It’s All Made Up
Bob Creeley offered a public reading of his poetry.
A member of his audience asked him,
“Is that a real poem, or did you just make it up?”
Creeley answered:
“Yes, I just made it up because I had a feeling about the potential of a new heaven and a new earth and I wanted to inhabit it.”
This exchange is reported by Lisa Jarnot (Four Lectures 71-72). Her report led me to wonder about the poets of the Bible who may offer “real poems” or who may simply “make it up.” Here I consider three poets, though many others might also be considered.
-Imagine asking Miriam about her poem:
Sing to the Lord,
for he has triumphed gloriously,
horse and rider he has thrown into the sea (Exodus 15:21).
Did you make it up or is it a real poem? She answered readily, “I made it up, because I had a vivid memory of our Exodus departure from Pharaoh’s Egypt. I could remember our wild dash in the night, the risk we ran as we rushed into the waters, as the Egyptians pursued us and then drowned. It was a frantic time with all ‘the fog of war’.”
All of that was clear to me. But we had a compelling conviction that what happened on that dangerous night was propelled by more than our eagerness to escape. We had the sense that somehow a larger purpose from the Holy God was operative among us. It was, however, all quite inchoate in a way that defied articulation. I wrote the poem because it was my effort to write into our moment of emancipation the holy purpose of God. My poem is all made up, because we had no guidance or precedence about God being at work in emancipation. I wanted the agency of God to be as visible and concrete as my imagination could make it. For that reason, I was able to portray God as an active agent in bodily combat with Pharaoh. I pictured God riding into the waters on a mighty stallion, able to push Egyptian soldiers off their horses, and watching them unblinking as they drown as agents of the evil regime. I knew all about the theological claims for God as transcendent, remote, and free from all historical complicity. But our experience required something much more vivid. I followed the lead of my brother, Moses, in sketching God as a mighty warrior who engaged in the battle on behalf of our mixed multitude of escaping slaves. It seemed essential to me that God’s agency in our emancipation was as violent as necessary, as vivid as required, and as resolved as our hope of freedom turned out to be. I made it up because freedom is a dangerous, messy business. I knew that the emancipatory God did not mind participation in this messy, dangerous business, so committed is he to our plight. I made it up and then added tambourines as we chanted out a doxology linking God to the drama of our escape. From then on, the tradition of my people could readily affirm the concreteness of God’s liberating resolve.
-Imagine the extended poetry of Isaiah in the exile. We can ask him, “Is this real poetry or did you just make it up?” Some of his poetic lines go like this:
The Lord is the everlasting God;
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint,
and strength to the powerless.
Even youths will faint and be weary,
and the young will fall exhausted.
But those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint (Isaiah 40:28-31).
Isaiah would give this answer: “I just made it up!” I was living among the exiles in Babylon. We had heard news that the Babylonian kingdom was in jeopardy before the potential attacks of the rising power of Persia. We could imagine that the defeat of Babylon might lead to our emancipation and freedom to go home to Jerusalem. We dared to hope that this great geopolitical conflict would have positive import for us. But I also noticed that many of my fellow exiles had settled in Babylon, had taken jobs, had raised families, and had grown accustomed to if not comfortable living as deportees. I noticed that they had no energy for emancipation, no lively hope for its possibility. Thus I wrote my poetry in an attempt to awaken a quite compromised exilic community to a distinct new historical possibility. I knew that such an historical possibility had to be more than a political calculation, because departure for the homeland was a risky adventure. For that reason, I knew that I had to offer the potent agency of YHWH in the option for homecoming. I had at hand the old poem of Miriam that portrayed God as a lively agent in emancipation. I drew on her poem to imagine that YHWH could make a decisive difference to the exilic community.
I decided to articulate a daring alternative for these very exiles who had neither the energy nor the willpower for a venturesome homecoming, so settled were they in this foreign land. I determined that the difference between energized exiles and complacent exiles was the capacity to imagine and host an alternative future, that is, hope. It seemed to me that hope was the precondition for entertaining a new possibility, and our present circumstance was not energy-giving. I had to make the point that our present circumstance need not be permanent.
I understood what difference hope might make for this community of exiles who were in the process of deciding their future. Thus I knew that I had to sketch God in grand fashion:
-God, unlike Babylon or its gods, is everlasting;
-God is the Creator who holds the whole world in his hands;
-God has inexhaustible energy;
-God can and will transmit that energy to a people without energy.
I wanted to appeal to my fellow exiles who felt abandoned and felt sorry for themselves. I wanted my poem to contradict their sense of abandonment in direct ways, because when we seem abandoned, we may lose energy and agency. My poem is an effort to give agency to people who are about to give up on their future. Thus I contrasted those who are “faint and weary” with those who practice hope. The “faint and weary” are easily pooped out and exhausted. Those who face forward to new possibility are energized. They have as much vigor as an eagle. So I scaled their agency to age groups:
the young—who soar;
the middle aged…who run, and
the old…who walk.
Soaring, running, and walking are all moves toward new historical possibility. Those who make such a move are not exhausted, not faint, not weary, not resigned. I wanted to appeal to those who feel sorry for themselves to accept some energized agency for a new future.
My entire poem concerns energy for a new future. At the outset (40:1-11) I sketched out a poetic scenario of God leading the flock of Israel back home, taking special care for the vulnerable (lambs), carrying them with gentleness. At the end of my poem (55:12-13), I portrayed a great, joyous triumphant procession homeward on the new highway that my poetry had “made straight.” As I drew that sketch of homecoming, I imagined that that traveling company hearing wild cheers of support from the mountains and hills and trees as the creator God mobilized all creatures in our celebrative homecoming. I hoped that my poetic sketch of new historical possibility would overcome the passive lethargy of Jews too settled to risk homecoming. After all, it was nothing less than the God of Miriam who would oversee our homecoming.
-Imagine Mary with her daring poem:
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty (Luke 1:52-53).
We could ask her, “Is this a real poem, or did you just make it up?” Mother Mary would no doubt answer, “I made it up.” I made it up because the gospel writer Luke wanted to have my poem at the beginning of the narrative that he would present. I wrote the poem because Luke wanted to tell the story of Jesus in a way that subverted the prose world of settled Judaism and settled Roman power. Thus I joined the priest, Zechariah, Simeon, and the angels at Bethlehem in offering a poem for Luke’s composition.
I thought about the coming life of my son, Jesus, and I thought about the story of his life that Luke would tell. I wanted to articulate my son, Jesus, in all his political capacity to make a decisive difference in the world. I had at hand the old poem of mother Hannah as she celebrated the birth of her son Samuel, and I had often joined the singing of Psalm 113 with its affirmation that the God of Miriam and Isaiah could and would invert historical circumstance for the sake of the poor and needy. It is an old theme among my people since the poor slaves under Pharaoh were given their freedom. With all of that background and with hope for my son, I sang of “the Mighty One” who is filled with mercy. The combination of might and mercy is the perfect remedy for a world that awaits rescue and transformation. I was able to imagine the way my son could do the work of rescue and transformation on behalf of the vulnerable who are regularly victimized by the powerful. I sang of the inversion of rich and poor, to the great benefit of the poor. I anticipated that he would be in the succession of Moses and the prophets who paid great attention to economic matters. He would understand that the only way the poor and needy could prosper is that the rich must hand back to the common good some of their wealth. From the outset I anticipated that he would tell tales of social upheaval and social possibility:
-like the Good Samaritan who would show mercy in unexpected ways;
-like the younger son who would be welcomed home in a lavish way;
-like the hapless Lazarus who, unlike the rich man’s brothers, would be welcomed to the bosom of Father Abraham.
I knew that his teaching would match his action whereby the blind, the deaf, lepers, and the poor would be restored to fullness of life. I knew enough about our old Messianic promises to know that he would cause upheaval to the benefit of the left behind. And it followed, as I thought about it, that he would collide with the authorities. I knew that I could not protect him from that fearful confrontation. But I appealed, at the outset and at the end of my song, to the faithfulness of Father Abraham whose great faith continues to sustain our people. I had great fear for his future. But I also had great hope. I had to entrust him to God’s goodness. I was so grateful for the life he was able to live, according to the best hopes of our people and of our God.
Miriam, Isaiah and Mary represent the flood of poems that constitute the Bible. It is required that the dangerous claims of the Bible be cast in poetry, so that our conventional explanatory prose world does not contain or domesticate those claims.
It is for certain that the church, as a people of this book, should be engaged in poetic affirmation and adjudication. Unfortunately the only poetry to which the church pays any attention is in its hymnic tradition. This tradition is now noticeably weakened in compelling terms by our widespread embrace of either love ballads or praise hymns, both of which lack the strength and energy of the old hymnic tradition. It could be urgent and good work in the church to recover the church’s nerve for good poetic drama, for it is poetry that articulates the deeply subversive elements of the gospel. Several Sundays ago in our church we sang:
Let all the angel throng give thanks to God on high,
while earth repeats the joyful song and echoes to the sky…
Not angel tongues can tell thy love’s ecstatic height,
the glorious joy unspeakable, the beatific sight.
… (“Maker, in Whom We Live,” The United Methodist Hymnal 88).
These words sing a world that refuses our domestication of God and the gospel to our familiar size. It may be that many in our congregation did not pay any attention to these wondrous words, but they are available. They invited us to imagine a world presided over by God that is well beyond our management.
The more the church relies on explanatory prose, the more it compromises and numbs the glad generative force of the gospel. We in the church are heirs of these old poets who “just made it all up,” because faith requires voices that are not contained in our conventional reasoning. Poetry refuses explanation. Poetry requires that the listener does some of the work. Our best hymnic traditions sketch out for us rich poetic scenarios of reality that refuse the reductionisms of our technology, our consumerism, and our control. We may be glad that we stand in this poetic tradition that requires our own liberated capacity to continue to “make it up.”
