In 1993, on Volume 6 of the Mars Hill Tapes, I talked with Roger Lundin about his book The Culture of Interpretation (Eerdmans, 1993). It was the first of many conversations with Roger, who died in 2015 at the age of 66. In that first interview, Lundin suggested that television talk shows which feature bizarre and deviant behavior are a manifestation of the postmodern penchant for tolerant inclusiveness. He notes that the drive for absolute inclusivity undermines the notion of community, which necessarily involves the setting of limits and prohibitions. Lundin warned that when the Church markets the Gospel as a therapeutic tool that fulfills “felt needs,” it robs the message of its redemptive power.
The hatred of limits — of embodied life within the order of Creation that precedes our choosing — is a theme in chapter 4 of his book, “Postmodern Gnostics.”
From the Montanists of the second century to modern fundamentalists, then, radical Christians have been prone to conceive of grace as the negation of nature and culture. In early Christian history, gnosticism led to the disparagement of the body, the Scriptures, and the life of the church. In the Western world since the Enlightenment, the gnostic impulse has prompted many to dismiss the idea of an order inherent in nature and to spurn that which has been given to men and women in their cultural and intellectual traditions. It is not so much embodiment that contemporary gnostics take to be the source of evil as it is the embeddedness of the self within the limits of nature and the constrictions of society.
In that chapter, three twentieth-century figures emerge as prophetic voices challenging the gnosticism of modern and postmodern culture: Alasdair MacIntyre, Wendell Berry, and Richard Wilbur. The following paragraphs are from Lundin’s appreciative account of Wilbur’s poetry.
• • •
“For more than four decades, Richard Wilbur has tried to bring words back to things in his poetry. Although acknowledged as one of the finest technical masters of contemporary poetry, Wilbur has consistently resisted any temptation to think of language as a haven from reality or of verbal dexterity as an end in itself. Wilbur is ‘one whose Way in his dealings with the body of this world is not the Way of Rejection but rather the way of Affirmation,’ explains Nathan A. Scott, Jr. For instance, in ‘Love Calls Us to the Things of this World,’ Wilbur imagines himself in the uncertain world between sleep and waking, between dream and fact. In the poem, the soul whose ‘eyes open to a cry of pulleys’ is ‘astounded.’ Hanging for a moment ‘bodiless and simple,’ the
soul shrinks
From all that it is about to remember,
From the punctual rape of every blessed day
“The Neoplatonic image of the waking soul, with which Wilbur is working in this poem, is a rich one in the romantic tradition. In several of his most famous works, William Wordsworth depicted the awakened soul as one that had been saddened and that sought through poetry the wonder it had lost upon entering the world of time. In ‘Ode: Intimations of Immortality,’ for instance, Wordsworth wrote that ‘our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting’; the soul within us ‘hath had elsewhere its setting, / And cometh from afar’:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.
“The goal of adult life, according to Wordsworth’s poem, is to recapture childhood through memory, to recall the time when the soul was as close to eternity as the waking mind is to the dreams from which it has just emerged. In ‘Love Calls Us to the Things of this World,’ however, Wilbur has the waking soul renounce the desire to retreat from the dawning world:
The soul descends once more in bitter love
To accept the waking body, saying now
In a changed voice as the man yawns and rises,
“Bring them down from their ruddy gallows;
Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves;
Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone,
And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating
Of dark habits,
keeping their difficult balance.”
“Desire allures us with its promises of purity of spirit and language, but love calls us incessantly back to the things of this world.
“While many poets and critics since the romantic age have conceived of poetic skill as a means of apprehending the wonders of imaginary worlds, Wilbur thinks of it as a way of striking a delicate balance between the desires of the heart and the constraints of creation. In a longer poem entitled ‘Walking to Sleep,’ he addresses a person trying to drift into unconsciousness. Wilbur first advises the person to ‘step off assuredly into the blank of your mind.’ But he also gives the following warning:
Try to remember this: what you project
Is what you will perceive; what you perceive
With any passion, be it love or terror,
May take on whims and powers of its own.
“‘What you hope for’ at the end of the ‘pointless journey’ of the mind through its own labyrinths is that,
when you least expect it,
Right in the middle of your stride, like that,
So neatly that you never feel a thing,
The kind assassin Sleep will draw a bead
And blow your brains out.
“In the second half of the poem, when the aimless drift of the mind has failed to lead the person into sleep, Wilbur offers contrary advice:
What, are you still awake?
Then you must risk another tack and footing.
Forget what I have said. Open your eyes
To the good blackness not of your room alone
But of the sky you trust is over it,
Whose stars, though foundering in the time to come,
Bequeath us constantly a jetsam beauty.
“In this second journey, ‘if you are in luck, you may be granted . . . / A moment’s perfect carelessness’ and then
sink to sleep
In the same clearing where, in the old story,
A holy man discovered Vishnu sleeping,
Wrapped in his maya, dreaming by a pool
On whose calm face all images whatever
Lay clear, unfathomed, taken as they came.
“If there is in the heritage of the Enlightenment an implicit gnostic desire to spurn the created order — to shun nature in favor of a self-generated grace — then there is in Wilbur’s poetry a tendency to blur the distinctions between the self and the created order, that is, to turn nature into grace. In most cases, however, irony keeps Wilbur from succumbing to that temptation. As one of his witty short poems realizes, the self and nature cannot be in perfect harmony precisely because human transgression has ‘loosened the grammar’ of God’s world:
Shall I love God for causing me to be?
I was mere utterance: shall these words love me?
Yet when I caused his work to jar and stammer,
And one free subject loosened all his grammar,
I love him that he did not in a rage
Once and forever rule me off the page,
But, thinking, I might come to please him yet,
Crossed out delete and wrote his patient stet.
“Latin for ‘let it stand,’ stet is a proofreader’s mark indicating that a passage marked to be changed or deleted from a text should be allowed to remain instead. In a world that is both bountiful and cursed, nothing less than the patience of God is required to keep the self from ruin.
“In a recent poem called ‘Lying,’ Wilbur ponders the way we respond to the given world. Its opening lines describe a lie:
To claim, at a dead party, to have spotted a grackle,
When in fact you haven’t of late, can do no harm.
“To say that you have seen this most common of birds will neither damage ‘your reputation for saying things of interest’ nor rupture ‘the delicate web of human trust.’ Later, however,
You may enjoy a chill of severance, hearing
Above your head the shrug of unreal wings.
“Why do we lie, then? The world is not ‘tiresome’ in itself, but ‘boredom,’
a dull
Impatience or a fierce velleity,
A champing wish, stalled by our lassitude,
“makes it seem tiresome. Yet no matter how much we fantasize about our power to create and to redeem, the fact remains that
In the strict sense, of course,
We invent nothing, merely bearing witness
To what each morning brings again to light:
Gold crosses, cornices, astonishment
Of panes, the turbine-vent which natural law
Spins on the grill-end of the diner’s roof,
Then grass and grackles . . .
. . . . . . .
All these things
Are there before us; there before we look
Or fail to look.
“And the fact that ‘all these things / Are there before us’
is what galled the arch-negator, sprung
From Hell to probe with intellectual sight
The cells and heavens of a given world
Which he could take as but another prison.
“Satan, the ‘arch-negator,’ was considered a heroic figure by some romantic poets because he refused to accept the limitations placed upon him by his creator. In refusing to accept them, he turned to the joyful pretense of creating by destroying. The first true gnostic, Satan was able to find in the ‘given world’ nothing but ‘another prison.’”
— from Roger Lundin, The Culture of Interpretation (Eerdmans, 1993).
Related reading and listening
- Sacramental Poetics — Poet and Eastern Orthodox believer Scott Cairns explains how a good poem functions like an icon: it assists the process of our becoming aware of what is real, and it is generative in the ways it keeps opening up new understandings. (56 minutes)
- Poetry and piety — FROM VOL. 48 James Trott discusses insights he learned while editing A Sacrifice of Praise: An Anthology of Christian Poetry in English from Caedman to the Mid-Twentieth Century. (7 minutes)
- A poet’s relationship to time — FROM VOL. 57 Poet Wilmer Mills (1969–2011) discusses how his agricultural and cross-cultural childhood in Brazil shaped his imagination and his relationship with modernity. (11 minutes)
- The life of the city in poetry — FROM VOL. 1 Ken Myers talks with W. H. Auden’s biographer and literary executor, Edward Mendelson, about political and social themes in Auden’s poetry. (7 minutes)
- Joy & sorrow, destitution & abundance — In this poetry reading and talk, poet Christian Wiman discusses his own faith journey and how his struggles worked themselves into his poems. (40 minutes)
- Seeing Creation Anew: The Life & Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins — Dana Gioia examines Gerard Manley Hopkins‘s poetic genius and dedication to Christ in spite of his personal trials and difficult cultural context. (55 minutes)
- “The essence of a moment, clearly perceived” — Haiku poet Gary Hotham reads his poetry and discusses how the form of haiku reveals the connection between creatures and creation. (45 minutes)
- The joy and mystery of poetry — FROM VOL. 98 Jeanne Murray Walker discusses how she helps students approach and appreciate poetry as the mysteriously meaningful literature it is, rather than as a linguistic cage containing static meaning to be abstracted from the words of the poem. (23 minutes)
- “The Emersonian elixir” — FROM VOL. 20 Robert Richardson and Roger Lundin discuss how Ralph Waldo Emerson’s legacy lingers in American culture. (18 minutes)
- The primacy of imagination — FROM VOL. 51 Literary critic Roger Lundin situates William Blake as a descendant of the radical Protestant movement of the 17th century and as a forerunner of the late 19th and early 20th century movements that put theology and the human spirit in opposition to the natural, fragmented, fallen world. (11 minutes)
- Dickinson and modern malaise — FROM VOL. 36 Roger Lundin explains how Emily Dickinson’s understanding of love, nature, religion, and mortality are modern in content. (11 minutes)
- The idiom for the revelation of mystery — Dana Gioia on the foundational place of poetry in Christian faith
- Breaking the frozen sea — Dana Gioia on how poetry enchants
- John Donne’s Passion in Life, Faith, & Verse — Poet Dana Gioia discusses the remarkable life of poet John Donne and how his spiritual and intellectual struggles created the conditions for his unique poetic voice. (53 minutes)
- Longfellow’s appeal — FROM VOL. 53 Poet and critic Dana Gioia explains why Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) is one of the three great American poets. (30 minutes)
- Sacramental correspondence — FROM VOL. 51 Poet Dana Gioia discusses the state of contemporary poetry and the sacramental relationship between language and reality. (15 minutes)
- “A sign of contradiction” — In this lecture, Daniel Gibbons compares and contrasts understandings of sacramental poetics proposed by Augustine, Aquinas, and Sydney. (36 minutes)
- Education as a pilgrimage and a mystery — In this lecture, James Matthew Wilson gives a compelling argument for understanding the role of a literary or poetic education as an immersion of the whole being in truth and beauty. (43 minutes)
- “Prophet of holiness” — Timothy Larsen discusses a new edition of George MacDonald‘s Diary of An Old Soul, a slim book of poem-prayers to be read daily as a devotional aid. (30 minutes)
- Touch’d with a coal from heav’n — Daniel Ritchie finds in the poetry of William Cowper (1731–1800) an anticipation of Michael Polanyi’s epistemology
- How we know the world — Daniel Ritchie argues that poet and hymnodist William Cowper was ahead of his time in critiquing the Enlightenment’s reductionist view of knowledge. (16 minutes)
- William Cowper: Reconciling the Heart with the Head — Daniel E. Ritchie discusses the life and work of poet William Cowper (1731–1800), comparing his commitment to understanding reality through personal knowledge, intuition, and rigorous contemplation with the thought of Michael Polanyi. (43 minutes)
- Bearing witness through poetry — Roger Lundin discusses the incarnational witness of poet Czesław Miłosz (1911–2004), exploring his service to truth and to his native tongue, Polish. (16 minutes)
- Czesław Miłosz: A Poet of Luminous Things — Roger Lundin discusses the themes, breadth, and depth of poet Czesław Miłosz‘s work, explaining how Milosz incarnated in his life and work a sense of exile and alienation so common to modern man. (43 minutes)
- Soundings of the human soul — Professor John H. Timmerman discusses the poetry of the late Jane Kenyon (1947-1995) and his visit to her home, Eagle Pond Farm. (16 minutes)
- Jane Kenyon: Living and Dying at Eagle Pond Farm — Biographer John H. Timmerman discusses the life and work of poet Jane Kenyon (1947–1995). (53 minutes)
- The formative power of hymns and hymnbooks — FROM VOL. 149 Christopher Phillips discusses the cultural and spiritual effects of hymns and the “thingness” of hymnals. (18 minutes)
- Faith and unbelief — FROM VOL. 98 This Archive Feature revisits two conversations, one with Roger Lundin and one with David Bentley Hart, on what makes Christian belief so implausible to non-believers. (39 minutes)
- The rediscovery of meaning — Poet and theologian Malcolm Guite explains Owen Barfield’s idea of the development of consciousness over time, an evolution made evident through language that reveals an earlier, pre-modern way of seeing the world. (63 minutes)
- The rich significance of everyday life — In this interview from 2000, Roger Lundin — a frequent guest on our Journal — explains how the poetry of Richer Wilbur connects with the verse of other New England poets. (24 minutes)
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 159 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Kirk Farney, Andrew Willard Jones, James L. Nolan, Jr., Andrew Kaethler, Peter Ramey, and Kathryn Wehr
- Sources of wisdom (and of doubt) — Roger Lundin shares what he has appreciated about Mars Hill Audio conversations, and he discusses what makes Christian belief so implausible to non-believers. (32 minutes)
- All manner of thing shall be well — T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets is regarded by many as his greatest accomplishment. Today’s Feature presents a lecture about this monumental work, a talk given in 2019 by Dr. Janice Brown. (58 minutes)
- Insights into reality itself — Malcolm Guite on the philosophical concerns underlying Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
- The story of the demotion of stories — Malcolm Guite on the Enlightenment’s rash dismissal of poetic knowledge
- Remembering Roger Lundin (1949-2015) — Today’s Feature presents our first and last interviews with frequent guest Roger Lundin (1949-2015), in which he shares his love of language and discusses a Christian understanding of desire. (34 minutes)
- Feelings made articulate — Glenn C. Arbery on poetry and the intelligibility of the inner life
- Words as fulcrums — Wendell Berry on the mediating responsibilities of poets
- Richard Wilbur: R.I.P. — Poet Richard Wilbur (1921–2017) describes how poetry is at once profoundly private and yet essentially public. Poetry — like love — calls us to the things of this world. (44 minutes)
- From cities humming with a restless crowd — In a much-sung hymn and a little-known poem, William Cowper seeks retirement from worldliness
- A very figurative and metaphorical God — David Lyle Jeffrey on the poetic character of the voice of God
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 149 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Dru Johnson, Steven L. Porter, Reinhard Hütter, Matthew Levering, David Lyle Jeffrey, and Christopher Phillips
- Walter Hooper, R.I.P., and Christina Rossetti’s Advent poems — Walter Hooper (1931-2020) describes his first meeting with C. S. Lewis, a man he so admired and long served. In a second chapter in today’s Feature, Emma Mason explains how Christina Rossetti’s hopeful eschatological beliefs influenced the poems she wrote about the season of Advent. (21 minutes)
- Music for St. Cecilia’s Day — Ken Myers introduces several poems and related musical compositions that celebrate the heavenly gift of music and thereby honor St. Cecilia. (21 minutes)
- Spirits in Bondage: Lewis’s early poetry — Karen Swallow Prior and Don W. King discuss C. S. Lewis’s early poetry and the evidence therein of a “frustrated dualism.” (23 minutes)
- On reading and “Englishing” Dante — Jason Baxter, Rod Dreher, and Robert Pinsky discuss the age-old appeal and power of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy to awaken our souls to Divine beauty. (25 minutes)
- Dana Gioia on poets and poetry — In this collection of interview excerpts, poet and essayist Dana Gioia comments on the literary significance and distinctive voices of Longfellow, Donne, Hopkins, and other fellow poets. (25 minutes)
- Six recent books worthy of note — Ken Myers shares a summary of six recent books that we want our listeners to know about but whose authors we won’t be interviewing. (15 minutes)
- Mary Midgley, R.I.P. — Philosopher Mary Midgley (1919–2018) was a tireless critic of the reductionist, atomistic claims of modern science. (16 minutes)
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 135 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Bob Cutillo, Hans Boersma, Dana Gioia, Matthew Levering, Bruce Gordon, and Markus Rathey