Writers to Read: Nine Names That Belong on Your Bookshelf

As Christian poets and writers, most of us have literary favorites who influenced our view of Christianity, the church, the world, and writing. Professor-pastor-writer Douglas Wilson discusses his favorites in his new book Writers to Read: Nine Names That Belong on Your Bookshelf, published by Crossway, who kindly sent me a copy to review.

In the Introduction, Wilson says, “A writer needs friends who simply benefit from knowing him, which is another way of saying that good writers need good readers.” Those of us who have been published know just how much we need good readers, but I’m especially taken with the idea that people I don’t know might benefit from having read my works! That thought might take us away from fretting about sales and reviews to a closer look at what we hope to accomplish in our Christian writing lives.

One of the things G.K. Chesterton accomplished was a prolific career that's already spanned generations of readers. However, Wilson began the first chapter with him because, chronologically, he comes first among these nine writers: G.K. Chesterton, H.L. Mencken, P.G. Wodehouse, T.S. Eliot, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Robert Capon, Marilyn Robinson, and Nathan Wilson.

In the opening chapter, the author quotes Chesterton, who wisely wrote: “There must always be a rich moral soil for any great aesthetic growth. The principle of art for art’s sake is a very good principle if it means that there is a vital distinction between the earth and the tree that has its roots in the earth, but it is a very bad principle if it means that the tree could grow just as well with its roots in the air.”

Having edited or critiqued many poems and manuscripts by other poets and writers, I see Chesterton’s statement as key to being authentic, down-to-earth, and well-grounded in reality rather than uprooted in a topsy-turvy effort to be heavenly.

The next chapter introduces us to H.L. Mencken, who “writes in such a way as to make anything an object of fascination. Whether it is soles of shoes that are like slabs of oak, or his own matronly figure, or hired girls built like airplane carriers…, Mencken is consistently, thoroughly interesting. Many Christians, under the influence of pietism, have come to believe that love, action, and gratitude must always be expressed in such smarmy ways as to ensure its thundering dullness. But in the hands of a gifted writer, the most astonishing connections can be made between this and that.”

As Wilson goes on to say:

“Christians can learn from Mencken in two ways. The first is by watching what he writes on any subject and imitating it. Those who want to be creative originals from scratch seldom are, and those who slavishly follow the recipe have a different problem, just as debilitating. Those who look carefully at the masters to learn and imitate soon find their own distinctive voice with their own contributions.

“The second way to learn is by reading and applying his observations about writers, writing, words, and so on.”

The third author under discussion is known for his Jeeves books – P.G. Wodehouse, whom Wilson describes as “a black-belt metaphor ninja” and one “whose comic metaphors can still teach us how all metaphors work, how the thing is done.” As Wilson puts it, “We need Wodehouse for a number of reasons, but one stands out. The besetting sin of many cranky, conservative Christian types is their inability to make any good point whatever without sounding shrill.”

Humor certainly smooths those sharp edges, enabling us to say what we want to say without sounding overly pious or judgmental. But, whether we’re apt to be humorous, metaphoric, or what, Wilson offers this sound advice: “If our words are weapons – and they are – then we need to train ourselves in the use of them.” Amen!

Since Wilson sensibly decided to discuss each of nine writers in their order of birth, T.S. Eliot – one of my first loves in poetry – comes fourth. If you’ve read his works too, you know the truth of Wilson’s assessment, “His poems are allusion-soaked, so much so that it is very hard to follow unless you are as well educated as he was…,” which I wasn’t! Since I often miss his connections, I’m relieved to hear that even a literary guru such as Wilson has similar issues. And that reminds me to reassure you that, if you didn’t have a clue about Prufrock in high school, try it again, and you’ll probably love it as I now do.

I was also interested to hear more about T.S. Eliot’s religious background, which began as a Unitarian in the U.S. However, when he later became an Englishman, Eliot was drawn to the Church of England. As Wilson says:

“Doctrinal differences aside, Eliot shares something in common with all Christian poets who deal with the permanent things, with the great issues. To be a Christian poet is to be shaped by the central Christian story, which is a story of death and resurrection.” And so, “Before his conversion, in The Wasteland and The Hollow Men Eliot did not see much hope, which is all to the good because without Christ, there is no hope. It is Christ or nothing.”

In the next highly interesting discussion, Wilson talks about the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, pointing out, “…if you put a work of fiction into the wrong category, a lot of confusion can result and, in this case, has” as the ever-popular “Lord of the Rings is not allegory.” In fact, Tolkien himself said:

“I dislike Allegory – the conscious and intentional allegory – yet any attempt to explain the purport of the myth or fairy tale must use allegorical language.”

What Wilson realized is that “questions about art and technology are…closely related to the issue of magic. Some Christians have been troubled by the wizardry, but the whole point of magic is the manipulation of matter in order to acquire power, which is what an ordinary magician does…. But the world of The Lord of the Rings is the very reverse of this – the good guys there represent a photo negative of magic. The ring of power is the ultimate symbol of magic in the traditional sense, and the whole point of the book is to destroy it, resisting all temptations to use it.” Those of us who haven’t read the book or seen the movie will be glad to know that.

In the Narnia tales, C.S. Lewis takes a different tact as he seeks something Wilson called “numinous” before quoting Lewis in this passage from In The Weight of Glory:

“We want something else which can hardly be put into words – to be united with the beauty we see to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it…. We cannot mingle with the splendors we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.”

Yes! Until then, writing poetry gives a glimpse of this, especially when a line or musical phrase comes as a gift, like grace or God’s forgiveness. Similarly, reading the Bible and reading the inspired works of authors such as those Wilson chose for this book, not only inform our faith, but also our writing lives in Christ.


©2015, Mary Sayler, poet-author  

Writers to Read: Nine Names That Belong on Your Bookshelf, paperback



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Seeing Beauty and Saying Beautifully

What pressed me to request a review copy of this highly recommended book from Crossway was the title, Seeing Beauty and Saying Beautifully, which expresses my yearning for poetry – both yours and mine.

If you have searched and searched, as I have, for Christian poet-mentors to study, you know how difficult it can be to find one who does not see beauty as saccharine and who does not write unrealistic poems that tap-tap their iambic feet onto paper from Miss Goody's two shoes! And so this slender hardback comes to our rescue, featuring three poets, writers, and pray-ers worth emulating: George Herbert, George Whitefield, and C.S. Lewis.

Although each of these writers makes use of different genres to address their honest doubts, worries, and concerns, they all keep searching for God until they find, see, and express the beauty that's bound to blossom with fresh words and refreshed faith and hope.

As the sixth book in The Swans Are Not Silent series by John Piper, this book was most likely written with Christian educators and pastors in mind, rather than poets and writers. Regardless, the book speaks clearly to any communicator for Christ, exhorting us to consider the poetic effort in the poetry of Herbert, preaching of Whitefield, and creative writings of Lewis.

The Introduction defines that premise by saying, “This effort was the God-dependent intention and exertion to find striking, penetrating, imaginative, and awakening ways of expressing the excellencies they saw. My thesis is that this effort to say beautifully is, perhaps surprisingly, a way of seeing and savoring beauty.”

Whether in writing or speaking, we choose our words and how we use them – hesitantly, softly, boldly, accusingly, or beautifully. We want to move people to hear and heed, which “may be one reason why the Bible is filled with every manner of literary device to add natural impact: acrostics, alliteration, analogies, anthropomorphism, assonance, cadence, chiasmus, consonance, dialogue, hyperbole, irony, metaphor, meter, onomatopoeia, paradox, parallelism, repetition, rhyme, satire, simile…and more.”

Anglican pastor, George Herbert (1593-1633) “called his poems the record of his conflict with God,” and yet “his skill in the use of language has earned him the high praises in the twentieth century from T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Elizabeth Bishop, and Seamus Heaney.” Never aiming for “art for art’s sake,” Herbert consecrated his poems to God’s glory, aiming to “feel the love of God and to engrave it in the steel of human language for others to see and feel.” In this role as the secretary of God’s praise, “Herbert discovered… that the poetic effort to speak the riches of God’s greatness gave him deeper sight into that greatness.” In other words, “this effort to see and savor the glory of Christ was the effort to say it as it had never been said before.”

Oh, how great such an aim with no thought of a brand or platform!

Similarly, in the 18th century, George Whitefield’s sermons became “a phenomenon not just of his age but in the entire two-thousand-year history of Christian preaching. There has been nothing like the combination of his preaching pace and geographic extent and auditory scope and attention-holding effect and converting power.”

“Whitfield’s poetic effort focused on the making of sermons” where “specific biblical passages and doctrines were chosen, and specific words, sequences, consonances, assonances, cadences, images, narratives, characters, tones, pathoses, gestures, movements, facial expressions – all combined for an astonishing impact on believer and unbeliever alike.” In other words, his “poetic effort to speak and act in suitable ways wakened in him the reality he wanted to communicate. For him the truths of the gospel were so real – so wonderfully, terrifyingly, magnificently real – that he could not and would not preach them as though they were unreal or merely interesting.”

Closer to our time, C.S. Lewis came to Christ through logic and reason, which “led him to see that truth and beauty and justice and science would have no validity at all if there were no transcendent God in whom they were all rooted.” However, he reasoned that “if the key to the deepest meaning of this world lies outside this world then the world will probably be illumined most deeply not simply by describing the world as what it is but by likening the world to what it is not.” By using “metaphor, analogy, illustration, simile, poetry, story, myth – all of these are ways of likening aspects of reality to what it is not, for the sake of showing more deeply what it is.”

So, how does this affect us in our writing and speaking endeavors? As series author John Piper says, “Groping for awakening words in the darkness of our own dullness can suddenly flip a switch and shed light all around what it is that we are trying to describe – and feel. Taking hold of a fresh word for old truth can become a fresh grasp of the truth itself. Telling of beauty in new words becomes a way of tasting more of the beauty itself.”

Sometimes this simply means praying before we speak or write, giving our work to God, and giving God and the work the time needed to speak beautifully to us and others. As one of my favorite Bible verses says it, “With You (God) is the fountain of life, and in Your light we see light” (Psalm 36:9.) Amen!

© 2014, Mary Harwell Sayler, reviewer and poet-author of Living in the Nature Poem and the Bible-based poetry book, Outside Eden


Seeing Beauty and Saying Beautifully, hardcover



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