"Words, words, words"* (GH Day 15)

I am just too impatient to be an adequate crafter of words, to wrack my brain and rummage through my wordhoard to find the absolute best term to fit the meaning I want. Yet yesterday, working on a paper abstract, I tried to do just that. I scanned over the same sentences again and again until I had started second-guessing myself and looked up the dictionary definitions and possible synonyms for nearly every major word in my abstract. It drove me crazy, and I finally threw in the towel. "Oh, well--it's good enough!" And off the conference abstract went via email.

I've previously written about George Herbert's professed struggles with his poetic language. His problem was a bit different from mine (trying to write something good enough for God), but not too far off. I also struggle with writing something "good enough" (for others whose opinion I either value or fear and for God as well): "For whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God" (1 Cor  10:31).

There's a stanza I'd like to focus on from the middle of Herbert's poem "Jordan (2)" (courtesy of www.ccel.org), which I think describes well the situation of the writer struggling to glorify God with her or his output:

Jordan (II)

WHen first my lines of heav’nly joyes made mention, Such was their lustre, they did so excell, That I sought out quaint words and trim invention; My thoughts began to burnish, sprout, and swell, Curling with metaphors a plain intention, Decking the sense, as if it were to sell. Thousands of notions in my brain did runne, Off’ring their service, if I were not sped: I often blotted what I had begunne; This was not quick enough, and that was dead. Nothing could seem too rich to clothe the sunne, Much lesse those joyes which trample on his head. As flames do work and winde, when they ascend, So did I weave my self into the sense. But while I bustled, I might heare a friend Whisper, How wide is all this long pretence! There is in love a sweetnesse readie penn’d; Copie out onely that, and save expense.

In the poem, the speaker perceives his poetic verse to have begun well, with lustrous lines that seemed appropriate to describe his "heavenly joys" (ll. 1-2). But the poet tries to go further and make his poetry more complicated than it perhaps needs to be, adding all kinds of bells and whistles, as if, he admits, he were trying to "sell" something (6) insincerely, like a mountebank.

What writer does not battle all the ideas swirling around in her/his head? Who doesn't scratch out and rewrite and scratch out again? The goal for Herbert here is language with enough vibrancy and vitality to be an adequate complement (and compliment) to a living Lord, yet "[n]othing could seem to rich to clothe the sun" (11).

I witnessed a lovely sunset last night. The sun was the one giving rich colors to the surroundings (the clouds, sea, sky, etc.), not the other way around. How could any "clothing" be a match for the brilliance of the sun? It will always outshine whatever attempts to cover it. And the Son (Herbert's wordplay is intentional) will always outshine our offered efforts at the best wordsmithing we can do. Herbert always seems to reach this conclusion: it's the motive, the love for God, that counts, not the "pretense" (16).

Perhaps it's best to reduce time spent "bustling" lest we miss the "whisper" (15-16).


* Title quote is from Hamlet