GOD THE POET

EXPLORING THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF POETRY

JEFFREY JAY NIEHAUS

God the Poet: Exploring the Origin and Nature of Poetry

© 2014 by Jeffrey Jay Niehaus

Lexham Press, 1313 Commercial St., Bellingham, WA 98225

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First edition by Weaver Book Company.

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Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission.

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Print ISBN 9781683592495

Digital ISBN 9781683592501

Copyedited by Amy Nemecek

Cover photo, Boynton Inlet at Dawn. Courtesy of Seng Publishing Group. Used by permission. The photo shows God’s artistry in a context of something made by men letting the ocean flow in, which is a figure for what poetry does if it is good.

CREATORI OMNIUM POETAE

To the great Poet

“A perfect Judge will read each Work of Wit

With the same Spirit that its Author writ.”—Pope

CONTENTS

Prologue

Chapter 1 God and Poetry

Chapter 2 Dante and the Divine Rescue

Chapter 3 Milton and the Ways of God

Excursus: Milton and the Devil

Chapter 4 Cowper and The Task

Chapter 5 Wordsworth and the Philosophical Poem

Chapter 6 A Modern Poet and the Way Home

Epilogue: Memory, Imagination, and God in Nature

Bibliography

PROLOGUE

Although this book has benefited from what thoughtful critics have said about poetry, and although it uses scholarly apparatus such as footnotes, it was not conceived as a scholarly work; and though it ranges into theological reflection it was not meant as a theological project. As a theologian and poet who has some thoughts and concerns about poetry, I took the liberty to express them as they came to me in the pages that follow.1 So, although this book takes up the epic-length poems of Dante, Milton, Cowper, and Wordsworth, it was not meant to be an even moderately scholarly treatment of the poets or their poems. Nonetheless I hope that in touching on those issues that seemed most important to myself I have touched on some of the more important issues in the poems. If I have actually engaged the points, or some of the points, that are most important, and if what I have written is true, then I hope this personal excursion may make some small contribution.

I was prompted to write the book because I had written and published a poem that, whatever its merits, stands in the tradition of Cowper and Wordsworth (and branching back from them, also has remoter affinities with the great works of Dante and Milton). Other poets have informed my thought on these matters. I have benefited from what C. S. Lewis wrote about epic poetry in his Preface to Paradise Lost as well as from Coleridge’s thoughts about God and the imagination in his Biographia Literaria.2 As a result, Coleridge’s primary and secondary ...