Doubly Smitten: Margaret and The Word

This post is about Margaret and scripture. One of the newer things added to Margaret’s archive that I noticed on my more recent visit was the addition of her Bible study notes. There were a number of files containing years’ worth of Bible study notes in the form of scribblers, notebooks, and yes, even just plain scrap paper. I was amazed to open up one file with her notes from June 2001. It contained her daily meditations on Ezekiel, written in tiny crabbed print on scraps of paper, the backs of which read a sampling of her daily life’s mental activities – promotional letters from publishers, donation cards for various charities, handbills for concerts, royalty statements, old typed out poems with crossed-out lines, photocopies of poems printed from literary magazines, and even housekeeping notices from the residence she lived in. I could hardly read the tiny print of the meditations but these daily notes were a true testament to Margaret’s intense devotional life.

On the day I saw these notes, I drove home past Elim Chapel. On its billboard was the message: THE BIBLE AS IT IS FOR PEOPLE AS THEY ARE. How true of Margaret! I thought, for reading and meditating on scripture was an integral part of Margaret’s life and of her poetry. Working as I am now through the lectionary in my own devotional practice, I see how lively scripture is, how a few choice lines of this or that can quicken the intellect and spark certain images and ideas, perfect for translating into a poem. Poems can also be a way of teasing out meaning in a text in a kind of question and answer method. Clearly, I see that happening with Margaret’s long poem on Job. There’s a thesis to be written on Margaret’s poetic interpretations of scripture but the object lesson for me in seeing Margaret’s notes was about her enduring and abiding habit of reading the Bible. The same sharp-eyed attention Margaret gave to the natural word, the urban landscape, she gave also to the scriptures. She read the Word, and then with her own natural gift for words re-interpreted it for the reader.

In my short story about my encounter with Margaret, I say of my character, Elizabeth, "She did not know what she loved more: literature or God." Thus it is when Elizabeth encounters the work of a godly poet, she is doubly smitten. That is the way I feel when I read Margaret’s poems. I can’t help but feel doubly smitten by Margaret’s focus on both word and the Word.