'Seeing Beyond the Scenery': Exploring the World Through Metaphor

Abstract

Metaphor has been called a 'form of listening.' In its enacting of a hinge between language and the beyond of language, metaphor points to something bigger than language that Christians might call the glory of God revealed in the material world by common grace (Ps.19.1-4, Rom.1.20). Two contemporary poets who pay particularly careful attention to the matter of the world are John Terpstra, a Christian writing a kind of 'lectio divina' about the abused body of the earth in south-western Ontario, and Don McKay, Canada's premier 'nature poet,' who describes 'the disturbing thrilling awareness that there really is a world outside language, which, creatures of language ourselves, we translate with difficulty.' Thus, despite different belief commitments, both these poets create what Madeleine L'Engle calls 'icons of the true' that open new windows onto God's glory.