Friday, July 29, 2005
Imaginative Reading 7: Poetry
Report from Imaginative Reading for Creative Preaching, a three-week seminar sponsored by the Center for Excellence in Preaching at Calvin Theological Seminary, hosted by Seminars in Christian Scholarship, and co-led by CTS president Cornelius Plantinga, Jr.:
English Department Professor Susan Felch opened our discussion of poetry this morning (primarily by Jane Kenyon and Robert Frost) with a quote from Jane Kenyon:
“The poet’s job is to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, in such a beautiful way that people cannot live without it; to put into words those feelings we all have that are so deep, so important, and yet so difficult to name… We have the consolation of beauty, of one soul extending to another soul and saying, ‘I’ve been there too.’”
From there, we asked three basic questions: 1) Why is it important for preachers to read poetry? 2) Why is it that people are often afraid of poetry? 3) How can the preacher make use of poetry when the congregation is even more afraid of it than is the preacher?
We used explication and discussion of poems to see what poetry has to offer us as persons, preachers, and listeners.
(7-27-05)
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