Poetry

Billy Collins, the former poet Laurette of the United States, was recently asked by The New York Times Book Review, "How has the internet changed your writing?" Collins responded:

The internet asks us to speed up. Poetry invites us to slow down. I write with a pencil and paper, then use the computer only as a fancy typewriter. So, no change really, except in [the internet’s] role as the most persistent distraction in human history.

Possible Preaching Angles:

(1) Distractions; Prayer—Of course there are many other distractions that can keep us from slowing down and being with God. (2) Bible reading and meditation—The Bible also invites us to slow down and listen to God speaking to us.

I'm grateful ... that from my mother's example, I found the base for worship--that I found a love of sitting and reading the Bible for myself and looking up things in it. How many of us, the South's writers-to-be of my generation, were blessed in one way or another, if not blessed alike, in not having gone deprived of the King James Version of the Bible. Its cadence entered into our ears and our memories for good. The evidence, or the ghost of it, lingers in all our books. "In the beginning was the Word."

If I had my life to live over again, I would have made it a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once a week; for perhaps the part of my mind now atrophied would have thus been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.