Beating the Bible with a Hose
Preparing us for National Poetry Month—and I know you’ve been making your plans for weeks now—my friend Mindy Withrow offers up the poem below by Billy Collins. As I read it, I wondered if we don’t too often treat the text of Scripture the same way.
Introduction to Poetry
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slideor press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
(from Sailing Alone Around the Room, Random House, 2001)
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April 4th, 2007 at 12:16 am
Hmm…torture a Confession out of it?
Intriguingly subtle.
April 4th, 2007 at 12:35 pm
Yes, especially the part about torturing a C/confession out of it! For torture it does require to extract such a thing!
April 4th, 2007 at 2:19 pm
April 4th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
Mark,
You said “we.” Could you give any examples of ways that you’ve done this?
April 4th, 2007 at 8:43 pm
Isn’t this great imagery? And now I have the added visual of Mark in ski-mask with sleeves rolled up over his forearms pistol-whipping an oversized King James Bible!
April 5th, 2007 at 8:48 am
That was a royal “we,” Jason, as in “we are not amused that you pointed that out. We shall have you taken to our dungeon straightaway.”
Excuse em now, I’ve got to practice my royal wave.
April 5th, 2007 at 3:09 pm
God save the Queen! How appropriate for Maundy Thursday and what a lovely picture.
I had the same thought as you Mark, on reading that poem. Perhaps if we all read more poetry (and more great literature) we’d all be a whole lot better bible readers. Jordan would say we need to listen to classical music, too.
April 6th, 2007 at 7:52 pm
Oh! I used this poem with my students every time we began our poetry unit. I’d never thought about it in light of scripture before…
Good stuff.
And in honor of April…Besides poets.org, this is also a good resource for a poem a day: http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/