Poetry: Refreshes the Parts Other Words Cannot Reach

It’s all poetry all the time at Second. This Sunday and the following Sunday, Ann Wilson will lead a discussion about poetry in a popular Christian Forum discussion before church that has taken place several times over the years – but each time with a different lens and a new set of poems.

And if you’ve not seen it already, please take a look at Mike Willock’s beautiful reflection written in National Poetry Month about poems that he has found especially meaningful over the years, published on Second’s blog a couple of weeks ago.

While “Poetry Sunday” is not something that is exists on any liturgical calendar, Second dubbed last Sunday’s story as its “Poetry Sunday” with the entirety of the service restructured to link sentiments from ancient Jewish scriptures to a huge variety of poems -  some very well known, some less so; some contemporary, some more traditional; all worth rereading beyond the service itself. The booklet can be found here. The service, coordinated by Kendal Ackerman and Pastor Travis, with more than dozen congregants reading a favorite poem within the service, some from their seats and some from the lectern. It was beautifully executed, and I hope it’s a tradition we can continue in the future.

It is always tough to come up with a truly satisfactory definition of poetry – my go-to definition, and one that I have on a poster of my classroom is this: “Poetry is language that calls attention to itself.” But that’s an English teacher way of looking at things. In this church service, the poems were operating on a somewhat different level. It brought to mind the old Heineken beer ad – I’m not sure if this phrase has much currency here, but it was everywhere when I was a kid in Britain in the 1980s, as Brits learned to embrace lager instead traditional bitter – “Heineken: Refreshes the Parts Other Beer Cannot Reach.” Someone with deep pockets ought to run an ad campaign reworking this – “Poetry: Refreshes the Parts Other Words Cannot Reach.”