How to Write a Poem Part II: The Master’s Mercies

Reflection

In another post, I tried to explain my approach to writing poems. Certainly, I managed to identify several evolutions that each of my poems have undergone. But I failed to properly express how much time such a process has sometimes taken; failed to note how some of my poems have skipped steps (or done them in a different order); and failed to really describe that most radical evolution, that most mystifying step that morphs an newly born idea, expressed in a few words, into the awkward adolescent of a first draft. I hope to rectify, or at least explain, those omissions today.

Sometimes the best way to see how much your advice is worth is to take your own advice. When, with all the drama of a fighting ring’s gong, the leader of our lady’s bible study announced that the homework for the week was to write a poem of praise in the fashion of Deborah, I was presented with the perfect opportunity to do just that. The rush of joy and knowledge brought forth by a fruitful study of God’s word and communion with God’s people was raging high. There could be no better time to start, so right then and there I looked for a few words, a starting point, and found them. I wrote:

"I will sing a song of praise
Praise to God my Maker, my Master
The singer will sing praise, for I am humbled
My       "

That was all I managed before rushing off to the main service, but by then I had already caught the threads of where I wanted the poem to go from there. By the end of the day, I’d added:

"With but a word He breathed the heavens
The same divine voice which makes the dead to breathe
Were His pinky to twitch, the center of the earth would shatter in it's haste to flee
My Mighty God

It's all been paid for        It is done"

These last two phrases were more like notes on where the poem was meant to go, rather than the next lines of it. I was confident that I would be able to put together more of it, when I sat down to it. And sit down I did, the following day, and the next. With the jerky, grinding movements of rusted gears I managed to ink out:

"I am vile
"Let us make plans and perform them
Let us fight fate war with wills and win
Let us make a lasting legacy, and declare it beautiful it's beauty a life well lived
So speaks the sinful, thus so pondered the proud
So blundered the blind, so fell the fool with a with petty sounds
Yet you have redeemed me"

The next day, with teeth clenched and a looming Sunday in the back of my mind, I wrote during my lunch break:

"By Your mighty hand, and by Your gentle voice,
and by selfless blood You saved me
My ways could not contend with your grace
It is done"

Then, after some thought, I caught the drift of the natural shape and rhyming scheme that was forming, and made some modifications:

I will sing a song of praise
Praise to God my Maker, Master
To the Savior, Wonderful, merciful is He
For I am humbled, and He is Worthy

With but a word He breathed the heavens
The divine voice which makes the dead to breathe
Were His pinky to twitch, the planet would shatter in it's haste to flee
My Mighty God

"Let us make plans and perform them,
Let us war with wills and win
Let us make a lasting legacy, a life well lived
So said I

So speaks the sinful, so pondered the proud,
So blundered the blind, so fell the fool with petty sounds
And unique and useful hands were bound
O lowly me

Yet by Your mighty hands, and by Your gentle voice
You have decided, and you have redeemed me
And by Your selfless blood You saved me
It is done

It is begun          He comes again"

And though by now there were several good thoughts in place, and a few coherent verses, I knew the poem wasn’t done. In a sense, what I had written was the full arc of my original idea, but I had yet to find or write about the “discovered meaning”. I had a plant, but no blooms; a knot, but no ribbon; a bridge, but no path beyond it. For the next three days, I sat during my breaks, and stewed for a few minutes each morning, and tried my hardest to find the words for the next step. I thought that if I could just catch hold of the first three or four words of the next stanza, I would know where to go, but my mind kept getting distracted by questions of where I really wanted to land this plane and how it was all supposed to tie back to praise. When nothing came during my lunch break on Saturday, I began mentally preparing my pitiful expressions of “It can’t be helped” (said more like “This was all I was able to finish this week, but here it is,” because American’s aren’t allowed to make that exact excuse). As an artist surrounded by artists who are so much more artistic than myself that the title hardly seems appropriate, there’s really no shame in saying that my art project wasn’t finished by an arbitrary deadline I didn’t even set myself (or so I said to myself). I said, “Really, four or five stanzas is nothing to sneeze at”, with all the conviction of an addict taking a half measure. The length of the thing had nothing to do with it, as other poems on this site show. I said with a bit more honesty, “I’ll finish it when the words come, even if I’m the only one who gets to enjoy that version.”

But the Lord had other plans. I awoke early Sunday morning, before my alarm, and lay still in bed, convinced I needed to do something wholesome. That was all I knew for sure, but after the week I’d had, my inclination was for my poem. It was in the notebook I’d helpfully tucked inside my bedstead, and I reached for it, still partially dreading the leaden sensation of my fingers when I’m stumped for words, as though the ink of my pen had been replaced with gravel. But God had other plans. The words came, and an hour later I had a poem to share:

The Master’s Mercies

"I will sing a song of praise
To the Savior, Wonderful, merciful is He
For I am humbled, and He is worthy
God my Master

With but a word, He breathed the heavens
The divine voice which makes the dead to sing
Did His pinky twitch, earth would shatter in it's haste to flee
My Mighty God

"Let us make plans and perform them
Let us war with wills and win
Let us leave a lasting legacy, a life well lived."
So said I

So speaks the sinful, so pondered the proud
So blundered the blind, so fell the fool with petty sounds
And unique and useful hands were bound
O lowly me

Yet by Your mighty hand and by Your gentle voice
You have decided, and You have redeemed me
And by Your selfless blood You saved me
It is done

Forgiven, I now fall on my face
Yet empowered and guided I rise by words of grace
For my every step You've chosen it's place
I walk again

And though the earth with sin is black
And devils forebear to keep their guises their guises to keep
Their day hour nears, good prevails, the Judge harvest to reap
He Christ comes again

So praise, great and lowly, praise, ye wayward
For the King does not withhold His favor
His gifts are endless numberless, His truths Of endless gifts and perfect truth ye might savor
So to His the Master's mercies run

In case you’re wondering, I’ve included all the original words in place, with strikethroughs where I changed the words almost immediately. While I know this makes each draft harder to read, I hope that this helps you see that editing isn’t really something I do only at the end or after the first draft is in place. For reference I’ve included an image of what my notebook looked like after that full week of brainstorming, grinding, inspiration and fiddling. If you’re reading carefully, you’ll see that there were even a few changes made just in the process of rewriting the whole first draft in a legible fashion, which I did on a different page.

Conclusion

So you see, the timeline of a poem’s life cycle is not nearly so condensed, nor so orderly, as I made it seem in my first post. Even when set to a deadline, there is no guarantee that the “words will come”. Notice the vague sense of helplessness in that expression? As if words, of their own free will and according to the inclinations of their own minds, will file up and collect themselves in orderly rows within my mind, the way the animals did for Noah (please laugh here). Yet, in a very really sense, God and His spirit within me seems to be a necessary part of the process, just as it was for the construction and occupation of the arc.

I believe God had a hand in every part of this process. He orchestrated the initial sparks that got me going; He’s been the teacher in the learning I’ve been doing that fed that inspiration; He was reining me in in the times when I couldn’t find the words, and He was nudging me forward in the times when the words came. Indeed, there have been many times when it seemed as though God Himself were giving me the words, though I don’t usually say it like that. Sometimes, I sinfully wish to hoard the credit, and other times I wish to avoid making my poems out to be more special than they are, and sometimes I really wonder where actually those words are coming from. But maybe all of those excuses are no more than that, and maybe God gives me words because He has a purpose for them, and it is really rebellious of me to pretend that all of those words came only from my own heart, and thus could come from any heart.

Do I think this poem is perfect? Hardly. In many ways it runs counter to my aesthetic sense. The lack of uniformity, for example, bothers me, even perhaps more than it should. In many places, I think better words are out there, words that will do more conveying, and words that might even do more than convey. And there’s no denying that at least the last three verse are truly the first draft. They just came out my head that way, so in theory, at least, they could be better.

But do I like it? Certainly. When I shared it, it was with the attitude of having finished a thing, and I made no mention of imperfect condition or future improvement, though both thoughts were there. Even now, sharing it here, I believe that I will improve it over time. But I mean to let it percolate, and only make changes after the initial flush of satisfaction and the rush of “finishing” something has faded. In the meantime, I might as well enjoy the both the flush and the rush, no?

I still believe that anyone can write a poem. I still insist that what holds any man back from finding the words and making something beautiful is his own head and his own heart and his own choices. But I would like to amend that belief by acknowledging two thing:

1. You cannot write what does not already reside within you. It is only because of the lessons I’ve been learning lately that I was able to write this poem, and without those lesson, painful as they were, these words would not exist.
2. All beauty, just like all knowledge and truth and goodness, comes from the Author of Creation, God All-Mighty, All-Present, and All-Knowing, who certainly does visit His people and shepherds them, His flock. If you really want to make something beautiful, make sure you know a bit about the One who defined beauty, and make sure you and He are “chill”, as they say.

In case you aren’t aware, there’s only one way to be “chill” with Your Maker: Believe in His Son, Jesus Christ, who came to earth as a man, lived a perfect life, taught us the heart of the Father, and died on your behalf to pay for your sins, then rose again to sit at the right hand of God on high. Believe, in other words, in God’s plan for forgiveness, believe in His goodness, and believe that His words are true. That’s the way God Himself made for you, because perfection is impossible for you, and His perfection can’t ignore your imperfections, but His love can’t ignore your lonely and helpless state. You haven’t understood the definition of the word “wonderful” until you’ve understood that much, and having understood, “[you]’ll never be the same“.

So, please, try writing something. Try making something beautiful. Get right with your Maker, and try knowing something true. Don’t put a timeline on it. Don’t force the process to comply with your conception of “efficiency” or “productivity” or “utility” or even your ideas of “beauty”, even your very well thought out ideas. Don’t try to leave out the parts of the process you don’t like. Finally, don’t imagine that anything good comes out of you in isolation, but instead remember that you are at your best when you are reaching for that which is above you, and then around you, and only then look for what these things have placed within you. That’s what God’s been teaching me lately, and I hope it helps you too.

Thanks for reading. May you have peace.

Grinning until next time,