
First, psalms are meant to be chanted, sung, at least read aloud. While I don’t believe that silent reading is going away anytime soon, it is diminishing. I’ve seen more than a few articles in the past several months bemoaning, mocking, and/or questioning the recent phenomenon, particularly among young people, of watching shows or movies with the captions on. There are a number of bizarre explanations for this but I think the answer is fairly simple. Young people have grown up with text and aurality intertwined, which is historically the norm, and they just prefer it. As a teenager in the early aughts, I spent hour upon hour downloading music on LimeWire and compulsively listening to the songs with the lyrics pulled up.
Poets have to wrestle with this on some level. People will continue to read and enjoy poetry silently, I know I will, but poetry and its texts have always been tied to orality and song in a way that makes many contemporary poets uncomfortable, whatever they may say.
Two: the Psalms are communal. The Canadian Northrop Frye, arguably the greatest literary critic of the 20th century, wrote The Great Code: The Bible as Literature, which was named after Blake’s statement that the Bible is “The Great Code of Art” which underlies all English poetry. You can disagree with Blake and Frye, but then you’d be wrong.
All that to say, even if you approach the Bible as a collection of mere literary texts, it has, through translation, held together not only different faith traditions for centuries but also birthed and brought up English poetry, as opposed to merely coloring it. Before the printing press, it was rare to have a completed Bible as we receive it today; instead one was more likely to find, as you still can, a text of just the New Testament and the Psalms. The Book of Psalms is the prayer book of Israel (and I would say now the Church, the New Israel).
With the English-speaking societies of the world scrambling to cohere around a multitude of identities, most of them marginal and incoherent, poets would do well to RETURN, not in the forced trad-LARPING of performative profilicity which is only so much silicon surface, but into the depths of genuinely foundational texts.
New stories are needed, new epics to cohere around and to celebrate, but at present it is difficult to imagine another Shakespeare or Milton coming down the pipe anytime soon. But we can lay the groundwork for such a figure by delving into the lyrical poems of the Psalter, a book filled with the whole of human experience, ranging from ecstasy to despair to boredom and everything in between.
Whether you are a poet or not, these poems written by King David, the Master Poet himself, can be not only an aid in creating a more beautiful world but also as Sheehan so beautifully puts it “a shield of psalmic prayer,” a safeguard against powers and principalities that seek to corrupt and ultimately destroy the image-bearers of The Most High.
Are you still with me?
Point three: We’ve already half-begun on this: the psalms “are actions of blessedness, actions that secure whole communities from demonic violence.”
I don’t imagine I have too many atheist-materialists in my vast subscriber base (if you are one, you’re more than welcome btw). Still, I am taking for granted that demons, or as the secular sometimes call them, “transpersonal beings,” and their activity in the world is very real. I am not here to defend this position, at least not at the moment, though I’ll say I have not always been a Christian and can more than understand not buying this, although I've experienced first-hand demonic activity on more than one occasion before my conversion.
The Psalter serves many purposes and as the story of the Polish man above suggests, I too am suggesting, asserting the spiritual power of the Psalter in spiritual warfare: “The Lord is my light and my Saviour; whom shall I fear?”
Art for art’s sake, poetry for poetry’s sake, has always repulsed me even if I can appreciate the work of many of its adherents. We simply don’t need any more of that. That movement has shot its shot and while the broader culture may not know what to do with poetry, that does not absolve the poets of today. The task of creating work that both delights and binds together communities has been with us for millennia, as opposed to what has become an amusing, idiosyncratic aside to share with other like-minded people with a middle class background.
What communities poets seek to serve is up to them; the digital has smashed the global village and despite the craving and nostalgia for a mono-culture, those days are past.
In brief
Many English poets have taken inspiration from the Psalms, adapting the free verse of the Hebew and the Greek to the English tongue, setting it in meter and even sometimes in rhyme.
is embarking on a similar project, and understands the role and power oral poetry possesses, particularly the Psalter.I am just beginning this investigation and plan to return to the Psalms periodically at Silver Door as I have something, hopefully, useful to say. To end, I’d like to end with Psalm 50 (51), the penetential poem par excellence, written by David after the death of his young son. Within it is one of my most cherished lines of Scripture: “O Lord, Thou shalt open my lips, and my mouth shalt declare Thy praise.”
David does not say: O Lord, if Thou shalt open my lips, then my mouth shalt declare Thy praise.
David knows God will do this for him even in the darkest day. With the aid of the Psalms, let us humbly ask for such surety in the goodness of the Poet of all poets.
Psalm 50 (51): Translated from the Greek Septuagint
Have mercy on me, O God, according to Thy Great Mercy; and according to the multitude of Thy compassions blot out my transgression. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I know mine iniquity, and my sin is ever before me. Against Thee only have I sinned and done this evil before Thee, that Thou mightest be justified in Thy words, and prevail when Thou art judged. For behold, I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins did my mother bear me. For behold, Thou hast loved truth; the hidden and secret things of Thy wisdom hast Thou made manifest unto me. Thou shalt sprinkle me with hyssop, and I shall be made clean; Thou shalt wash me, and I shall be made whiter than snow. Thou shalt make me to hear joy and gladness; the bones that be humbled, they shall rejoice. Turn Thy face away from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from Thy presence, and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation, and with Thy governing Spirit establish me. I shall teach transgressors Thy ways, and the ungodly shall turn back unto Thee. Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God, Thou God of my salvation; my tongue shall rejoice in Thy righteousness. O Lord, Thou shalt open my lips, and my mouth shall declare Thy praise. For if Thou hadst desired sacrifice, I had given it; with whole-burnt offerings Thou shalt not be pleased. A sacrifice unto God is a broken spirit; a heart that is broken and humbled God will not despise. Do good, O Lord, in Thy good pleasure unto Zion, and let the walls of Jerusalem be built up. Then shalt Thou be pleased with a sacrifice of righteousness, with oblation and whole-burnt offerings. Then shall they offer bullocks upon Thine altar.
I was curious where you would go from the previous post; this is the move I was hoping you would make. Great stuff
"If we keep vigil in church, David comes first, last, and central. If early in the morning we want songs and hymns, first, last, and central is David again. If we are occupied with the funeral solemnities of those who have fallen asleep, or if virgins sit at home and spin, David is first, last, and central. O amazing wonder! Many who have made little progress in literature know the Psalter by heart. Nor is it only in cities and churches that David is famous; in the village market, in the desert, and in uninhabitable land, he excites the praise of God. In monasteries, among those holy choirs of angelic armies, David is first, last, and central. In the convents of virgins, where there are the communities of those who imitate Mary, in the deserts where there are men crucified to the world, who live their life in heaven with God, David is first, last, and central. All other men at night are overcome by sleep; David alone is active, and gathering the servants of God into seraphic bands, he turns earth into heaven, and converts men into angels."
Saint John Chrysostom on the Psalms