Seven Poems on Faith, Hope, Love, Grace, Loss, Time, and Memory.
The Full Series of Seven Herbert Poems.
The Darkling Psalter is Going Dark
I’m going to take some time off from adding new posts to the Darkling Psalter in order to work on the manuscript to present to publishers (though there might be a “bonus post” here and there). It will involve creating new notes on all the poems and psalms and editing them so we are looking at a few months of quiet on this Substack.
But never fear - the project will continue afterward.
Catch Up On Previous Posts
If you are new to the Darkling Psalter, it is a project to create renditions of the Psalms (artistic rewordings based in the original Hebrew) and original poems to pair with each one.
You can catch up with previous psalms here: 1, 2, 6, 8, 13, 14, 16, 19, 22, 29, 31, 32, 34, 38, 39, 40, 42, 46, 51, 53, 65, 73, 74, 84, 86, 88, 90, 107, 121, 123, 130, 131, 137, 142, 147, and the Guided Tour.
Read the Darkling Psalter in one Google doc.
Sign Up for a Print Copy of the Darkling Psalter
I’m collecting signups to “pledge” for a print copy of the Darkling Psalter when it is available. Just drop your email into this form and it’ll help me pitch the manuscript to publishers because I will be able to say, “Hey, I have X people who said they would like to have this in print.”
Seven Sonnets based on Prayer(1)
This post is a culmination of a sub-project nested inside the larger project that is the Darkling Psalter. Since this summer, I’ve been trying to make seven poems based on George Herbert’s poem Prayer(1). Herbert’s masterful poem resounds with strange images for prayer (“sinner’s tower… the bird of paradise… the soul in paraphrase…”) woven together with a complex rhyme scheme and internal rhythms. I have tried to capture aspects of Herbert’s poem by applying his form to different ideas (faith, hope, love, grace, loss, time, and memory). If nothing else, this project made me pay close attention to Prayer(1) during these six months, which has been a gift.
What Is a Chiasm and What Does It Have to Do With These Seven Poems?
This series of seven poems has its own structure. It is organized into an ancient literary device called chiasm.
A chiasm is a literary pattern that builds meaning by nesting repetitions inside one another. They are all over the Bible, both in poetic and narrative sections. They can be as small as a couplet or as long as a whole book. Chiasms use repetition to highlight the writer’s main idea, make comparisons, and connect the main idea to other subtopics.
Chiasms have a symmetrical structure that can look like this:
A
B
C
D: The center of the chiasm is often a really important idea
C2
B2
A2
These seven poems are structured as a chiasm. Here is what it looks like:
In this chiasm, Faith and Memory are paired, as are Hope and Time and Love and Loss.
The thing about the number seven is that it has a middle. The middle of this chiasm is the poem about grace, emphasizing that concept through the way the poems are structured. However, each poem is 14 lines long and the thing about the number 14 is that it doesn’t have a middle. So I added an extra, rhyme-scheme-breaking middle line to the Grace poem so that the middle poem has a middle line, a double emphasis.
What does all this mean? You will have to spend some time with the poems and figure it out for yourself, but I suppose I’m trying to say something about how to navigate existence in which there is so much beauty and yet so many bad things happen.
For reference, here is Herbert’s poem.
George Herbert’s Prayer(1)
Prayer the church's banquet, angel's age, God's breath in man returning to his birth, The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage, The Christian plummet sounding heav'n and earth Engine against th' Almighty, sinner's tow'r, Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear, The six-days world transposing in an hour, A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear; Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss, Exalted manna, gladness of the best, Heaven in ordinary, man well drest, The milky way, the bird of Paradise, Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul's blood, The land of spices; something understood.
And here is the series of seven poems in response to Prayer(1).
Faith a Bible Split at the Psalms
Faith a Bible split at the Psalms, the sunless city, Silver that meets itself in the crucible, The curve of the valley, songs on a midnight piano, Your prophets paltry and ragtag, Unlooked for, unhoped for, cursed until the end, A step to the brink, the block, to the sea’s throat, The world without man or woman to say its name, A kind of prayer rising from the ground: First the snowdrops, then the daffodils, the lupine, the lilies, The stone the builders rejected, mother of pearl, Saturday’s world, yesterday’s years, Tomorrow’s bread, simply getting out of bed, A laugh breaking rich beams, The bare world brighter than it seems.
Hope the Remembrance of the Future
Hope the remembrance of the future, fleeting manna, No more than hand can hold or heart gather, The black and bird-boned limbs of winter, the lives of stars, A thousand years then the firekiss, Men like trees walking, snowdrops writhing underfoot, The martins circling year and again, angels and flames of fire, Celestial bodies humming to themselves, A soft peach bruised as if the world were young, Haunted and hallowed, branded, bent, and fallow, Memory of lupine, the hint half-guessed, God incarnate, the gladness of the blessed, Sweet singer and holy fool, all lost for a single jewel, The sky itself gripped and rended, Empty hands until the benediction is ended.
Love the Curve in the Waterfall
Love the curve in the waterfall, pattern of wings, The hush of birdsong and little else, Dare gale darling, the altar of everyday things, The church become nearly itself, The wind behind you, now at your face, A soft dawn in the high sky, illuminated lines, The humiliating gentleness of the Lord of Days, Self unmade, long request and long reply, Lives you let get buried, foresworn, forgotten, unknown, Kernel crushed, spear sheathed in flesh, One the grain, the other threshed, First the harrow, then the seed is sewn, Dust to dust, light from light The son and the seed both slip out of sight.
Grace the Hound in Field
Grace the hound in field, fox in flight, Raven’s food and feather and fall, Noonday darkness, the mattering light, Deep heaven’s diagonal call, The chest's cathedral, rib-raising wind, Storm’s summons and rebuke, The air of a distant planet, priceless, costless, Walking the ranges to talk and talk, A kind of crossing all things feel and fear Relief, release, consolation, wonder, Farther than eye can see, heart hope, tongue tell, Long watch at the wayward way, ring and robe, Far way round and the first home, Light’s long walk between stars come, Sea of glass, feather-clad throne.
Loss the Dark Threads at the Back of the Tapestry
Loss the dark threads at the back of the tapestry, Long lines you don’t whisper behind your eyes Bone flutes, dull teeth, panicseed, Listless days for what rises to rise, The white unsaid silence, clamor and brine, The oursness of here, the space between trains, Word and world bare of rhyme, Ghost days that never came, a crescent stain, Weird wind full of skulls, red roses and white, Falcon father, voices in the clerestory, Long-fingered hands, heart's high aerie, Dark to dark, light from light, The lamb and the goat given to the Lord, The thunder at last, the wild, the word.
Time the Spit Pip of an Orange
Time the spit pip of an orange, a bright bead, The silence between breaths of bellsong, The distance between seed and seed, The storm tail of summer when the light was long, A thousand years, a watch in the night, Thistledown the wind has taken, A black bird with bare neck that was hung and lived, Lyric of bodies, circlet of thorns, The heavens in a handsbreadth, A firestorm, a trembling, the wind, the whisper, Dream of flesh, crudible cadence, Water barely dimpled for ghost feet, The dawn chorus, the starless sky, The dead risen, blinking at the light.
Memory the Coinage of Unquiet Thought
Memory the coinage of unquiet thought, rogue wave, Riddle years that half went mad, Thistledown and sinew, slow lathe, Myrtle and juniper clapping their hands, God at a walk, fire by night, Old chances, sorrow drawn, The starlong stride of distant light, Long regrets, six trumpets gone, Beams of rosegold all round wider, Fear bright firekiss, loves you lack, Christ behind us, hunting back, Christ among us, prowling wilder, Then the wild whisper of a rumor ran, But before abraham was, I am.
Thank you for the Google Document! I joined this newsletter only a couple of weeks ago, and I haven’t had the chance to catch up on all I missed, so that will be very helpful! Thank you so much for your work!
Reading all eight poems I felt what Herbert said prayer is, "Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss." And you're right about needing (now for me, wanting) to spend time with them.
I am grateful and inspired. Thank you