The most common use of poetry in worship is the singing of poems as hymns. Despite their common use, however, hymn texts are rarely thought of in terms of their poetic qualities. Yet hymn writers are among the finest wordsmiths the church has known. Appreciating their art enriches the experience of all who sing.
Hymns are usually seen as low art and sub-zero theology. Theologians file them under “music.” Literature departments file them nowhere. C. S. Lewis detested them. John Ruskin described hymns of his own day as “half-paralytic, half profane,” consisting partly of the expression of what the singers never in their lives felt, or attempted to feel, and partly in the address of prayers to God, which nothing could more disagreeably astonish them than His attending to.
I want to suggest that at its best, the hymn is a complex minor art form, combining theology, poetry, and music. As such it merits attention from theologians and artists alike. But first I must admit the truth in the criticisms. Hymn-texts range from doggerel to poetry, just as hymn tunes range from cliché to classic. Yet we have moved on from the hymnody that repelled Ruskin and Lewis. Since 1960 there has been an explosion of new hymn writing in the English-speaking world, beginning in Britain and spreading to Canada and the United States. Its styles range from praise music through folk song to the classic stanza form, reborn in contemporary English. I work at the latter end of the spectrum and do theology through the hymn-poems I write.
At their best, hymns are a complex art form. When read aloud, as a poem, a hymn text is time art. Each reading is similar, yet unrepeatable. When the poem is sung as a solo or choral item, it moves the listener as songs do. When sung by a congregation, it invites commitment. Though some congregations behave as if they didn’t have bodies, singing together is an intensely corporeal, as well as corporate, activity. Diaphragm, lungs, larynx, tongue, lips, jawbone, nasal cavities, ribcage, shoulders, eyes, and ears come into play. When body attitude combines with deepest beliefs, singers are taken out of themselves into a heightened awareness of God, beauty, faith, and each other. Finally, hymns deserve to be seen as visual art: like other poems, their appearance on the page enhances their attractiveness or detracts from it.
As a writer of hymn texts, I am a theological poet serving church congregations. The title “poet” once seemed pretentious. I claim it now because I’ve repeatedly seen the power of hymn-poetry to move people at a deep level. I have also gathered evidence showing how strongly our language habits shape thinking and behavior so that the way we sing about God and each other is cardinally important. The hymn is an art form through which a congregation expresses and commits itself to a theology. Sunday by Sunday, most Christian traditions sing their faith and are shaped by what they sing. It is therefore a great mistake to classify hymns as “church music,” as if they only mattered to singers, choir directors, and organists. They matter to preachers, theologians, and anyone concerned with the interplay between theology and the arts.
Good hymns are theological poetry, not theology in bad verse. The classic hymn poem is formally strict, with exact meter, stress-rhythms, and usually rhyme in each succeeding stanza. It needs imagery and phrasing clear enough to grasp at first sight (singers can’t stop to look in the dictionary), yet memorable enough to give pleasure and meaning through repeated singing. It cannot give free rein to the poet’s imagination because it is poetry in the service of its singers. The singers of hymns need poetry that will express their faith and enable them to be truthfully themselves as twentieth-century worshipers in the presence of God. The greatest compliment a hymn poet earns is an unspoken YES from singers who grasp, delight, and identify with the hymn-poem in the immediacy of singing it, yet rarely know or care who wrote the words or composed the tune.
As with any art form, these restrictions both cramp creativity and enable it. The possibilities of the form are exemplified by Thomas Troeger’s hymn, “These Things Did Thomas Count as Real.” The briefest analysis of this poem would note its strong visual and tactile imagery (stanza 1); its economic use of paradox and antithesis (stanzas 2 and 3); its full, apt rhymes (including the brilliant “Braille/nail”); its careful attention to stress and sound sequence; and the achievement of all this in sixteen eight-syllable lines which evoke the story yet break it open afresh. Read aloud, it compels attention. Sung, we find ourselves critiquing Thomas while stepping into his psyche so that Christ’s “raw imprinted palms” reach out to us and question our post-Enlightenment assumptions about reality.
An example of my own work is a wedding hymn (No. 643 in the new United Methodist Church hymnal), written for a well-known folk tune for ease of immediate singing. Its four-syllable lines compel simplicity since it is hard to be polysyllabic in such a short line. I wanted to sing truthfully about some of the experiences of partners in a long-term relationship. The first stanza came quickly, appearing almost fully formed in consciousness;
When love is found / and hope comes home,
sing and be glad / that two are one.
when love explodes / and fills the sky,
praise God and share / our Maker’s joy.
“When love explodes and fills the sky” is a simple but strong metaphor. It may derive from firework displays, but the allusion is indirect, enabling me to crystallize varied experiences in one phrase. People know what it means for them when they look in the crystal.
I then had to decide where the hymn was going. What I had already suggested was that the first line of each stanza could set out the theme developed within it, which led to the following outline:
—When love is found …
—When love has flowered …
—When love is tried …
—When love is torn …
—Final wrap-up stanza of praise.
In the second stanza, I wanted to avoid a cozy image of the home as a private castle, so I tried alternatives till I got the lines “that love may dare/to reach beyond home’s warmth and light/to serve and strive for truth and right.” The third stanza recognizes that personalities change over time so that relationships have to be restructured or broken. The fourth stanza deals with betrayal. I can’t remember how long I waited for “when love is torn” to appear as its first line, but there was some waiting time between deciding on the theme and getting that first line. Finding the rhyme fade/betrayed also took time, and involved listing some of the possible rhyme words and trying out phrases. I was aware of quoting from 1 Corinthians 13 in the New English Bible in lines 3 and 4. At some point, I opted for the relaxed rhyme scheme ABCB that came with the first stanza.
Love Song
When love is found and hope comes home,
sing and be glad that two are one.
When love explodes and fills the sky,
praise God and share our Maker’s joy.
When love has flowered in trust and care,
build both each day that love may dare
to reach beyond home’s warmth and light,
to serve and strive for truth and right.
When love is tried as loved-ones change,
hold still to hope though all seems strange,
till ease returns and love grows wise
through listening ears and opened eyes.
When love is torn and trust betrayed,
pray strength to love till torments fade,
till lovers keep no score of wrong
but hear through pain love’s Easter song.
Praise God for love, praise God for life,
in age or youth, in husband, wife.
Lift up your hearts. Let love be fed
through death and life in broken bread.
(Copyright 1983 by Hope Publishing
Company, Carol Stream, Ill. 60188. All
rights reserved. Used by permission.)
The writing process always has this partnership between rational and intuitive. Metaphors and phrases have to be set in order, rhymes collected and selected. Ideas must be clarified, then wait for the appearance of suitable phrases and metaphors. “Appearance” is itself a metaphor, suggesting the way in which phrases come to consciousness from the part of the mind which constructs them, and which is outside conscious control. Though much theology is still done as if we were talking heads inhabited by controlling rationality, the creative process shows otherwise. I am emboldened to question the patriarchal dualisms of our culture (mind over body, reason/logic over imagination/feeling, man over nature, the masculine over the feminine, and the root dominance of men over women) because they are not only dangerous and unjust but untrue to the creative experience.
I said earlier that like other forms of poetry, hymns are visual art. Most Americans never see the poetry of hymns, because the only way they encounter them is with their poetic structure dismantled, the words cut into syllables and interlined (arranged between musical staves for ease of singing). Thankfully, the needs of an aging population are obliging hymnal producers to provide large-print editions, in which the poetry of hymns is once again seen on the page. Christian educators will find this makes poems easier to teach. Pastors and congregations will find hymns more readily available as poetry, fit for public reading (by solo voice or the congregation) and devotional use, and beautiful to look at: an art form in their own right, and a useful part of seminary courses labeled “Introduction to Theology.”