When asked “How did you become a poet?” Robert Frost answered, “I followed a procession down the ages.”[1] As I thought about the procession I have followed as a poet, I had to ask myself who my favorite poet is. In many ways it is an impossible question to answer, because I have so many favorites based on various criteria and influences. For sacred poets, George Herbert would be a favorite, then John Donne; and for contemporary poets, who are both sacred and profane (meaning poets whose subjects are secular), T. S. Eliot and W. H. Auden. There are dozens of others. Shakespeare’s sonnets are in a unique category and were studied well by my all around favorite poet, Robert Frost, the consummate New England poet. We share many things as New Englanders, but his exclusive love of New Hampshire seals the deal for me. From a historical, cultural, and natural perspective (not political) it is the Shire for me.

Oddly, he was born in San Francisco, becoming a New Englander at age eleven. I was born in Boston and became a New Hampshirite at age two. He was not a believer, but as a classicist he revered the King James Bible for its literary and oral excellence. He was deeply affected by both its content and beautiful Elizabethan cadences. He was a philosophical dualist, always sensing something beyond what we see. His poetry was outwardly accessible, unlike so much modern poetry, because it is couched in the rural realities of early twentieth-century New England, especially New Hampshire. Hence, he is the secular or profane bard with whom I most resonate and seek to emulate. In the end, the exclusively profane Frost and the exclusively sacred Herbert have made excellent mentors.

Frost believed in structure and the influence of the history of poetry. I discovered both of these qualities years ago in the first poem of his first published book, A Boy’s Will (1913 in England, 1915 in the United States). “Into My Own” is a Shakespearean sonnet with an allusion to the Bard’s Sonnet 116 in line 4, “unto the edge of doom.” Frost looked beyond the visible. In that sense he is just like me. E. e. cummings was the first to catch my interest in poetry after a childhood of hearing my father’s repetition of lines from Shakespeare’s plays and the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Just recently I came across a poem by Cummings that I would have used for my Thanksgiving issue of Ordained Servant but for copyright problems: “65” XAIPE (1950), the first line of which is, “i thank You God for most this amazing.” The final quatrain reads:

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any—lifted from the no
of all nothing—human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?[2]

His juxtaposing of words and their use in odd ways assures the reader’s attention. Yet unlike much modern poetry his unusual wording yields meaning. This stanza nicely encapsulates the flavor of Cummings’s last book, titled XAIPE, meaning rejoice or greetings in ancient Greek. Paul uses this word almost thirty times in his letters.

Cummings and my father’s recitations paved the way for me to love the sound of well-ordered words. Then as Frost, “I followed a procession down the ages.” Several years ago at Shiloh Institute, after I had taught on the importance of appreciating and reading poetry for preaching, one of the students asked me to read one of his poems. It was doggerel, but I did not tell him so. Instead, I asked him who his favorite poets were. He answered that he did not read poetry, he only wrote it. I encouraged him to start following the “procession down the ages.”

I am reminded that we embark on a similar journey in theology, and perhaps any intellectual discipline. Theology cannot be done without historical theology. Our world of expressive individualism has spawned the dangerous idea that we should create unique spontaneous poetry or theology, spun out of the whole cloth of our imaginations. But unless our imaginations are filled with the best poetry and theology of the past, our creations will be of little value.

In closing, let me recommend several books that exemplify the “procession down the ages.” In historical theology, Crawford Gribben’s John Owen and English Puritanism: Experiences of Defeat[3] is a gem, providing a different perspective on Owen, appreciative without being hagiographic. Tracing the influences on Owen’s theology, Gribben provides a rich picture, including an initial powerful influence from Thomas Aquinas.

For poetry, the 2015 two-volume biography by Robert Crawford of T. S. Eliot is a superb exploration of the influences on Eliot’s poetry and criticism, ranging far beyond poetry itself. This is especially true of the first volume, Young Eliot.[4]

Finally, for exploring the literary influences on Frost, William Pritchard’s Frost: A Literary Life Reconsidered provides a thorough and fascinating account.[5]

I hope these suggestions will help my readers to enjoy investigating the “procession down the ages” in theology and poetry, and many other disciplines.

Endnotes

[1] Kathleen Morrison, Robert Frost: A Pictorial Chronicle (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1974), 6.

[2] e. e. cummings, Poems 1923–1954 (Harcourt, Brace, 1954), 464.

[3] Crawford Gribben, John Owen and English Puritanism: Experiences of Defeat (Oxford University Press), 2016. See Darryl Hart’s review in Ordained Servant 26 (2017): 121–23. Ordained Servant Online (August-September 2017) https://opc.org/os.html?article_id=643.

[4] Robert Crawford, Young Eliot: From St. Louis to the Wasteland (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015).

[5] William Pritchard, Frost: A Literary Life Reconsidered (Oxford University Press, 1984).

Gregory E. Reynolds is pastor emeritus of Amoskeag Presbyterian Church (OPC) in Manchester, New Hampshire, and is the editor of Ordained Servant. Ordained Servant Online, December, 2024.