https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/nov/29/nick-laird-poetry-religion

EXTRACT:

Though an atheist – in that I believe we’re here only by happy accident – my sensibility is religious. I like ritual and heightened states. I like mind-altering drugs. I believe in invisible forces – radioactivity, magnetism, sound waves – and I’m more than willing to sit for an hour listening to a church organist practice, which I did just last week. And I’ll let myself shiver along with the immense chord changes. I don’t like faith but I’m fond of its trappings- the kitschy icons, the candles, the paintings, the architecture and, especially, the poetry. Though many great religious figures, from Augustine to Screwtape, have taken prose as their instrument for confessing or cajoling, when it comes to praise, poetry’s the usual choice. I’ve been reading Robert Alter’s magnificent new translations of The Book of Psalms, and “My heart is astir with a goodly word”.

The relationship between poetry, those goodly words, and religion is hard to quantify. Both involve the hidden, working at the borders of the sayable. They share an experiential dimension. Personal religion involves a private speech act (prayer), chanting (psalms), heightened states achieved by ritualised words. The Lord’s prayer is one of the first poems I learned. Leached of its import by years of mindless recital, it’s almost a Sitwellian sound poem to me.

I broke three back teeth while in my bed
I  prefer to love  but where’s my choice?
What nonsense am I chewing in my head?

I  once had a husband,but he’s dead
Now and then I seem to hear his voice
I broke three back teeth while in my bed

Where are men when I need  buttered bread?
Can I have one  here, I would rejoice?
What nonsense am I stewing in my head?

I used to keep my husband so well fed
I thought he’d never go ,I am annoyed
I broke three back teeth while in my bed

I guess he’s chosen Raphael instead
So I am free to  go out with a buoy
What rubbish am I brewing in my head?

1. If I am your mistress,  am I coy?
   Andrew Marvell, whom did he employ?
   I broke three back teeth while in my bed
   What substance am I grinding in my head?

He got his hooks into my   bleeding heart
He trapped me with a  stone which had no moss
In Plato’s Cave I saw but shadows long
I wondered why I let him be my boss

All my eggs were in one ovary
I had no baskets  in my abdomen
More haste has made me  backwards in my tasks
I did not know my husband was a man

Innocence prolonged  led me astray
The early birds  had stolen all the worms
Well,  let tomorrow be another day
My utter foolishness has made me squirm

The time for preparation is  a need
Not much good has come from haste or speed.

http://theconversation.com/antisemitism-how-the-origins-of-historys-oldest-hatred-still-hold-sway-today-87878

Extract

Yet Justin’s concern was not really with Jews. It was with his fellow Christians. At a time when the distinction between Judaism and Christianity was still blurred and rival sects competed for adherents, he was striving to prevent gentile converts to Christianity from observing the Torah, lest they go over wholly to Judaism.

Vilifying Jews was a central part of Justin’s rhetorical strategy. He alleged that they were guilty of persecuting Christians and had done so ever since they “had killed the Christ”. It was an ugly charge, soon levelled again in the works of other Church Fathers, such as Tertullian (c.160-225AD) who referred to the “synagogues of the Jews” as “fountains of persecution”.

The objective of using such invective was to settle internal debates within Christian congregations. The “Jews” in these writings were symbolic. The allegations did not reflect the actual behaviour or beliefs of Jews. When Tertullian attempted to refute the dualist teachings of the Christian heretic Marcion (c.144AD), he needed to demonstrate that the vengeful God of the Old Testament was indeed the same merciful and compassionate God of the Christian New Testament. He achieved this by presenting the Jews as especially wicked and especially deserving of righteous anger; it was thus, Tertullian argued, that Jewish behaviours and Jewish sins explained the contrast between the Old and the New Testament.

To demonstrate this peculiar malevolence, Tertullian portrayed Jews as denying the prophets, rejecting Jesus, persecuting Christians and as rebels against God. These stereotypes shaped Christian attitudes towards Jews from late antiquity into the medieval period, leaving Jewish communities vulnerable to periodic outbreaks of persecution. These ranged from massacres, such as York in 1190, to “ethnic cleansing”, as seen in the expulsions from England in 1290, France in 1306 and Spain in 1492.

We used to make the ink   before the class
Powder  stirred in  water  turned it black
On the desk  were double  lids of brass
Sliding  back revealed the well ,its lack 

After  sums we  learned to write in ink
A dip in pen, lined paper and a space
We copied joined up writing,learned to link
Taking care, for ink can’t be erased

We used also used our pencils  now and then
The better off bought Biros  up the road
I had to save to buy a fountain pen
I have it still  to  write  down poems and  odes

So common now we never give a thought
Is ink what every human should avoid?

http://www.textetc.com/modernist/postmodernism.html

“To repeat a previous simplification: whereas Classicism, Realism and Romanticism all deal with the outside world, contemporary literature, by contrast, is commonly a retreat into the writer’s consciousness — to make autonomous creations that incorporate diverse aspects of modern life (Modernism), or free-wheeling creations constructed of a language that largely points to itself (Postmodernism).

Postmodernism began in the sixties, when there developed on both sides of the Atlantic a feeling that poetry had become too ossified, backward-looking and restrained. {1} The old avant garde had become respectable, replacing one orthodoxy by another. The poetry commended by the New Criticism — and indeed written by its teachers — was self-contained, coherent and paradoxical. Certainly it was clever, with striking imagery, symbolism and structural economy, but it was also far too predictable. Where were the technical innovations of the early modernists? Where were the alternatives to capitalism and the modern state that feature in Pound’s or Lawrence’s thought? And if contrary movements existed, they seemed disorganized. The UK might have its neo-Romantics, and a reaction to them. And in Europe were Milosz, Kundera, Ponge and Herbert. But there was no common purpose in these figures, and no common philosophy to give them intellectual standing. Into this vacuum came radical theory, and the generally Leftist theories of literature.”

When I  got white hair I did not know
Women would get envious  of my snow
I suffered it when I had golden locks
Even  though my knees inclined to knock

Once so thin I looked like a mere child
I wore little  skirts, my legs were bared
Then my body wanted to grow large
I got aches and pains my life was hard

My feet swelled up, my toes were all deformed
Then my mind detached,  my eyes were torn
The retinas  disliked   their place  and ran
But where else can  they dwell  but where I am?

If I go deaf and blind  and cannot speak
Some will hate me, jealous of my reach

The Guardian  says
A girl burst into laughter
While enjoying sex

She has no husband
She has not learned the hard way
Men don’t like giggling

But if with a man
Another man might laugh too
We don’t know why

Except  our organs
Have not evolved to be cute
Except for our brains

We can’t see them yet
But they make us laugh and cry
And do algebra

Learn Greek and Hebrew
Lie on rocks in sunshine
Laughing at a nose

Don’t lose your new pen
You can write a poem there
A letter in French

To a friend exposed
By Russians for his photos
Why save the image?

Once seen,forgotten
In the cemetery yard
They have too many

All this talk I wonder
Why it is so  on our minds
A bad sign,don’t think.