Circling back, now, to Thompson’s Two Ghazals to finish off this present put-down of postmodern verse: In his brief commentary, as noted earlier, Mr. Lane quotes Thompson’s reason for using this form of poetry (which has no form): “My interest in the form lies in the freedom it allows—the escape from brief lyric unity.” Mr. Lane interprets: “So the poems move as the mind moves, quickly, leaping from association to association, from image to thought, from idea to rhythm.” They leap because connecting thoughts are not supplied.
Thompson’s “interest in the form lies in the freedom it allows—the escape from brief lyric unity.” What is he freeing himself from? He is freeing himself from the hard work of composing real poetry: concise, comprehensible verse that is songlike and lucid. He is freeing himself from making intelligible statements. He is freeing himself from the limitations of making sense. This is frightening because the poet represents, to a degree, the age in which we live. The fact is that millions of people parallel Thompson’s broken poetry in their fragmented, disjointed, inconsistent lives. There are souls who hold to no planned routine to advance in life because welfare and charity are no longer linked to responsibility and a sense of gratitude. People leap from association to association because the thread of truth no longer holds friendships together. They leap from fornication to church to fornication and back because connections between faith, obedience, and church discipline have been severed. Or a pastor, in his preaching, leaps from the love of God to forgiveness because love and forgiveness have been cut off from the doctrines of sin, condemnation, and repentance. This is easily demonstrated by the fact that most Christians believe it is their duty to forgive others regardless of whether the duty of repentance is fulfilled by the guilty party. (But see Luke 17.3, 4.) This idea of unconditional forgiveness is a falsehood that comes straight from the pulpit, which, these days, is just the world’s lectern inside the church. Churchgoers even talk of forgiving themselves, which is as unbiblical an act as it is an impossible one. Frustration is rampant because confusion is ubiquitous. If we have no system of truth in our minds—if our minds are not connected to a system of truth—we will not lead systematic, satisfying, orderly lives. The system of theology is as dead to the pastor as the elements of poetry are dead to the poet. It is natural and appropriate to laugh at modern art and staccato poetry. We should laugh these abominations out of every department of humanity. But we should cry at how our lives are walking, breathing Ghazals. Like these Ghazals, we are not defined. We don’t know what or who we are. We are more than ‘tin wings in the wind’; but we scarcely act like it. Large numbers of us are as connected to the philosophy of Thompson’s poems as his poems are disconnected in thought. We must be driven by fear to seek integrity of life. Churches need to teach and enforce the conjunctions between doctrine, faith, and obedience; Christians in name only need actual new life through doctrine faithfully communicated and spiritually applied; and atheistic unbelievers need to start from scratch by acknowledging there is an infinite-personal God to be reckoned with and reconciled to.
Today’s poet can communicate. He does it every day. He engages very well to get his disengaging poetry noticed by newspaper editors and literary judges. But without knowing it, and thinking his poetry is good and maybe great, he fulfills a fatal role by writing a word that is as crazy as the world is bent. There is a wicked harmony in this. And it is decreed, no doubt, by an angry, offended God. It is not just for the Amorites of old to fill up the measure of their iniquity (Genesis 15.16.) The Amorites are no exception. Filling up the measure, as Jesus puts it, is a principle carried over into New Testament times (Matthew 23.32; Romans 9.22.) It is to the purpose of bringing down wrath ‘to the uttermost’ for the commission of sin (1 Thessalonians 2.16.) It is a principle that carries over unto us. Writers, like everyone else, must fill up the measure of their iniquity because God will have his fill of judging. “But I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment” (Matthew 12.36.)
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