Celebrating the Creative Life
“The central question of Higgs’ poems may well be, ‘What does it mean to be human?’ If so, then the versifying itself gestures toward an answer.”
Dear friends,
I have missed interacting with you through this newsletter. I’ve been on hiatus since the beginning of the summer, as I’ve been focusing on a number of other projects. One of those projects is a book on American literature, for which I’m under contract through B&H Academic. Your prayers and encouragement are much appreciated as I try to take advantage of the upcoming semester break to make good strides on that manuscript.
Recently on social media, I shared some poems written by my friend Elton Higgs. These poems were well-received, so I thought it would be worthwhile to further highlight his work in this venue. A few years back, I wrote the following foreword for his poetry collection Probing Eyes, and with his permission, I’m sharing that foreword with you.
As you can see from my discussion below, I am a fan of Higgs’ work, even more so because I know these poems resonate with his strong character and deep faith. I have covered several of these poems in class, and there are always fresh insights to discover. Do enjoy, and check out his work as you’re able.
Foreword to Probing Eyes: Poems of a Lifetime, 1959-2019
What first stands out on reading Elton Higgs’ newly published poetry collection is its sheer sweep, as the poems brought together in Probing Eyes: Poems of a Lifetime stretch across decades and run the gamut of human experience. Psalm 90:12 admonishes us to “number our days,” a habit of mind that the passage unambiguously links to the cultivation of wisdom. Such is the spirit of Higgs’ compilation, both in its form and content.
Written over the course of some sixty years, the 156 poems of Probing Eyes are organized around four categories: “Scriptural Extensions,” “Interactions.” “Perspectives on Time,” and “Personal and Meditative.” As these headings suggest, the poems cover territory from the sacred to the secular and in so doing explore the links between them. What emerges from Higgs’ pen is both distinctly personal and ultimately universal, as the best literature is.
Of course, anyone who has read his preface knows that Higgs resists applying to himself the label of professional poet, preferring to identify instead as one who enjoys language as a game. That may be so, but that game, you will find, has yielded many quality poems, some of which are simply stunning—notably “The Budding Stump,” “Word Became Flesh,” “Uprising,” and “Alpha/Omega.” As this list suggests, my favorite of Higgs’ poems are the scriptural extensions, verses that center on specific scripture passages and often take on the voice of a biblical figure to explore the experiential and existential implications of God’s interactions with mankind. Through Higgs’ poetic imagination, readers enter into the world and potential mindset of key players like Jacob, Joseph, Lazarus, Nicodemus, and many other scriptural characters, both major and minor.
Those familiar with scripture will find in these poems new avenues by which to explore the word of God. Those less familiar will find inspiration for discovering the source that lies behind these intriguing pieces. When read in conjunction with the more personal poems Higgs includes, those about his wife and daughters, these biblically inspired poems remind us how small the gap is between these legendary figures and ourselves. We have the same fears, the same desires, the same limitations, the same temptations, the same potential, and importantly the same need for God to give our lives significance, to redeem our sufferings, and indeed to redeem the world.
Never do readers sense the tension of the human condition more than while reading Higgs’ poems for his daughters, especially those for Cynthia and Rachel, both of whom Elton and his wife have cared for through the devastation of Huntington’s Disease. In a poem such as “The Broken Thing,” readers sense the desperation of a daughter who believes daddy can set all things right, the weighty responsibility of fatherhood and his deep desire to fulfill his daughter’s expectations, and the helpless realization that the panacea is beyond the father’s reach.
At such moments, it is especially fitting that these personal verses come after the “Scriptural Extensions” section because they intimately link the earlier representations of these biblical figures who often communed with God, and in so doing better understood their place and God’s undying love and faithfulness.
In showing us this connection, the gift Higgs’ Probing Eyes offers us is perspective. A common theme across these poems is man’s place in the order of creation as well as the perennial temptation to pride because of all the gifts with which God has endowed us. The opening “Invocation,” a poem entitled “Tabula Rasa,” directs our attention to this paradox: that we both create and are created, and a number of additional poems explore that tension. In “Craftsmen of the Lord,” for example, Higgs reflects on the tabernacle craftsmen and their role in designing beautiful things, receiving all their resources and skill from their Maker.
Higgs’ tools are words, but the process is the same. As a longtime professor of literature at the University of Michigan Dearborn, Higgs has immersed himself in words. I was not lucky myself to have sat under his instruction, but was gifted a secondhand mentorship by way of my husband who was Higgs’ student and protégé and who remains deeply indebted to Higgs’ wisdom and heart these thirty plus years on from his college career. These words Higgs has studied so long do have something enchanted in them, a quality Higgs’ poetry capitalizes on. This almost preternatural feature of words is unsurprising given their centrality in scripture—from the creation where God spoke the world into existence, to the incarnation where Jesus took on flesh and is identified as the Word that holds the world together, to the written revelation of the Bible itself. Augustine explicitly linked Christ as the incarnate Word to our own use of words.
Words order our existence, enable our communication with others, help us articulate our most intimate experiences. This interaction between human activity and God’s creative force that lies behind it is mysterious and powerful, for these poems are clearly Higgs’ own, the product of his experiences and personality, but somehow are also of God. Tolkien calls this poetic process sub-creation. Coleridge calls it the secondary imagination.
The central question of Higgs’ poems may well be, “What does it mean to be human?” If so, then the versifying itself gestures toward an answer. We create because we are created. And as Higgs’ poetry poignantly illustrates, we find our true identity, our most authentic selves, in Him who is our beginning and our end and Him in Whose image we are made.
Miscellany
This past week, we wrapped up a panel series at HCU hosted by the Center of the Foundations of Ethics. The series centered on virtues and public discourse, and this final installment focused on human dignity, using as a touchstone Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.” If you—like me—are in need of encouragement in this time of political upheaval, I believe you’ll find what you’re looking for in King’s sermon.
Solidarity, other-centeredness, valorization of sacrifice: these are what King can help us desire and prioritize. Amid today’s clamor of self-protection, self-justification, and self-promotion, we need more prophetic voices like King’s, those who see with clarity the existential stakes of the fight for justice and who are also willing to go all in to achieve it. Fear may be an understandable response to the chaos that surrounds us, but fear only draws us back into a spiral that further empowers and entrenches turmoil and division, giving rise to yet more despair.
Yet there is hope, as King’s message powerfully emphasizes. It is love that can and will defeat such fear (I John 4:18). Love alone enables us to turn outward, to ask what others require of us and to follow through on those obligations. As we face uncertain days, we need many such reminders of love’s promise and power.
Be of good courage, dear friends. Much love to you all.
Marybeth