poetry and prayer have been tangled up from the start. For most cultures, the earliest extant poetry is a mixture of psalms and spells: language intended to do something supernatural, to bring forth blessings or curses, bridging the divide between the human and the divine. As Sir Philip Sidney reminds us in his A Defence of Poesie and Poems, the Romans called the poet “vates, which is as much as a diviner, foreseer, or prophet,” and other ancient cultures had similar terminology. The mysterious “inspiration” that yielded poems was not far removed from that which yielded visions or oracles.
But this relationship, even as it has continued to the present day, is not without its problems. Does a prayer need to be well written? Does it matter if it’s beautiful? Will God be more likely to listen if it is? Is God really the audience, or is...
