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Poetry in the Image of God

Conjure and weave a calligraphic spell
Within the wells of mystic words and themes,
And bring to life a voice with tales to tell
Of life and death, of laughter, love, and dreams.

Conceive, command, contrive, connive, cajole
From sweet romance or willful, righteous rage,
A scattered babel, tamed, re-formed, made whole
To fit and fill a-virgin-pure, unblemished page.

Uplift, inspire, create, control, conspire
To wrest it from its tangled, mangled must
And with an ink-tipped plume, consume with fire
Till phoenix-like it rises from the dust

Alive, to speak and to be understood.
Incarnate words. And God said, “It is good.”

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James A. Tweedie is a retired pastor living in Long Beach, Washington. He has written and published six novels, one collection of short stories, and three collections of poetry including Mostly Sonnets, all with Dunecrest Press. His poems have been published nationally and internationally in The Lyric, Poetry Salzburg (Austria) Review, California Quarterly, Asses of Parnassus, Lighten Up Online, Better than Starbucks, Dwell Time, Light, Deronda Review, The Road Not Taken, Fevers of the Mind, Sparks of Calliope, Dancing Poetry, WestWard Quarterly, Society of Classical Poets, and The Chained Muse. He was honored with being chosen as the winner of the 2021 SCP International Poetry Competition.

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12 Responses

  1. Roy Eugene Peterson

    Amazing alliteration contained in an inspired context with beautiful rhyme.

    Reply
  2. Warren Bonham

    It doesn’t count quite as much when I say it, but I do think “it is good”. Great message and I really enjoyed the alliteration.

    Reply
  3. Margaret Coats

    James, your many verbs suggest that the image of God may appear in most genres of poetry. I say “most” because, although I can’t think of one, there could be some obscure one in some tradition not suited to this purpose. But going beyond genre to the final purpose of literature–using words to transcend what words can express–your poem implies the function of the poet to create in imitation of God’s multifarious creation. For that reason, it is good to end with God’s statement on each day of the Creation Week. When I think of the thousands of love lyrics (secular and religious) that I studied in preparation for my dissertation, very few were impressive poetry. But I found something good (the vestige of the creative God) in almost all. You’re right; keep up the good work!

    Reply
  4. James A. Tweedie

    Margaret,

    You are not wrong to expand the intent of my poem to embrace poetry as a whole.

    The intent of the poem, however, was a personal one–an attempt to describe the process I go through when I create a poem. Finding a voice through which to speak. Choosing a vocabulary. Embracing a subject and/or emotion to speak through/from. Scattering, juggling words to capture the meaning or effect as part of a creative search for form. Putting the words on the page and then shuffling them, rearranging, reshaping, and even replacing them until the parts rise from the ashes as a whole, having been shaped int a form and breathed into life so that the words and the poem as a whole have the power to speak and be heard by ears other than that of the poet. All of this in imitation of the Creator of all who said, “It is good.”

    Not all poetry is God-good, of course, including much of my own. But when the breath of life comes through me from a Source greater than myself, I can usually tell. And it is then that–satis est–I can believe that my poem (by grace) has risen to the level of being what I might hope to be God-good.

    Reply
  5. Cynthia Erlandson

    Beautiful, James. And the final couplet is truly marvelous.

    Reply
  6. Paul A. Freeman

    Most limericks aren’t about love,
    or being a peace-loving dove.
    Yet wholesome or rude,
    one’s words are imbued
    with talent from Him up above.

    Thanks for the read, James. I was inspired – as you can tell.

    Reply
  7. C.B. Anderson

    A perfect account of creation (or Creation), this poem is a smack in the face of any would-be poet who fails to aim high. I’m thankful for the reminder.

    Reply
  8. Jeff Eardley

    Jim, a wonderful insight into the creative process. Long may your flaming, ink-tipped plume continue to inspire. Thank you.

    Reply
  9. Alan Orsborn

    You describe writing a poem as wrestling with the words on the page until they fall into their proper place.

    I was thinking about the creative process the other day, and at that time it seemed to me to be identical to carving something from a block of wood, releasing the form that was there all along.

    I think we both are describing the same process. Starting with nothing and arriving at something.

    This is neither here nor there, but I’ve gone back to typing my poems. It slows down the process and puts me in better control. Using the laptop, edits are way too easy and I lose control of the whole project, it gets away from me. It’s like carving a block of wood down to a nub.

    Reply
    • James A. Tweedie

      Me? Mostly on my PC. Sometimes, when I away or on a trip, on my iPhone. In a pinch, paper and pen/pencil. I literally think through my fingers and can type almost as fast as I can think. And I like my edits to be as easy as possible!

      Thanks for t he comment, Alan.

      Reply
  10. James Sale

    The strength of a language – and so of poetry – is always in its verbs. Weak poets are masters of adjectives, and are constantly fiddling with them; but here we see clearly the power of Tweedie’s writing in the use of the imperative verbal form. Masterly. One interesting side note on this, is that who uses the imperative form in the Bible, that is, uses it much? Well, the Lord God in the Old Testament and … Jesus Christ in the New. Indeed, the incredible usage of the imperative tense in the New Testament by Christ is the linguistic, stylistic ‘proof’ that He is the identical person to the One called Yahweh in the Old. Since Tweedies’ poem is in the ‘image’ of God, it is wonderfully appropriate that it should adopt this grammatical feature. Finally, we can conclude that the characteristic of God (that is, Being) that we can derive from his linguistic patterning, is that God (Being) is a God of action and command!

    Reply
  11. James A. Tweedie

    God’s one great imperative is for us to love one another as Christ loved us.

    All else is annotation.

    Reply

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