Marilyn McEntyre
Eerdmans, 160 pages
When asked what advice he would give to pastors, Eugene Peterson said, “Read more poetry.” He may have received and passed on that advice from Marilyn McEntyre, surely a kindred spirit who continues to probe the relationship between language and faithful practice. Her testimony to the power of words to form life is well-known from previous books, including “Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies.”
In “When Poets Pray,” McEntyre attends specifically to the poets whose poems bear a remarkable resemble to prayers. Like the Psalms, they can be called prayer-poems. She has selected poets that together make a rich, diverse feast of voices: Denise Levertov, Wendell Berry, Mary Oliver, Robert Frost, Scott Cairns, Hildegard of Bingen, George Herbert and TS Eliot, among others, make an appearance. The poems would be a feast enough, but there is more. McEntyre is a skilled poet herself and a faithful Christian with a deep heart. She brings a subtle, listening mind with a God-tuned heart to these brief mediations on each poem. By her own admission these meditations are not scholarly exercises, they are invitations. One could add that this is the very nature of poetry that she conveys: invitations to listen more closely to words that have the power to reveal truth known in no other way. Perhaps pointing toward another volume, McEntyre acknowledges these poems are from the Western traditions and that we have much to learn from Asia, Africa, India and South America. Indeed. She modestly delivers her comments on these extraordinary poems to readers “who seek in them the spiritual companionship one pilgrim can offer another along the way.”
