As poetry editor for Tiferet Journal, I'm often asked what the term "spiritual poetry" means. It is arguably true that nearly all poetry is “spiritual,” but there’s something more specific about the term as it relates to a particular kind of poetry. What I look for in “spiritual” poetry is a sense of the nature of spirit, the intangible as it relates to deity, to humanity, and to all that lives. A truly spiritual poem has an ineffable quality that is more than “religious” and more than temporal – a concern for realities that are unseen.
We may regard spiritual poetry as an inner path that enables us to share the deepest values and meanings of our human existence as we share our connectedness to larger reality. This includes our relationships with one another, relationships with the natural world and its creatures, our understanding of the world’s immanent or transcendent nature, and our belief in higher truth (divinity). Spiritual poetry points to the truth within us – the realization that the body is not who we really are, that we live in connectedness to everything, that there is no separation or death. Spiritual poetry is a way of recognizing and living our oneness with all creation.
I believe that, while they are not mutually exclusive, there is a difference between “spiritual’ and “religious” poetry, the latter being more specifically individualized expressions of our particular faiths. “Religion” is part of the larger spiritual journey, and “religious” suggests a “system” of belief; “spiritual” exists beyond any system or organizational structure, and spiritual poetry is more about enlightenment than belief.
Spiritual poetry is a poetry of relationships that often points to a particular truth or leads readers to think more deeply about their own truths. It is a special way of saying, “yes” that shows without telling. It illuminates realities that are not apparent to the senses or obvious to intelligence. It is, importantly, a way of expressing who we are and of inviting others to understand and to share with us.
To re-create a spiritual (sacred, mystical, visionary) experience in poetry does not necessarily take the reader directly into the experience; rather, the poet offers the reader an opportunity to reflect upon a dimension of mind that is charged with the emotional and subjective energy of the experience.
Recommended:
Tiferet: A Journal of Spiritual Literature
http://www.tiferetjournal.com/
Examples:
Spring and Fall
By Gerard Manley Hopkins
to a young child
Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
A Name for All
By Hart Crane
Moonmoth and grasshopper that flee our page
And still wing on, untarnished of the name
We pinion to your bodies to assuage
Our envy of your freedom—we must maim
Because we are usurpers, and chagrined—
And take the wing and scar it in the hand.
Names we have, even, to clap on the wind;
But we must die, as you, to understand.
I dreamed that all men dropped their names, and sang
As only they can praise, who build their days
With fin and hoof, with wing and sweetened fang
Struck free and holy in one Name always.
Matins
By Rev. Alex D. Pinto
A moth crosses the morning moon,
the air is cool, monastery walls muffled by mist.
My cassock flutters in the breeze.
The dull earth trembles beneath my feet.
It is dawn, it is spring, the time of risings,
the earth seed-speckled, the sky open to wings.
A kyrielle of birds rings with the abbey bells
and here, where eternity is learned,
I turn my face to the breeze and give praise
for the sparrows, the finches,
the light in the pines, the invisible stars.
From Tiferet: A Journal of Spiritual Literature, Issue 5, 2007
Pushcart Prize Nominee, 2007
Reprinted by Permission of Tiferet
