Your thoughts on a poem?

[eye_of_a_cat]

This is behind f-lock as a precaution because I'm teaching it at the moment, but it's not just the students whose interpretations aren't matching mine at the moment. The poem is Carol Ann Duffy's 'Prayer':

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer -
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.
(The 'radio's prayer', if you're unfamiliar with the names, is the BBC late-night shipping forecast.)

Many of my students, and several of the other TAs, read the 'prayers' talked about here - the ones uttering themselves - as actual prayers spoken/thought by those individuals, even if subconsciously. So the birds singing in the tree, the Latin chanting of the train, and so on, are then answers to the prayers. I read it the other way around: the people aren't praying, but the sounds they hear are still 'prayers'. I'm curious because the only TA who read it the same way I did the first time round is Catholic (as am I, and as is the poet) - is it a Catholic thing, with Catholics typically having more of a concept of communal, ritualised prayer than Protestants?

Comments

[highfantastical.livejournal.com]

I agree with you - and am a very bad Protestant, not Catholic.

[hamsterwoman]

I also read it the way you do -- and I'm an atheist (who grew up atheist, in an atheist country -- so maybe I'm your control point? :)

[eye-of-a-cat.livejournal.com]

Oh, I totally think I'm right :) Apart from anything else, the poem just doesn't hold together with the other interpretation, and the TAs who went with that reading think mine sounds more plausible now they've heard it. But I do think it's curious they didn't jump to that straight away...

[laura-iskra.livejournal.com]

I read it as you do, and honestly I would never have thought about the other interpretation hadn't you talked about it, and though born in a very catholic country I'm more on the atheist side and not a great expert on prayers of any sort

[la-dame-du-lac.livejournal.com]

I agree with you, I think verse I makes it rather obvious: the woman cannot pray, I imagine the "sieve of her hands" suggests she's holding her face in her hands in despair, then she raises her head at the sound of a prayer sung by a tree.
The whole poem seems to say that when people become unable to pray (I think, unable to form coherent words to express a prayer), the sounds from the world around them become prayers, perhaps more adapted to the world because they are made up of meaningless or incoherent sounds, the only way to express the prayer, in a world that has become... well, too complicated? detached from religion?
Hmm, I'm not sure that was very clear. ;)

I'm an atheist, not even baptised (and raised in a Protestant city), by the way.

[blackcurrants.livejournal.com]

I read it the way you do. Erm. And am lapsed protestant who went to catholic school. Not sure what that says. But I am surprised that "Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer/utters itself. " is interpreted the way you say your students are reading it. I had never thought of the possibility that the people were praying 'even if subconsciously.' My interpretation is that the poem is about the inability to pray, and how the ritual sounds that are not actually prayers nonetheless offer comfort to these people who 'cannot pray.'
There doesn't seem to be an option for "some days, although we think we cannot pray, we do subconsciously anyway, and then noises sound like responses." That seems to be a bad-faith (sorry) reading, to me.

[vampireelf.livejournal.com]

I'm with you! (Lapsed Anglican/Episcopalian, me) The subconsciously praying interpretation actually I find kind of annoying, to be honest. If one feels one cannot pray (and I've felt that!) and then finds comfort in prayer-like aspects of the world, it's patronizing to have someone tell you're secretly, /actually/ praying. Unbeknownst to yourself. Uh...no. No, I'm not. I think /I/ would be the one to know that.

[mitchy.livejournal.com]

Why can't it be taken both ways? Anyone other than the poet who says they know the "right" way to interpret a poem is just asking for trouble :)

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

The alternative nterpretation would not have occurred to me. These people hear something transcending in everyday sounds. And I love the idea of the shipping forecast being a prayer; because that ritual is comforting and reassuring to so many people without meaning anything.

[aerynne.livejournal.com]

Yes, the birds and the "distant Latin chanting of a train" are totally prayers. I was also raised Catholic!

[moon-very-thin.livejournal.com]

I confess to almighty God, and to you, my brothers and sisters, I'd never have gone to the other TAs' interpretation of the birds, train etc as answers to prayers. I had to reread it three times and squint to try to see it that way, and I'm still not sure I understand that reading.

That's a beautiful poem, incidentally. I'd never come across it before.

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

I was raised Jewish and I still can't see how the other TAs and students came up with that reading as opposed to yours.

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

I'm with you also, the random sounds catching the mind and evoking a response, familiar chanting things heading out into the unknown. Um, raised Catholic, was agnostic, now pagan, not quite sure how the other folk are getting the other reading.

[bike4fish.livejournal.com]

I've never understood prayer-as-supplication. I do understand prayer-as-meditation. And I do listen to the world around me - I suspect more so than many people do. Needless to say, my interpretation falls close you yours.

But people frame things in terms of the meanings with which they are most familiar.

I would describe myself as a metaphorical pagan atheist. I don't believe in any of the stuff, but I find certain metaphors quite useful for dealing with other humans, and the world in general.

[nonethewiser.livejournal.com]

I read it your way and am of no particular religion with minimal religious education.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

I (lapsed Anglican) read it as you did. I'm not sure about your proposed Protestant/Catholic divide, although I suppose there might be a liturgical/non-liturgical one.

[kairon-gnothi.livejournal.com]

Hurm. As a nonobservent Jew and minimally observant witch, I read the poem as describing individuals, spiritually bereft (even if only for a moment), hearing prayers which connect to their own experiences.

Their reading doesn't make sense to me. "...a prayer utters itself." And then some examples. Seems pretty straightforward.

I never went to synagogue, except for bar/bat mitzvahs.
I practice solo as a witch; when in a group, prayers are, more frequently than not, communal and ritualized.

A more personal response to the poem:
The singing in the tree, the chanting of the train, to me would not be a prayer at all, but the voice of the goddess streaming towards me. The whole divine communication thing is more of a two-way street; a spiritual conversation.

The closest I can think of in the (Protestant?)Christian context is immanence. I think there's a Catholic equivalent in Theophany, but you would know better than I.