Names are funny things, I think –
The importance we tack to them,
Of how they’re spelled and what
They mean: leader, servant, or gem
It shows how little we can read into
The lives of those around us
From the people that we barely know
To the people we feel have found us
But I love your name, I love its
sound
Spoken by any voice at all
I love it for what it means to me
I love that it’s a voice I can
call
You see
Your name means safety,
And a heart that’s true
And most of all,
Your name means you
I'm not the poetry guy at all, as I think you know, but I can say with assurance that there is a very long, honorable, and fruitful tradition of blurring the distinction between religious or devotional poetry and love poetry. Notice, for example, how a word like 'passion' has morphed. What originally meant 'agony' has come to mean 'love.' The Passion of Christ turns into a passion for, let's say, Maine coon cats.
ReplyDeleteOf course, anyone who's dealt with affairs of the heart has a pretty good idea why agony and love are really not that far apart....
Alright so.... I have two blogs. One for prose (here) and random ramblings, and the other solely for poetry. These two poems weren't exactly supposed to be here! But apparently I was being scatterbrained!
ReplyDeleteI know about the tradition of blurring the lines between religious/devotional poetry and love poetry. And personally, I hate it. I understand it of course - I mean, when you love Christ a LOT and you love your significant other a LOT then sometimes that love can be very similar. Besides, we only have so many words and terms for love, so some are bound to be used for both. But I just think that Christ, who gave so much for me and has loved me so long, deserves to be on a higher level than my boyfriend. Regardless of how much I care for him. Besides the fact that sometimes people just blur these lines for the sake of popularity or acceptance...
Maybe I'm not being understanding. I've probably blurred the lines before. And I'm not pointing any one group out in particular, but I guess you've struck upon something that I'm passionate about. Since I'm a writer this is a choice I've spent some time in making.
And yes! I know what you mean. Love and agony... sometimes they are simultaneous they're so similar.
I don't think devotional poets who stray into the language of romantic love are necessarily failing to do justice to the Christ and I don't even think they are claiming that their loves are similar--but, as you say, there are only so many words, and I assume there are no words to truly express or cope with the numinous. So the poet uses what's available, inadequate as it may be.
ReplyDeleteThey say that to the man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. But to a man without a hammer faced with a bunch of nails, every stone, stick, or hard object looks like a hammer--you use what you can, poor as it is!