Freedom in "Spirits in Bondage" ... Poems by C.S. Lewis
07/04/06
by Paul R. Miller, "Parm"
Here is a robust, energetic collection of poems that has been reprinted for our generation.
During Lewis' lifetime, his first volume of poems did not flow out into the ocean of literature--it trickled. However, it did reach that great sea of poetry and added its freshets of insight to vast and deep expanses of expression.
According to various reviewers, this book was published when we was nineteen, and under the pen name Clive Hamilton, after Lewis had recently returned from the Great War, the War to End All Wars, but a war that forever marked him and his future colleague, J.R.R. Tolkien. Its effect, as Tom Shippey, a renowned biographer is often quoted as saying, "could not help but profoundly change them." For Tolkien, the theme of death would weave in and out of his works; for Lewis it would be evil, that evil that people are capable of doing to other human beings.
The book itself is filled with poetry that has not been easily dismissed by critics, but filled with powerful, gripping imagery. One reviewer called it "clunky", and another "awkward", but it is agreed that the poetry is neither shallow nor weak in its impact. In that sense, there is a sense of freedom, freedom to express such heart-wrenching yearning to know God, yet be angry, to be in awe of nature's beauties, yet be suspicious.
Step in carefully: these are not poems for the delicate-spirited. We have dark poetic conversations, grimly wry, almost cynical observations, particularly in the first of the three sections, "The Prison House," reflecting the books theme, which comes from a line in 1 Peter 3:19, where the key word, "bondage" is often translated as "prison."
What else will you find there? You will enter into the first steps of a literary journey that begins from angry atheism to end in convinced Christianity with Poems. Knowing this, then, here is a motto for our fledgling poets: Keep at it! For our celebrated poets here at The Stone Table, who have been awarded with both acclaim and a few goodies for such poetic skills: Press on!
May those, whose poetic spirits seemed trapped in life's bedrock, burst forth, with fountains of lyrics and lore, and flow with newfound freedom.
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