If you are even a casual reader of this blog, you quickly realize that I am not a cultured character. I like the Simpsons, country music and the Republican party. However I do have more interesting friends. One of them has just started a new blog entitled, Ars Theologica: An Intersection of theology, poetry, art and music.
One of the first posts is about the poet Karl Shapiro, here is a little excerpt from Ars Theologica...
"Lately I've been digesting a poet with whom I have had only a passing relationship - Karl Shapiro (1913-2000). I wish I had gotten to know his work earlier, for it is filled with unforgettable images of necropolae, automobiles crashing, and under all, the haunting presence of Jehovah.
He ponders the alchemical order and power of the Hebrew letters in "The Alphabet" (1958). Which manages to evoke theophany, order, limits, persistence, heritage, holocaust, palimpsest, and atonement in the space of its first twelve lines.
"The letters of the Jews are strict as flames
Or little terrible flowers lean
Stubbornly upwards through the perfect ages,
Singing through solid stone the sacred names.
The letters of the Jews are black and clean
And lie in chain-line over Christian pages.
The chosen letters bristle like barbed wire
That hedge the flesh of man,
Twisting and tightening the book that warns.
These words, this burning bush, this flickering pyre
Unsacrifices the bled son of man
Yet plaits his crown of thorns."
Can any Christian read that and not wonder and wince simultaneously?"
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