A Century of Poetry – 100 poems for searching the heart, by Rowan Williams

The former Archbishop of Canterbury says his principle of selecting the poems was ‘whether or not they open the door to some fresh and challenging insights about the life of faith’

A Century of Poetry – 100 poems for searching the heart
By Rowan Williams
SPCK
ISBN: 978 0 281 08552 1
Reviewed by John Matthews

 
In this book Rowan Williams has collected and commented on a hundred poems from the past hundred years or so by 79 poets, from a variety of faiths and none. Many of them are not well known, with many more familiar names like Yeats, Duffy, Heaney and Hughes absent. Each poem and commentary occupies three or four pages.
 
Williams says his principle of selecting the poems was ‘whether or not they open the door to some fresh and challenging insights about the life of faith’ and whether ‘they present the language of religious belief...as something worth thinking about, worth thinking with, and capable of leaving the reader with an enhanced perception of their humanity and all that surrounds it’.
 
Some of the poems deal with biblical passages and themes. Yehuda Amichai’s ‘The Real Hero’ speaks the real hero of the binding of Isaac as the ram. Euros Bowen’s ‘Lazarus’ says of the raised Lazarus that ‘feelings/ feel more, tastes taste more, smelling/is more than smelling'. George Mackay Brown and T S Eliot write of the three kings or magi.

Rhina Espaillat brings two passages together in ‘Martha Considers the Lillies’. Denise Levertov has a novel slant on ‘The Jacob’s Ladder’. Paul Mariani and Michael Symonds Roberts focus on Holy Saturday. Tadeusz Rozewicz imagines Jesus writing in the sand. A E Stallings writes of the birth of Jesus as the first miracle. James Wright sees ‘Saint Judas’, on his way to killing himself, running to help a man being beaten up.
 
Two poems I especially liked were Isobel Dixon’s ‘One of the First Times After’ and Denise Levertov’s ‘Kindness’. Amongst lines that particularly struck me were ‘God is the poetry caught in any religion/caught, not imprisoned...’ from Les Murray’s ‘Poetry and Religion’ and Stevie Smith writing of ‘The Airy Christ’ who ‘...only wishes they could hear him sing’.
 
This is a very eclectic collection of poems, for some of which Williams’ elucidatory comments were necessary as well as helpful, and it is one to which I shall return. The book is a well produced hardback with good-sized type and a bibliography, which includes the dates of the volumes in which the poems appear. Unfortunately, the only biographical details of the poets are those which Williams mentions and sometimes there are none at all.

 

John Matthews is a retired Baptist minister living in Rushden, Northants