Wanted: Poets, Dead or Alive?

LongfellowPoetry of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Come, read to me some poem,
Some simple and heartfelt lay
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of day.
– “The Day is Done” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


Recently my daughter came up to me with a book of poetry. She showed me a poem and asked, “How is this a poem, just because someone decided to break the sentences up in random places?” She’s taking a poetry class at college and when I asked her how it was going, she said it’s hard because the poetry they’re reading is “c–p,” as she put it. The teacher told the students that since they most likely studied the “old” (ie. dead) poets (ie. Longfellow, Dickinson, Tennyson, Kipling, the Romantics) in high school, they were going to do modern and contemporary poetry in this class. Then my daughter (unintentionally) gave me a compliment and said now she understood WHY those old poets are the ones I assigned when we were homeschooling. My daughter had a hard time understanding this modern poetry, couldn’t relate to it, and definitely didn’t seem to appreciate or enjoy reading it. Continue reading “Wanted: Poets, Dead or Alive?”

Give ’em Watts, Parents! : Divine and Moral Songs for Children

divinemoralsongsHymns and Spiritual Songs and Divine and Moral Songs for Children by Isaac Watts

Alas! and did my Savior bleed?
  And did my Sov’reign die,
Would He devote that sacred head
  For such a worm as I?
 
Was it for sins that I had done
  He groaned upon the tree?
Amazing pity! grace unknown!
 And love beyond degree!

What kinds of songs does your church congregation primarily sing for its worship services? Most churches seem to have moved away from singing hymns to praise songs, and the use of the hymnal has been displaced with PowerPoint slides to project the lyrics at the front of the sanctuary (or should I say auditorium?). To some extent I suppose it’s just a matter of preference and personal taste, but I have to say that the lyrics of many of the contemporary worship songs I hear seem so shallow and repetitive and lacking in content. And the melodies are often really tough to catch on to. I think it’s really sad that a whole new generation of church goers are no longer learning the old hymns, song with lyrics that teach theological truths and focus on who God is and what He has done, not on man’s feelings and needs.

One of the greatest hymn writers of all time was Isaac Watts. Never heard of him? Continue reading “Give ’em Watts, Parents! : Divine and Moral Songs for Children”