Word Made Fresh: An Invitation to Poetry for the Church

by Abram Van Engen, Shane McCrae (foreword)

Have you ever read a book that turned your world upside down? What about a poem?     Poetry has the power to enliven, challenge, change, and enrich our lives. But it can also feel intimidating, confusing, or simply “not for us.” In these joyful and wise reflections, Abram Van Engen shows readers how poetry is for everyone—and how it can reinvigorate our Christian faith.    Intertwining close readings with personal storytelling, Van Engen explains how and why to read poems as a spiritual practice. Far from dry, academic instruction, his approach encourages readers to delight in poetry, even as they come to understand its form. He also opens up the meaning of poetry and parables in Scripture, revealing the deep connection between literature and theology.   Word Made Fresh is more than a guide to poetry—it’s an invitation to wonder, to speak up, to lament, to praise. Including dozens of poems from diverse authors, this book will inspire curious and thoughtful readers to see God and God’s creation in surprising new ways.

Genres: Poetry, Theology, Nonfiction, Christian, Faith

312 pages, Paperback

Published June 25, 2024

Reviews

[Joshua Jipp · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. Highly recommended!

[Shane Gottwals · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was like taking a poetry course with my favorite professor… who’s also a pastor. It’s an academic work infused by the spirit of Christ. It’s only through an understanding of Jesus that we can fully appreciate poetry. It’s really the only way we can fully appreciate anything.
Great authors express what you only wish you can. This book put words to my heart for literature unlike anything I’ve read in a long while.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read it for a book club over this past month, skimmed some parts, lots if interesting anecdotes and poem-dissections that are worth the read. Also just a fun range of poems included.

[Bardfilm · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very worthwhile read. The first part is an invitation to those in the church to engage with poetry. It makes a good case for doing so (on both secular and sacred grounds). But it doesn't quite continue in the same vein. Instead, it offers insightful readings of many poems. That part was quite good, but it doesn't take the invitation forward, helping readers to develop a method for how they could approach poetry. Additionally, despite advice not to feel compelled to read the Biggest Names in Poetry, the poems considered are largely either the Biggest Names in Poetry or the Biggest Names in Specifically Christian Poetry. I would have appreciated more variety and more instruction.

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Summary: An invitation to delight in poetry while discovering how form and language help make meaning that may enrich our lives.

A recent survey found only twelve percent of Americans had read poetry in the past year. I wonder if many are like friends of my who are put off by one or both of two things. Firstly, they find poetry confusing or obscure. Secondly, they don’t know where to start. By contrast, Abram Van Engen believes poetry is for all of us, an invitation to pay attention, to delight, and reflect. For Christians, he goes further. Poetry may be found in much of scripture, most notably in the Psalms. They both disclose God to us and give us language to disclose ourselves to God at all the turns of life. Van Engen believes poetry is for you and he sets out in this book to show how you may enjoy it and find your life enriched by it.

He keeps it uncomplicated. He invites us to just pick up a book of poetry and begin reading until something catches us. Don’t worry about meaning to start with, just notice what caught our attention, and why, in our lives, that might be. Initially, he invites us to read for pleasure, and at the beginning of the book, shares a number of poems. If we like them, he invites us to pay more attention, and if not, to move on.

For example, in one chapter, he considers poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins (sonnet), William Carlos Williams (three four line verses), Gwendolyn Brooks, Denise Levertov (free verse), Lucille Clifton, Luci Shaw, Scott Cairns, Mary Karr, Richard Wilbur, James Weldon Johnson, John Donne (sonnet), Countee Cullen (also sonnet), and Robert Hadyn. By doing so, Van Engen offers us his own curated anthology, offering us the change to discover what we like, while offering very introductory comments.

While he discourages starting by asking what a poem means, he does encourage us to ask questions of the poems that catch our attention, For example, “Why was I struck by this poem?” What about this poem made us stop? “What gave us pause or pleasure? Was it the sound of the poem? Was it a certain memory the poem invoked or revived?” He then takes us through a very short poem (“This Is Just to Say”) by William Carlos Williams, considered previously and notices how each stanza is a literal room, adding to what has come before about eating plums another has set aside in the icebox. He asks questions about the structure, the line breaks, and the repeated “so.”

Before going further into technical matters, he invites us to think of poetry like a friendship. Like a friendship, poems travel with us through life. Along they way, they show us different things as we change and grow. Then Van Engen turns to form. He considers different forms and how form, rhyme schemes, and content interact. Another practice he encourages is erasing. For example, we erase all but the verbs. Or we isolate the requests in a prayer.

Then Van Engen explores how poets use words to name, the oblique ways they express truth. And he devotes two chapters on how poetry helps us rejoice with the rejoicing, and weep with the weeping. Poetry offers us language to express how glorious our life in the world can be, and how wretched. Finally, returning to Hopkins, “As Kingfishers Catch Fire,” he shows how poems enact life. Van Engen contends that as “the just man justices” so poems poem as we read and experience them.

In recent years, I’ve been on a journey of discovery poetry. Van Engen makes this so approachable, so enjoyable. He introduces us to forms and uses of words and more. Mostly, he invites us to read a lot of poetry, guiding us lightly, asking us questions to help us discover for ourselves the wonder of poetry. And for Christians, he tips us off to a rich vein of devotional material many of us may have neglected. He show us how poetry and the poetry of scripture may enhance and enlarge one another. Read this book if you are in the place of feeling both drawn and daunted by the call of poetry. Read this book with a group, using the group guide provided. I believe you will find that which pleases and enriches you and your friends for the journey.

____________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

[Benjamin Shurance · Rating 5 out of 5]

“God is more than all we can ever say of him, and poetry revels in that plenitude.”

In this book, English professor Abram Van Engen invites Christians to the pleasure of poetry. His is a call to enjoyment of poetry (coupled with some critical analyzing as long as such analysis is born of the enjoyment of the poem). This is an especially effective book in that the many poems that appear throughout (I think) will be particularly easy for Christians to appreciate. I knew quite a few of them beforehand, but was delighted by both those and the ones new to me.

The first half of the book proposes ways to read poetry in accessible language and with helpful examples. The chapters are titled: 1. Read personally, 2. Read for pleasure, 3. Ask questions, 4. Think of poetry like friendship, 5. Consider form, 6. Erase to discover more. The second half of the book offers more theological-ish reflections on the why of poetry: 7. To name creation, 8. To tell the truth, 9. To rejoice with those who rejoice, 10. To weep with those who weep.

As a student of poetry myself (albeit a very rusty student), there was nothing incredibly new or mind-blowing here, but it was very nicely arranged and I think will be readily received by people with less training in poetic forms. There were a few parts where the exposition of certain poems dragged, and some of his theological-ish reflections felt a bit forced. But I loved it for being a book that I needed right now: it stoked the embers of poetry which have lacked for oxygen in my life.

Some quotations extracted from the ARC I received from the publisher:
“Poetry reflects the ways of God.”
“The effects of this poem matter beyond any intention of the author.”
“The meaning of the poem is the saying of the poem. It is the experience produced by putting these words together, in this way, in this precise order, involving and invoking this rhythm or this rhyme or this form. Meaning is not something other than what the poem has produced. It does not lie behind or below or above or around the words.”
“Poetry brings new knowledge to light as it observes, identifies, and participates in creation.”
“The art of poetry is limited but not useless. It comes to us out of creation, a vocation of naming extended to the first human beings that enables us to know and remember. In taking up that task, poetry partners with God in the act of creation itself and reaches out for new communion.”
“A reader of all poems already exists. God reads.”
“Poems… do what they say in such a way that the experience of the words brings alive the theology they convey, so that the conveying is the living, the saying is the doing— the experience is the theology of the poem, and the poem brings that theology to life.”

[Alicia Pollard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

In Word Made Fresh, Abram Van Engen invites readers into a joyful meditation on the truths, surprises, insights, and delights of poetry. Engen’s posture of curiosity, wonder, and attentive listening in engaging with poetry is a refreshing antidote to the aggressive dissection many people were taught in high school English classes. He equips readers with a useful set of principles for exploring poems and books of poetry, such as erasure (erasing different parts of speech in a poem to pay closer attention to others), examining punctuation, and studying the double meanings of individual words.

The first half of the book covers much of the territory that other introductions to the study of poetry have previously explored, with the added gift of a gentle, thoughtful, and reverent tone. The second half of the book goes deeper by unearthing the theological and spiritual richness that gives poetry its fire: the sacred task of naming that the Lord passed onto Adam and all mankind, poetry’s ability to invite others into communal rejoicing and grief, and poetry’s power of reaching divine mysteries too great for human eyes. The book offers a friendly guide to people who may have been scared off by the enigmas of rhyme and verse, and an encouraging reminder to longtime lovers of poetry.

[Jack Heller · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this book up from the library of the university where I used to work. Basically, it's an argument for the value of reading poetry, geared towards a Christian reader. Well, I read poetry constantly, so I might not have needed persuading. But nonetheless, the book is a delight! It's a delight because poetry itself is a delight! I would love to read this book in a discussion group; I'd probably bounce up and down in seat saying, "Ooh, ooh, I know!"

I would say that within the lasts fifteen years, I've read thousands of poems, probably tens of thousands. Most do not stick with me. Some recent ones which have have been Emily Dickinson's poems numbered in the 280s and Tolu Oloruntoba's "A Parable," which I read for a church service two Sundays ago. Is there a message to this book? Yes, read poetry. Read this book to find out why.

[Katy Stanton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I heard Professor Van Engen speak at a lecture a few months ago, and I was so impressed with his engaging approach. He was able to reach those of us who have loved poetry over long lifetimes and those new and skeptical to the subject. I asked for this book as a gift, and it was a joy to read. As someone who teaches poetry, I found a few new poems to share with my students. As a student of poetry myself, I found some confounding lines from well-loved poems interpreted in enlightening ways. I would not let the word "church" in the book's title deter you from reading this book. If you have curiosity about poetry, or if you have been trying to read or write poems in isolation, or if you just want to renew your love of poetry, you will find something helpful in this book.

[Chris Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don't let the subhead deter you. While there is a Christian background to this, it's helpful to anyone like me who wants to enjoy poetry but feels a bit intimidated. Abram Van Engen walks us through how to read poetry for pleasure and then for meaning (but acknowledges sometimes the former is all you need from a good poem). He talks about form in a way that's insightful without going too deep in the weeds. It's in the last half that he builds on the enjoyment of poetry to talk about the way it's used to point to the truth or as a tool for empathy. Really good stuff, and I found myself starting to wade into poetry for the first time as I read this...and really enjoying what I was reading. For someone who's largely prose-minded, it helped me open my mind to poetry without demystifying it.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know Abram and I know his family--especially his mother and I feel personally so proud of him for this wonderful book--this spiritual book. What a gift he gives in sharing these ideas in churches and now in this published work. I am inspired to read more poetry and to continue reading the psalms--maybe playing them at my piano and singing the words would be a good way for me to appreciate them. I have done that before as an exercise in Lent and it is worth doing again.

I see it took me almost two weeks to work through this book. That was a good way to do it--our chapter at a time. There was a lot to absorb in each chapter and in each poem quoted.

[Josh Nisley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book that needed to be written—and not only because I'm gearing up to teach a Sunday school elective on poetry at my church. I hope someday to teach poetry with the same attentiveness, hospitality, and joy that Van Engen demonstrates. I share his conviction that poetry is for everyone, not just "literary types" or (heaven forbid) professional academics. But in making that case, he never makes one feel like a philistine for not getting it. It's an invitation in the best sense: "Come and see."

[Don · Rating 5 out of 5]

This may be the best book about poetry I’ve ever read, which is saying something since I studied poetry in college. The author’s insights about the poems he presents and poetry in general are stunning. I discovered Van Engen through the excellent podcast he co-hosts, “Poetry for All.” This book reads more like “Poetry for Christians.” I enjoyed it from that perspective, but I think some non-Christians would enjoy it too because of its abundant insights about the art of poetry that transcend content.

[J. Alfred · Rating 5 out of 5]

"See how my eyes brightened when I tasted a little of this honey."
One of the more exciting books I can think of on poetry, this would be a fantastic introduction for a poetry-skeptic, and is a fantastic, down to earth reminder, for the poetry lovers out there, of why we love poetry. This taught me things about poems that I have loved for twenty years, and introduced me to new poets I can't wait to know better. I give this my strongest recommendation, which in practice means I won't loan it to you because I want to make sure it stays on my shelf. Get one yourself.

[Jacqueline · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was a great introduction to poetry and also a wonderful encouragement to me as a Christian poet. Highly recommend! It includes some great poems and is very approachable. It's not the author's own poetry, but more like an intro class on poetry and it's significance for Christian life.

I came away with ideas for improving my own work and energy to consider publishing in the future.

[Kevin Braun · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have never liked poetry, which had begun to bother me, since the Bible contains a lot of it. This book gave me new ways to think about and approach poetry. Don’t overemphasize the meaning. Read as deeply as you care to. Move on if a poem doesn’t speak to you. God delights in poetry and reads every poem. And more…. A worthwhile read.

[Dan Dekker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book. Great intro to poetry for those who haven't read much of it. I enjoy a good analysis of a poem!