Poetry: The Crownless One Crowning

 

The Crowning of the Virgin, by Louis-Edouard Paul Fournier (1857–1917)

Sacred Poetry Writing Contest

Since 2020, the Catholic Literary Arts has had an annual Sacred Poetry Writing Contest. I only just discovered it early this year when one of my friends from our parish recommended that I give it a try. Being a poetry enthusiast, I immediately looked it up. It turns out, there is a form of poetry that is called ekphrastic poetry, which is poetry that is formed about a specific picture or image. According to Getty.edu, "Ekphrastic poetry has come to be defined as poems written about works of art; however, in ancient Greece, the term ekphrasis was applied to the skill of describing a thing with vivid detail." This, I admit, was not an easy thing to do, as it is the first time I had ever attempted such a thing. I am attempting something very similar by writing a hymn to Our Lady of Perpetual Help for a friend, so at least now I have "gotten my feet wet," as the saying goes. 

The three winners of the Contest did an excellent job, and seeing their poems has given me an idea of how to write such a poem. I normally stick with a certain meter and rhyme, but their winning entries have taught me that neither is so important when it comes to drawing out truths revealed in the art. These truths can be revealed through the use of colors, light, facial expressions, body postures, positions of articles, and many other things besides. What is great is that, although the artists may have used artistic techniques by which they sought to express realities or truths, sometimes there are other things the artists do not intend that are no less important. The First-Place poem really taught me that. Where I used to have a disdain for free verse, I do so no longer; that said, however, I thoroughly enjoyed the meter and rhyme scheme of the Third-Place poem. 

From the eight different images chosen for the Contest, the one titled The Crowning of the Virgin, really struck something within me. I tried to write it out in the poem, but words fell short. Essentially, I was struck by how the crownless Ecce Homo was crowning His Virgin-Mother, as if we could see the dogma of the Immaculate Conception within the image: that through the foreseen merits of the Passion of Jesus Christ, Mary was herself conceived without original sin. And so, without further ado, I present my submission.

Poem: The Crownless One Crowning

The Crownless One has crowned thee Queen,
The Crownless suffers insults keen.
But is He crownless crowning thee,
In burnt-sienna cloak and reed?

Where is His crown? This Mystery
Can be explained: That in our need
Christ the suff’ring Servant came
To be, less sin, like us the same.

Ere Mystery of the Incarnation,
God formed plan with perspication;
Thus He crowned thy brow with grace,
Second Eva of our race!

Thy white veil to all a sign:
No stain of sin was ever thine.
The azure blue upon thy sleeve,
Like waters of baptism received,
Reveals thine own surpassing grace
Which shines upon thy lovely face.

Thou art th’ Immaculate Conception
Only by His death and Passion:
He who is thy Son and Savior
Merits thee His grace and favor.

Before Him bendest humbly low,
Yet simultane lookest below
To aid our combat here on earth
And send us grace from thy reserve.

A careful glance upon Him now,
His face downcast and all forlorn
Revealeth lancing painful thorn
Hath moved to heart from on His brow
As tumult of the nations ring,
“Crownless be this God and King!”

Let faithful hearts comfort the Lord
And speak His praise forevermore!
Let faithful voices rise and sing,
“Long live the Queen, and Christ the King!”

Some Texts on Poets

St. Robert Southwell is the foremost poet amongst the English Martyrs, even though many others of them also wrote poetry. This is why I have taken him as one of my patrons for poetry, the other reason being that English is my native language; although my particular dialect is American-English, I see no reason why that should be an impediment to my deciding on his patronage. Below is the introductory paragraph from his feastday, February 21st, in Lives of the Saints for Every Day of the Year (1965; The Catholic Press, Inc.).

Saints and poets have a great quality in common. Both are blessed with a deep appreciation of beauty: the poet sees the order and magnificence in creation and communicates this to others through the written word; the saint recognizes this beauty as a reflection of God and communicates this experience to others through the example of his dedicated life. Perhaps saints and poets enjoy life more than most other people. With their gift of sensitivity, they feel, see, and hear more deeply the things that others very often take for granted. When a man is both saint and poet, his life is a reflection of all that is true and beautiful.

In Chapter 2 of his book Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton made the observation that poetry and imagination do not breed insanity, that reason and logic do. G.K. Chesterton was one of the finest minds of the Twentieth Century. It is my hope that someday, he will join the ranks of the Canonized Saints.

If we are to glance at the philosophy of sanity, the first thing to do in the matter is to blot out one big and common mistake. There is a notion adrift everywhere that imagination, especially mystical imagination, is dangerous to man’s mental balance. Poets are commonly spoken of as psychologically unreliable; and generally there is a vague association between wreathing laurels in your hair and sticking straws in it. Facts and history utterly contradict this view. Most of the very great poets have been not only sane, but extremely business-like; and if Shakespeare ever really held horses, it was because he was much the safest man to hold them. Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination. Artistic paternity is as wholesome as physical paternity. Moreover, it is worthy of remark that when a poet really was morbid it was commonly because he had some weak spot of rationality on his brain. Poe, for instance, really was morbid; not because he was poetical, but because he was specially analytical. Even chess was too poetical for him; he disliked chess because it was full of knights and castles, like a poem. He avowedly preferred the black discs of draughts, because they were more like the mere black dots on a diagram. Perhaps the strongest case of all is this: that only one great English poet went mad, Cowper. And he was definitely driven mad by logic, by the ugly and alien logic of predestination. Poetry was not the disease, but the medicine; poetry partly kept him in health. He could sometimes forget the red and thirsty hell to which his hideous necessitarianism dragged him among the wide waters and the white flat lilies of the Ouse. He was damned by John Calvin; he was almost saved by John Gilpin. Everywhere we see that men do not go mad by dreaming. Critics are much madder than poets. Homer is complete and calm enough; it is his critics who tear him into extravagant tatters. Shakespeare is quite himself; it is only some of his critics who have discovered that he was somebody else. And though St. John the Evangelist saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators. The general fact is simple. Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion, like the physical exhaustion of Mr. Holbein. To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain. The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.

All around us, there is a general revival of interest in poetry that raises us up from the mundane and humdrum daily existence. Man is no longer satisfied with dullness and mediocrity: his indominable spirit longs to be uplifted to beautiful realities that transcend time and space. In previous times, there was an ecclesiastical interest primarily in Latin poetry for the Sacred Liturgy; while that is still good, we need poetry that reaches into the hearts of modern-day people, and in the United States, that can effectively be done with both modern and traditional English (although not mixed in a single poem, because that would be just straight-up awkward and unintelligent, like the goofy way the Vulcans spoke in the Original Star Trek series episode "Amok Time," whose screenwriter was likely no linguist). I do enjoy the poetry of Saints like Thomas Aquinas, Robert Southwell, Thomas More, John Paul II, and others. Yet, I also enjoy many other poets 

• John Milton,
• Chaucer,
• Isaac Watts (the "Father of English Hymnody"),
• John Mason Neale (especially his poetic translations from Latin originals),
• William Cowper,
• John Keble, and
• G.K. Chesterton. 

I once heard it said that our day and age do not produce the arts like in years or centuries past. The tide has changed; along with the rediscovery of the Gregorian Rite Liturgy (the "Traditional Latin Mass"), there has also been a great springtime in the arts: new classical music, new sacred music, new poetry, new hymns, new paintings, and new sculptures. Many musical compositions should also be considered modern classical music (here I am thinking of outstanding musical scores from motion pictures, like the four films The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Gladiator). To my surprise, the USCCB had a poetry/hymn competition for the Eucharistic Revival. And there is even a Catholic Poetry Society! These are definite signs of hope and renewal.