I belong to a poetry group. A couple of the participants are published poets. Most of us are people who dabble in poetry, enjoying the shimmer of words in patterns that create rhythm, evoke images, inspire us to explore our senses, and give delight. Over the span of my life, I have sort of run hot and cold on poetry, having times when I have read the poets often and other times when poetry has not been a regular part of my reading. In retirement, I have a short shelf of poetry right next to my recliner and I regularly take up poems and read them slowly and carefully, allowing them to sink in. Often I read out loud, appreciating the sound patterns that the words create in ways that touch my spirit.

In our poetry group, I have begun to notice differences not only in how people write poetry, but also in how they read poetry. One member of our group was born in Wales and her accent is lyrical. She works hard at her poetry, a quality that shows in the volumes of poems that she had published. I appreciate her contributions to our group. Beyond those words, however, I am grateful for the way she reads poems. It is the practice of our group to share the written poem as it is read for the first round of each meeting. In subsequent rounds, the poems or poem fragments are read, but not shown. When this poet reads, I have a tendency to close my eyes to allow my senses to embrace her words as she speaks.

Others in our group have the opposite effect on me. A couple of them write words that reveal their care for the craft of poetry, but that seem to be lifeless when they read. I am drawn to looking at the words and imagining how they might sound if I were reading when they present. Of course, I cannot close my ears in the way I can close my eyes.

Reading rhythmically is an art and it requires practice. I learned this over years of honing my technique as a preacher. There are two great preachers among the dozens of mentors I have had over the course of my career whose example has taught me a great deal about the difference between oral language and written language. In my seminary experience, the art of preaching was primarily taught as prose expression. Students were invited to create manuscripts and to read those manuscripts with care and precision. I maintained that practice throughout my career, using manuscripts for weddings and funerals and periodically in my regular worship leadership.

Reading a manuscript, however, can be stilted and, frankly, boring. As I worked to refine my preaching and learn from my mentors, I learned to pay attention to cadence, patterns of repetition, and even pitch. One of my mentors spoke of engaging emotions with words. He urged preachers to speak from the heart, saying that reading scripture is insufficient preparation for preaching. “To preach,” he declared, “you must invite the scripture to dwell inside of you so deeply that when you preach from your heart, the text is revealed.” His words sound fancy, but his style was terribly difficult to imitate. For me, following his technique involved memorizing the text well in advance of the sermon and allowing the repetition of it in my mind, and often out loud, to become automatic before I could find the words to interpret it.

Another mentor spoke of pitch and rhythm. Preachers who ignore pitch and rhythm make the words go flat. In learning from him, I experimented with a lot of vocal variation, speaking softly and loudly, intentionally supporting my preaching with techniques taught for singing, warming up by singing arpeggios and scales. At times, members of my congregation would report that they had difficulty hearing all of my words. Variation of volume in preaching is valuable, but speaking too softly results in missed communication. And speaking too loudly can make it hard to listen. I’ve heard many preachers who confuse projection with yelling. No one wants to be yelled at. Yelling steals safety from the experience.

Invite the text inside, keep pitch and rhythm - good advice for a preacher, and I think, good advice for those who read poetry. When I think of it, I realize that it is no mistake that there is so much poetry in the bible. Psalmists and prophets have given us the gift of poetry with words that transcend centuries and layers of translation to convey power and meaning despite generations of less than stellar preaching. It isn’t a mistake that the gospels report multiple instances of Jesus reading or quoting poetry from the Hebrew scriptures. Even though the pitch and rhythm of the original languages and patterns of speech are battered by translation, the power of the poetry remains.

It is not a mistake that we retain the practice of reading scripture aloud in worship. Sharing print does not carry the power of the words in the same fashion.

Participating in a poetry group is a luxury of being retired. I did not give time to such a venture during my years as an active preacher. From my current perspective, I think that I would have benefitted from such a practice, however.

I don’t know if I am becoming better at reading poetry than I was before I began meeting with the group. I suppose other members of the group might have some perspective on that. I hope I am. I would like my reading to carry the power of carefully chosen words, to dance with their playfulness and to shine with their brilliance. Not preaching each week has left me a bit out of practice at the art of preaching but I suspect that the art is not unlike singing, or even riding a bicycle. There are elements of the art that have become so ingrained that they don’t leave when one is idle.

I am grateful for the poetry group in my life. While I miss regular preaching, I am learning once again of the power of careful listening. And some of the words of the poets are diving deeply into my soul and inhabit me in ways that empower my reading.