Psalms
Photo by Tim Wildsmith on Unsplash
Poems and prayers, despite their differences, are related to one another by blood. “Like Shakespeare’s Antipholus of Ephesus and Antipholus of Syracuse,” the critic David Yezzi noted, “they began life together, were rent apart by circumstance, are frequently taken for each other, and, upon re-acquaintance, immediately apprehend in each other a profound genetic identity.”
(selection from Summer Day)
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver
Consider the casual yet reverent language of Mary Oliver's "The Summer Day" and the formal, structured pleas of the Lord's Prayer. Both can be informal or formal, intentional or relaxed, and driven by an undercurrent of pleading. At their core, poems and prayers are more than collections of words. Poems and prayers are messages sent to something larger than ourselves.
At pivotal moments in life, when the world is calm enough to hear our breath and the faintest crack in our resolve, we find ourselves in a state of prayer, whether we realize it or not. This universal experience, where we clasp our hands, close our eyes, or whisper under our breath, hoping that our words might bridge the gap between the tangible and the mysterious, underscores the shared essence of prayers and poems.
Both poems and prayers serve as a source of comfort and understanding in times of need. The impulse to look past the material world is ancient, predating religion and language. Once we found words, we wrapped this impulse in them, hoping that a single plea might render the unknowable knowable, the unspeakable speakable.
A poem is more than a reflection of the world. It is an invocation, a call, a summoning. Poets seldom write to express what they know. They write to comprehend what they don't. And if prayer is about seeking understanding or solace, how far can a poem be from that? To read a poem is to step into a realm where words are sanctified. Every line break, every shift in rhythm or tone, is a step towards something sacred, even though we may not be able to name our destination. Poems and prayers reassure us that we are not alone in our struggles, offering comfort and understanding in times of need.
The cadence of a prayer is similar. There is a rhythm, a formality, and a surrender. "Our Father, who art in Heaven," is an invitation to give up control. The structure of prayer is one of supplication, a belief in the power of the spoken word to alter the course of fate. It is not so different in poetry: think of how we recite the lines of our favorite poems in hopes that, in their repetition, we might be delivered from whatever weighs on us.
In moments of despair, I've found myself saying the same things repeatedly, only later realizing I wasn't just thinking aloud—I was praying. I remember the lines of poems I love slipping between my words as though there was no difference between the two. Maybe there wasn't. Maybe there isn't.
The blur between poems and prayers also lies in their origins. Poets write from a place of yearning, a sense that the world as we see it isn't enough, and something must be summoned to fill the void. Prayers come from this same place. When we pray, we ask for intervention, for the world to be different than it is. And when we read or write a poem, aren't we doing the same thing? Aren't we asking for the world to make sense in a way we can hold?
I think of Emily Dickinson. Her poems feel like prayers because they dance around the truth (she calls it “telling it slant") rather than confront it head-on. Like a prayer, a poem doesn't always need to be direct. It needs only to be spoken with conviction, a belief that the act of saying it matters, that someone—something—might be listening.
Poems and prayers share a faith in the unseen. We believe, or at least hope, that something will hear us when we speak them. Whether it's God or the better parts of ourselves, we trust that our words will be heard. This common faith connects us, offering hope and a sense of belonging. Whether the words are formed in a chapel or scribbled on a page, we speak them for the same reason: we need to believe that someone, somewhere, might be listening.
The most compelling similarity between the two is their inexplicability - even mystics are bound by words. We can define a poem as a form of literature and a prayer as an act of devotion. Still, their substance is beyond our ability to explain. When someone says a poem brings them to tears or a prayer brings them peace, we do not understand why. And that's the point. Poems and prayers resist definition because they come from the parts of us that language fails to grasp.
Is it possible to speak a poem without it becoming a prayer or to recite a prayer without it taking on the rhythms of a poem? The lines between them are blurred and irrelevant. The distinctions do not matter. I know that poems and prayers offer us a way out of silence. Poetry and prayers give us a voice to say the unsayable and name the nameless.
To paraphrase Voltaire, “If prayer did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it.” The Polish Nobel laureate and poet Czeslaw Milosz seems to agree:
" All I know is that prayer
constructs a velvet bridge,
And walking it we are aloft,
. . . every one, separately,
Feels compassion for others entangled in the flesh
And knows that if there is no other shore
We will walk that aerial bridge all the same."
In other words, we make the world by praying, one stanza at a time.