After Prayer

Malcolm Guite’s Twitter bio begins with this surprising and auspicious combination of words: “priest, poet, rock'n'roller.” Indeed, for those unacquainted, Guite is a pipe-smoking, theology-teaching, Harley-riding, soul-caring, pub-playing, walk-taking, Eucharist-presiding, sonnet-composing enigma of a man. His Mystery Train bandmates call him “Rockin’ Rev.”

Others, having taken one honest look at him, sensibly go with “The Hobbit.” In a recent profile of Guite for Christianity Today, Kara Bettis writes, “Much like the sonnets he writes, he lives wholly in this world yet transports those around him to an ethereal one.”

Many of Guite’s books, like Waiting on the Word and Sounding the Seasons, are oriented around the liturgical calendar and lend themselves to seasonal reading. I also love Parable and Paradox, a collection of sonnets inspired by the sayings of Jesus. Now, I’ve just read After Prayer: New Sonnets and Other Poems (Canterbury), which is more of a hodgepodge—but in the richest possible sense.

The first part of the collection has 27 poems—each one a meditation on a particular phrase in George Herbert’s stunning poem about the many shapes prayer takes. One of these poems-in-response contains lines from a Beatles song as well as a nod to the Ships of Tarshish. Others are frankly heartbreaking, like the one that includes these lines: “Our prayers just break / Against what seem like walls of silent stone.”

Elsewhere in this collection is a series of poems written to accompany Marty O’Donnell’s music from the video game Destiny (“My response was to the music, rather than to the game,” he notes). “Sitting for Bruce” is about the experience of having his portrait created by Bruce Herman, a remarkable, soulful painter who also happens to be a friend of ours. And then there’s “A Rondeau for Leonard Cohen,” written, Guite says, “in response to his death and to all his music has meant to me.”

As I said, a hodgepodge in the richest possible sense. It’s a wonderful collection.