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My friend Kate, who died about a year ago, was my go-to expert on English Literature. The question I wish I could now ask her is, "What's a good poetry anthology that's come out in the last year or two?" I miss those long meandering conversations which always came round to "What are you reading?" That's when I would have asked my question, knowing the answer would offer something intriguing and promising.

I've been looking for a couple of poetry anthologies that would both refresh the familiar and introduce me to poems and poets new to me. And I so wish Kate was around for one of those conversations. I recently bought two¹ very different collections. In truth, they are more than collections. They are poems collected by the anthologist for very specific purposes, both of which are likely to make the reader think as well as enjoy. 

This post is about Dancing By the Light of the Moon, a thick, readable and conversational collection of poems worth memorising. Clearly Giles Brandreth has a wide and generous repertoire in his own well informed mind. From Shakespeare to Lear, Betjeman to John Donne, Denise Levertov (now a life-member in my personal canon) to Carol Ann Duffy, from Heaney to Herbert, and Auden to Zephaniah; and the poems are arranged into chapters that cover haiku, limericks, sonnets, nonsense poems, Shakespeare soliloquies and various other categories, sensible, and intriguing, if at times refreshingly whimsical.

I'm half way through it, and it's like attending an audience with Giles Brandreth in full flow, with one liners, and personal stories that are funny, laced with name-dropping gossip, and at times poignant. More than that, he is an enthusiast, in love with his subject of poetry learned by heart. At times Brandreth's writing gives the impression of an overfilled wine glass spilling out verses and quotations and complete poems as he walks about the stage. It's a fun read which manages to say interesting and new things about the familiar, and prepares you to read and hear (yes read it out loud) poems for the first time. He is a consummate teacher who is not off-puttingly didactic; more like a conversationalist who shuts up regularly to let the poets get a word in edgeways.

It's nobody's business, but this book is on the bedside table. It's exactly what's needed to calm and re-settle the mind; not too much stimulus, but enough to keep you interested till lights out. 

However all this brings me to one of the more intriguing reasons for his compiling this collection in the first place. Brandreth takes time to introduce the most recent research on the benefits of learning poetry by heart, which points to growing evidence that such cognitive activity helps keep dementia at bay. Professor Usha Goswami, leading researcher in cognitive developmental neuroscience at the University of Cambridge, puts the lie to the myth that as we grow older the brain replaces fewer and fewer cells. Learning new things, and specifically the practice of committing new knowledge to memory, and doing so in language that has rhythm and verbal cadences, strengthens the neural processes by which we learn and retain, remember and recall. That first chapter containing the evidence is worth the price of the book. 

I can still recite, word perfect, several poems and Shakespeare passages learned 55 years ago. As a preacher throughout my life I know a lot of the biblical text by heart, and like most church-goers of my generation I can sing dozens of hymns without the aid of a hymn book.

But that's only half of the good Professor's point. That's the recalling part. What is of primary importance is to learn new poems by heart – or hymns – or Bible passages – or Shakespeare. But learn it, store it in the memory and compel the brain to work at retaining it by repetition, recitation and performance even if only to yourself. Brandreth is fully persuaded by the findings of this fascinating research, probing at the very edges of cognitive science in Cambridge. In response he has assembled more than 200 poems and passages, with introductory context and comment, and in categories chosen for the convenience of the reader intending to memorise. I'm going to try this and see how I get on. It will, I hope, supplement other lifelong intellectual and cognitive habits like textual exegesis, and reading books that provide brain circuit training as a mental workout! 

Half way through it, and I'm glad I bought it. And I so wish that Kate was around to have a serious chinwag about the science, the poems, and the cognitive therapy that is scientifically established, of memorising her beloved Shakespeare – her Norton Critical Edition of which was laid on her coffin along with her flowers. She, amongst all the friends I've known, understood poetry, its place in our human experience, its capacity to teach, to heal, to comfort, to rebuke, to point us beyond ourselves. She knew in that way that the best readers know, the quality of poetry to equip the mind with words and images that sharpen our perceptions of the world, and deepen our understanding of each other, ourselves, and whatever transcends our all too human limits. 

_{1. The second one I bought will be featured in another post once I get to it.} 

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will direct your paths."

That verse from Proverbs was typed from memory, a mixture of the King James Version and the RSV. The NIV which is by now more familiar to me from years of preaching from it as the preferred translation in my church tradition (Baptist,  is

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight."

My favourite reading version of the Bible is now the Revised English Bible, and it sharpens the translation further:

"Put all your trust in the Lord and do not rely on your own understanding. At every step you take keep him in mind, and he will direct your path."

The most recent scholarly commentary on Proverbs, (Paul Overland in the Apollos series) reads more like a paraphrase, but is the author's own translation:

"Incline your confidence towards the Lord with your entire mind, and do not habitually depend on your own insight: in all your ways know him and he personally will straighten your paths."

And finally, a translation from a leading Jewish scholar of Wisdom in the Hebrew Bible, in a commentary where he also provides his own translation, (M V Fox, Proverbs 1-9, Anchor Yale Commentary):

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and rely not on your own understanding. In all that you do, hold him in mind, and he will keep your path smooth."

All of these translations gather the gist of the text, with small but significant variations. Why trouble you with five different ways of saying (more or less) the same thing? I'll try to explain.

I first started reading the Bible seriously after I was converted at the age sixteen. The book of Proverbs was one of the first books I read through. I guess it was one of the chunks of the Bible that quickly made sense, and that sometimes reads like those Reader's Digest snippets and page fillers of practical wisdom, good advice, pithy sayings and self-help pointers to success in life.

My guide was a now battered and much used copy of Derek Kidner's distilled brilliance at getting quickly to the heart of things. Kidner's wee commentary passed on to me a fascination with the Wisdom tradition in the Hebrew Bible, and particularly how some of its verses can read like a commentary on the latest news of the 21st Century – from Fox News to the Financial Times, from the Guardian to the Daily Mail, from your favourite gossip sources to Have I Got News For You, and most other places where we go looking for someone else's take on the way the world is.

The Book of Proverbs is made up of several collections of ancient wisdom, telling us the tried and tested techniques, attitudes, responses, and reactions to all kinds of human behaviour, from the palace to the market place, from the home to the courts. How to make friends and keep them; when to keep your mouth shut and when to speak; learning to control money instead of letting it control us. And throughout, the contrasting moral options that always come at us in daily life; with examples of the virtues of faithfulness, compassion, truthfulness, and of their opposites of betrayal of trust, hard-heartedness, deceit – and these are only for starters.

This is a book to keep by the bedside and read a few verses morning and evening. Reminders of what a well lived human life looks like when lived wisely; and warnings of what a wasted life looks like when lived foolishly. So, in the world of human relationships of love, friendship, business partnership, neighbourly co-operation, the Sages gives the kind of advice that should be on the back of our business cards, on our screen savers, or a post-it on the fridge and certainly at the edge of your keyboard:

"Let your loyalty and good faith never fail; bind them around your neck, inscribe them on the tablet of your memory. So you will win favour and a good name in the sight of God and everyone else." (3.3-4, REB) 

Chapters 1-9 of Proverbs makes the case for wisdom as the building blocks of a good life. Chapters 10-31 are crammed with one liners. Like this one:

"The righteous suit words to the occasion; the wicked know only subversive talk." (10.32)

Let that sink in. The righteous person wants to speak and act justly and constructively; the wicked bends words and to use an ugly word, weaponises words! Think of our own Parliament, and then read this:

"By the blessing of the upright a city is raised to greatness, but the words of the wicked tear it down." (11.11)   

To raise, or tear down. Our words, attitudes, values and actions have outcomes. They raise or tear down. That's as true in Parliament as in our family life, in the shops as where we work, the office or the church. See what I mean? These one liners from Proverbs judge our habits of thought, our manipulative ways of speaking, the rush to criticise, to look for the worst, to opt for the convenient lie, to make me, I, my and mine the keywords in our ways of being. 

Hence the advice near the beginning of the book, which reads as the learning outcome God sets for this course we are taking called "Living the Good Life" :

"Let your loyalty and good faith never fail; bind them around your neck, inscribe them on the tablet of your memory. So you will win favour and a good name in the sight of God and everyone else. Incline your confidence towards the Lord with your entire mind, and do not habitually depend on your own insight: in all your ways know him and he personally will straighten your paths."  (3.3-6)

Whimsical Haiku
"Been here for ages,
being inconspicuous –
please – just go away!"

Around 35 years ago I discovered Frederick Buechner as a novelist, pastor, and writer. Buechner was most at home in imaginative story-telling that was both down to earth and unembarrassed about the traffic of prayer and thought that goes between earth and heaven. It was in the front room of our manse in Aberdeen, the monthly meeting of ecumenical clergy, about eight of us. For a decade, over each year we met to plan inter church occasions of fellowship, mission and worship. That group was the most effective, enjoyable and able gathering of clergy I have ever had the joy of being with over a good few years. We were friends, we differed respectfully, we co-operated at every opportunity, we supported each other in our varied forms of ministry. Every month we spent a whole morning doing this, and the first hour we discussed the chapter of the book we were reading together. Books we read included John Zeisler's Commentary on Romans, one of the first to weave the implications of the (then) new perspective on Paul; The Persistence of Faith, by Jonathan Sacks, at the time recently appointed as Chief Rabbi; the biography of George MacLeod by Ron Fergusson; and we read Frederick Buechner.

The book we chose was Telling Secrets, the third volume of his memoirs, 106 pages of wise candour about what goes on in the heart of a son, a father, a husband, a pastor, a novelist – all of them one person trying to integrate each with the other in a life of faith in which the love of God was both gift and demand. That book occasionally brought tears to our eyes, tears of recognition of our own hopes and bereavements, failures and achievements, our prayers, promises and the realities that often collided with them. Buechner is that good, or at least so honest he exposes his readers' easy dishonesties, and speaks compassion into souls trained in unsparing self-criticism.

Over the years I have read Buechner, in that way commended in Thomas Cranmer's lovely collect – "read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest." Buechner I have found to be that best kind of friend to have as a voice in a book; nourishing, honest about his own inadequacies and confident in the adequacy of the grace of God. His essays are long conversations of insight and wisdom into what makes human experience both fascinating and ordinary. His sermons are beautifully written, not as literary, but as human documents, in which the exegesis of the text invariably becomes the exegesis of the human heart and the exposition of the grace, mercy and love of God. His theological musings, gathered in several books combine witty aphorisms and sharply observed truth as applied to the struggles of ordinary folk trying to make their lives work.

Few writers have rescued me as often as Buechner. I don't mean that in any exaggerated sense of major crises. I mean rescued me from the cynicism that can grow like algae on the surface of a pastor's heart' I mean rescued me from complacency about the miracle of life itself as one-off gift and as lifelong responsibility; I mean rescued from ever thinking that God's call, my vocation, was ever up to me or dependent on my skill, education, even perseverance. No, Buechner gave us what for me remains the finest anatomy of vocation:

"The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet."

Deep. It's one of Buechner's favourite words. Depth not superficiality; the truth beneath the surface of things; finding our treasure buried under habits of self-deception; working hard as a miner in search of the ore out of which is smelted the precious metal of a life worth living because a life worth giving. Diving deep into who we are in order to become who we are meant to be, and doing so in the faith and trust and hope that is nurtured from the depths of divine love. Not for nothing did Buechner study with people such as Paul Tillich, Reinhold Niebuhr and James Muilenburg. These were theologians familiar with the depths; and from them Buechner learned to dive, to dig, and to search for the truth of the human heart in its hunger for God, and meaning, and purpose, and the joy of integrating all three of these into a life well lived.

A paragraph from his remarkable essay, 'Adolescence and the Stewardship of Pain' will show you what I mean about the candour, compassion and self-deprecating wisdom of Buechner:

"I have no qualifications for speaking about adolescence with anything like authority except in one respect. I am sixty four years old. I have fathered children. I have written books. I have letters after my name and an ecclesiastical title before it. But to call me an adult or grown up is an oversimplification at best and a downright misnomer at worst. I am not a past participle but a present participle, even a dangling participle. I am not a having-grown up one but a growing-up on, a groping up one, not even sure much of the time just where my  growing and groping are taking me or where they are supposed to be taking me. I am a verbal adjective in search of a noun to latch onto, a grower ins earch of  a self to grow into…I speak about adolescence with authority because in many ways I am still in the throes of it. This is my only qualification for addressing myself to the subject here. I am a hybrid, an adult adolescent to whom neither term alone does full justice…" (The Clown in the Belfry, 84-5)

I read that and recognise a voice I can trust not to overload my conscience with all those positivity memes that tell me I can be anything I want to be. What I can be is someone on the way, a pilgrim on a sacred journey towards who and what it is God called me to be and made me for. And lurking in the background of so much that Buechner writes those aspirational words of Paul:

"Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ."