In praise of poetic simplicity

John Donne’s poems, while often dealing with religious themes, are hardly known for their simple piety. His Holy Sonnets, which include such classics as “Batter my heart three-personed God” and “Death, be not proud,” provide ample food for the spiritually hungry, but their power derives from much the same wit and irony and metaphor that characterizes Donne’s “profane” works. Even in the most sincere and straightforward of his spiritual poems there remains the presence of the artist, or we might say, there remains evidence of the controlled craftsman, who is using every artistic muscle and wielding every rhetorical means to convey his message at maximum force. And this is, of course, precisely what one would expect from such a master poet as Donne–or any poet, for that matter. It is the poet’s job, quite simply, to communicate as much as possible with words by using as much of every word as possible. That we find Donne applying his immense artistic abilities to spiritual matters is hardly unexpected or problematic.

However, it is precisely due to the complexity and depth of Donne's poetry, taken as a whole, that his “Hymn to God the Father” first stunned me. In what is almost certainly one of his final poems, written on what would prove to be his deathbed, Donne seems to eschew artistic power, opting for a candor and simplicity unprecedented in his earlier work. Consider the first stanza:

Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
And do run still, though still I do deplore?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.

Without pressing my case too far–it is probably true, after all, that Donne intended the pun on “done” that critics have made so much of–I think it is fair to describe this poem as deliberately plain. Here we find little of the “impure” elements, such as imagery and wordplay, that a poet usually uses to elicit and evoke feelings, and it is this artistic refusal which, paradoxically, gives the poem its spiritual power. Precisely because Donne does not employ those artistic techniques which are known to delight readers, and of which we know Donne to be capable, we get the distinct feeling that we are overhearing a genuine prayer, as if we had an ear to the door of Donne’s hospital room.

For the same reason that I was immediately drawn to Donne’s “Hymn to God the Father” I have found Dunstan Thompson’s spiritual poetry, written in seclusion and only published after his death, to be particularly arresting and profound. No doubt, a critic as sympathetic as Dana Gioia is not wrong in his judgement that much of Thompson’s religious poetry is “diffuse, prosaic, or sentimental.” Yet there is something beautiful about the best of Thompson’s spiritual poems, particularly the most simple and unvarnished of them. And, as is the case with Donne’s late “Hymn,” Thompson’s spiritual poems are especially winning when considered in light of his personal and poetic beginnings, adequately captured in the following lines from an early poem, Tarquin:

The red-haired robber in the ravished bed
Is doomsday driven, and averts his head,
Turning to spurn the spoiled subjected body,
That, lately lying altar for his ardor,
Uncandled, scandalizes him, afraid he
Has lost his lifetime in a moment’s murder:
He is the sinner who is saint instead:
The dark night makes him wish that he were dead.

Just about every aspect of this poem is helpful in understanding the kind of poet who emerged as something of a poet-wonderboy in 1940’s New York City. Boasting a style as indulgent and seductive as his overtly sexual subject matter, Thompson’s first volume, simply titled Poems, garnered critical acclaim and quickly established him as a rising poetic talent. However, after publishing another well-received book, his success petered out, or else, he began to define success differently, and this shift in values took its toll on the reception of his work. After floundering in post-war England for a few years, Thompson returned to the Catholic faith of his youth in 1952, abandoning his licentious lifestyle and poetic prospects in one go. He would not abandon poetry, however.

Thompson’s later work is not dominated by religious themes, despite the religious reasons for his withdrawal from mainstream art culture. However, there are a few late spiritual poems that deserve to be remembered, and among them, I find the sonnet “San Salvador” to be the most moving. Its octave runs:

Friend of the friendless, and the One who cares
For every lonely, frightened, desperate man;
Kind Heart, attentive to the feeblest prayers,
Hastening to all who do the best they can;
Who, coming unexpected to the door,
Knocks, and, if answered, breaks the chain of guilt,
And lets the soul go free to live once more;

Much as Donne in his “Hymn” neglects those techniques that gave his earlier work such popularity and power, Thompson trades the stylized rhetoric epitomized in “Tarquin”–with its unrelenting alliteration and rhythm–for naked, everyday speech. And this decision to adopt an everyday register reflects the poem’s central sentiment, as Thompson assures us that God cares for every man, even the weakest among us. Through his rhetorical choices, the poet quietly suggests that he is one such “lonely, frightened, desperate man” who needs the assurance that God will hasten “to all who do the best they can.” Then comes the sestet:

Shepherd, who seeks his torn and filthy sheep,
Rejoicing when the longest lost is found;
Father, who sees the broken wastrel creep,
Towards home, and, running, lifts him from the ground:
This is our God, entreating us to prove
His friends and live forever in His love.

In the poem’s final few lines, we are presented with several images, a fact which may seem to work against my earlier suggestion that Thompson is, like Donne, purposefully embracing a plain, almost Puritan, style. Importantly, though, none of the images here arise from experience, and are instead derived from scripture. Unless his reader is well-versed in Jesus’ parables–and perhaps even if he were–the images would fail to establish the kind of common understanding, and common feeling, between poet and reader that imagery is normally geared toward. On top of that, these spiritual images hardly develop on one another, failing to constitute any sort of engaging argument. Rather, they are simply offered, one after the next, as further “evidence” for his singular, spiritually-intuited point: God is the Friend of the friendless.

What I trust is becoming clear, by this point, is that both Donne and Thompson’s poems present us with a paradox: What we have are poems whose spiritual power is predicated upon the way they sacrifice poetic power. Of course, we would not wish that every poem be written this way–in fact, as I’ve been suggesting, such a situation might be impossible. To sacrifice poetic power would seem to require that one’s poetic abilities have already been demonstrated.

Yet how, exactly, could the sacrificing of poetic power make a poem more powerful? How could giving up poetic techniques give a poem anything? It is here I recognize the extent to which my whole argument has rested upon my personal experience of these poems, and the extent to which that experience is the consequence of my most deeply-held beliefs. It is possible that very few readers will agree with what follows.

However, I find these poems to be moving and beautiful precisely because of the way they fail according to conventional artistic standards. These are poems whose apparent failure arises from faith in the idea that the weak things of the world will shame the wise. These are poems whose candor implies belief in a God of whom it has been said, “A broken and contrite heart, He does not despise.” And these are poems whose simplicity suggests a soul willing to trust when told that we will not be heard for our many words. It is for these reasons, in addition to the homely beauty of the lines themselves, that these poems so move me.

Of course, in all of this, one could claim that I have simply accounted for the ingenious artistic choices of two brilliant poets. Sure, these may be genuine prayers offered to God at one level, but doesn’t it remain true that we are reading poems nonetheless? If these poems arise from a desire to approach God in all simplicity and sincerity, why have Donne and Thompson written poems at all? In other words: Doesn’t the fact that Donne and Thompson have written poems, or written anything at all, suggest that they wished for their words to find a human audience?

Ultimately, I don’t know what was motivating these two poets. I can’t speak to their intentions and desires. Yet it occurs to me that the key to the whole matter may be found in the idea of offering or sacrifice. As those who have placed their faith in a God who, to use Duntan Thompson’s terms, hastens “to all who do the best they can,” these two come bearing their best, which, because they are poets, happens to take the form of a poem. However–and this may be the most important point of all–they do not come bearing just any kind of poem, but specifically the kind of poem that succeeds on God’s terms rather than those of the world. And for this reason, I find their sacrifices to be unblemished.