The Faber Sessions: Poetry - Tell All the Truth but Tell it Slant

TFS 9,1: Tell All the Truth but Tell it Slant: Poems of the Bible

February 13, 2023 • Rick Ganz

The Faber Sessions #9 Part 1 on Poems of the Bible (specifically Isaiah 35 and Psalms 1, 42, 51, and 104), presented by Rick Ganz. Roughly a third of the Old Testament is verse (i.e., set in lines). This poetic corpus includes the three books of Job, Proverbs, and Psalms, and the several festival songs embedded in prose texts, other poems or poetic fragments embedded within blocks of prose, and much of the Latter Prophets. Any reading of this material, however motivated (theologically, literarily, historically), will need to accommodate its poetic medium. The corpus as a whole remains centrally a part of the scriptural heritage of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and has been a foundational source for poetry throughout history and throughout the world, and especially for all later (post-biblical) traditions of Hebrew verse.

TFS 9,2: Tell All the Truth but Tell it Slant: George Herbert

March 13, 2023 • Rick Ganz

The Faber Sessions #9 Part 2 on George Herbert, presented by Rick Ganz. George Herbert (1593-1633) was considered one of the brightest men in Anglican England of the early 17th century, and was a contemporary of William Shakespeare. He was in the largest part of his short life the principal “Orator” of Cambridge University, where he was called “the jewel” of the University. But during the last three years of his life, he chose to commit his life, full-time, as the Pastor of a rural parish (from 1630-1633), through which work he pursued a life of exemplary holiness. His large collection of poems, discovered and published only after his death in 1633 (he died of Tuberculosis), was given the name The Temple by the editor of this first edition of Herbert’s poems. The personal example he was - his lived, holy life during the last three years of his life, when he served as Pastor - was widely recognized and admired. And the poems from this period (nearly his entire collection of poems) had a significant impact on poets of his time and in the centuries that have followed.

TFS 9,3: Tell All the Truth but Tell it Slant: Emily Dickinson

April 10, 2023 • Rick Ganz

The Faber Sessions #9 Part 3 on Emily Dickinson, presented by Rick Ganz. There is little argument among literary critics that Emily Dickinson, along with Walt Whitman, are two of the greatest of a distinctly American style or voice of poetry. The Poetry Foundation says right off that: “Emily Dickinson is one of America’s greatest and most original poets of all time. She took definition as her province and challenged the existing definitions of poetry and of the poet’s work.” Emily is fierce, brilliant, and startling … and rewarding, worth the effort. And as was the case with George Herbert, and was the case with Fr. Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ, Emily Dickinson’s poetry (except for seven or so of them) was completely unknown to anyone other than herself. It was only after her death that her poetry was discovered - a prodigious output: 1,800 poems! - and then a selection of which was brought to publication four years after her death. About that the Poetry Foundation notes: “When the first volume of her poetry was published in 1890 … it met with stunning success. Going through eleven editions in less than two years …. Dickinson is now known as one of the most important American poets, and her poetry is widely read among people of all ages and interests.”

TFS 9,4: Tell All the Truth but Tell it Slant: Gerard Manley Hopkins

May 8, 2023 • Rick Ganz

The Faber Sessions #9 Part 4 on Gerard Manley Hopkins, presented by Rick Ganz. To conclude The Faber Sessions, Series 9, we will experience together the poetry of Fr. Hopkins, SJ, a member of the Jesuit Order, a Catholic priest, who at the time of his early death from Typhoid, considered his life a failure. As was the case with George Herbert (March 2023) and then with Emily Dickinson (April 2023), so it was true of Hopkins: all three of them died and hardly anyone knew about their poetic gift or had seen or heard their poems. Their poetry came to light only after they had died, and only because there was one person who discovered their poems and worked to get them published.

Faber Institute