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Poetry and Pedagogy
across the Lifespan
Disciplines, Classrooms, Contexts

Edited by Sandra Lee Kleppe

and Angela Sorby
 Poetry and Pedagogy across the Lifespan

“This is a book that may well transform thinking about poetry forever. Its
authors explode the many myths and misconceptions about how one reads,
understands and utilises the affordance of poems. They demand a re-imagining
of the practice of poetry and show how poems, in all their manifestations, can
offer unique satisfactions for the many and not just the few. This is a refreshing,
exciting and much needed book that will make a difference to how poetry is
read, taught and enjoyed.”
—Professor Andrew Lambirth, Immediate Past President of the UK Literacy
Association
 Sandra Lee Kleppe • Angela Sorby
Editors

Poetry and Pedagogy

across the Lifespan
Disciplines, Classrooms, Contexts
Editors
Sandra Lee Kleppe Angela Sorby
Inland Norway University of Applied Department of English
Sciences Marquette University
Hamar, Norway Milwaukee, WI, USA

ISBN 978-3-319-90432-0    ISBN 978-3-319-90433-7 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90433-7

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018954352

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and trans-
mission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or
dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional
claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Cover illustration: Carl Spitzweg, Der Rabe, oil on wood, circa 1840, Haus der Kunst, Munich.
© INTERFOTO / Fine Arts / Alamy

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Acknowledgements

We are grateful for partial research funding from Inland Norway

University of Applied Sciences, which made this project possible. Thanks
are also due to Christopher F. Roth for his indefatigable help in preparing
the manuscript. We are also grateful to the individual contributors for
their patience and hard work in bringing this anthology together.
Every effort has been made by the contributors to stay within fair use
practices when quoting the poems discussed in this volume. Where more
than a few lines of a poem are cited, we have sought and received copy-
right permissions as follows:

Moira Andrews, “November Night Countdown.” Copyright © Moira

Andrews, 1999. First published in Rhymes about the Year, edited by
John Foster (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). Reprinted with
permission of the author.
Yusef Komunyakaa, excerpts from “Light on the Subject,” “Vigilante,” “I
Apologize,” “When in Rome,” and “The Thorn Merchant’s Mistress”
from Pleasure Dome: New and Collected Poems ©2001 by Yusef
Komunyakaa. Published by Wesleyan University Press. Used with
permission.
Solmaz Sharif, “Vulnerability Study,” from Look. Copyright © 2016 by
Solmaz Sharif. Reprinted with permission of the Permissions Company,
Inc., on behalf of Graywolf Press. www.graywolfpress.org
v
 Contents

Part I Poetry Across the Disciplines and Modalities    1

1 Poetry and Accounting: “What Is It You Plan to Do with

Your One Wild and Precious Life?”   3
Richard Tobin

2 The Chemistry of Poetry: Transfer Across Disciplines  19

Angela Sorby and Tracy Thompson

3 Teaching Poetry Through Dance  37

Vivian Delchamps

4 Poetry and Pedagogy in St. Teresa of Avila (1515–1582):

Affirming Life Lessons for Women  57
Anne M. Pasero

5 Teaching Poetry with Painting: “Why Do You Thus Devise

Evil Against Her?”  73
Sandra Lee Kleppe

vii
viii Contents

6 Whatever Gets You Through the Night: Poetry and

Combat Trauma  95
Kristin G. Kelly

7 Pedagogies of Personhood: The Place of Lyric in Cultural

Criminology 117
Jesse Zuba

8 Multimodal Encounter: Two Case Studies in the Recovery

of the Black Signifier 139
Jim Cocola

Part II Poetry Pedagogies and Theories in the Classroom 163

9 Push the Envelope: An Alternative to Testing and the

Teaching of Emily Dickinson’s Manuscripts 165
Jacqueline Jean Barrios

10 “Ten Fat Sausages”: Poetic Sense Units, Vocabulary

Chunks, and Language Acquisition in Young Learners 187
Christina Sandhaug

11 Helping High School Readers Interpret Challenging Texts

Using Lenses from Literary Theory 211
Hallie Smith Richmond and April Salerno

12 The “Effanineffable” Weakness of Poetry: The Duality of

Bringing Poetry into the Teacher Training Classroom 237
Johan Alfredsson
 Contents ix

13 English Poetry in the Foreign Language Classroom:

A Study of Teacher Perspectives, Purposes, and Practices 255
Juliet Munden and Torunn Skjærstad

14 Why Teach Poems About Animals? Animal Poetry Across

Disciplines and the Life Span 277
Heidi Silje Moen

15 Teaching Unlikely Poets: Herman Melville, Harriet

Beecher Stowe, and Frances E. W. Harper 303
Brian Yothers

16 Expanding the Turn: Using Poetry to Prepare Students

for a Post-Truth World 327
Conor Bracken

Index 349
 Notes on Contributors

Johan Alfredsson is PhD in Comparative Literature, and Associate Professor at

the Dept. of Literature, History of Ideas and Religion, at the University of
Gothenburg. He has published books on Swedish poet Bengt Emil Johnson and
Gender Perspectives on Scandinavian Modernist Poetry, and a number of arti-
cles and book chapters on Swedish and Danish contemporary poetry (mostly in
Swedish). In English he has published on the interplay between Swedish con-
crete poetry and sound technology.
Jacqueline Jean Barrios is a PhD student at UCLA’s Department of English
studying 19C British and American Literature and London, especially represen-
tations of affect work, service and collecting. Her public humanities work con-
nects her research to her other role as a veteran public school teacher of
underrepresented youth for whom she directs LitLabs, orchestrating guest
experts from the humanities, architecture and the arts to imagine new pedagogy
for the twenty-first century South LA urban teen reader of the nineteenth cen-
tury novel.
Conor Bracken is a poet, translator, and educator. His poems have appeared in
Colorado Review, Indiana Review, The New Yorker, and elsewhere, and he has
received fellowships from Inprint, the Frost Place, Squaw Valley Community of
Writers, and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences. Author of Henry Kissinger, Mon
Amour (Bull City Press, 2017) and translator of Mohammed Khair-­Eddine’s
Scorpionic Sun (CSU Poetry Center, 2019), he is an assistant professor of English
at the University of Findlay.

xi
xii Notes on Contributors

Jim Cocola is associate professor and associate head for the humanities at
Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where he directs the Worcester branch of the
Bard College Clemente Course in the Humanities. Author of Places in the
Making: A Cultural Geography of American Poetry (Iowa City: University of Iowa
Press, 2016), his honors include awards from the American Comparative
Literature Association and fellowships from The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
Research Center and The MacDowell Colony.
Vivian Delchamps is an English PhD Student at the University of California,
Los Angeles. Her academic interests include nineteenth-century American lit-
erature, poetry, dance, disability studies, theories of the body, and bioethics. She
currently serves as the Disability Studies Advisor for the UCLA Disability Law
Journal. A ballerina and competitive ballroom dancer, Delchamps founded the
Dancesport Club at UCLA and teaches dance to students of all ages.
Kristin G. Kelly is Associate Professor of English at the University of North
Georgia; she has taught courses in English composition, American literature,
and film and literature. Her current research concerns the aftermath of the wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially as reflected in the poetry and prose of combat
veterans. She has poems, essays, and reviews published or forthcoming in jour-
nals such as South Atlantic Review; Annals of Internal Medicine; War, Literature
and the Arts; The Examined Life, and several others.
Sandra Lee Kleppe is professor of English-language literature at Inland
Norway University of Applied Sciences. She is the author of The Poetry of
Raymond Carver: Against the Current, and editor/co-author of Ekphrasis in
American Poetry: From the Colonial Period to the 21st Century.
Heidi Silje Moen works as an Associate Professor at Inland Norway University
of Applied Sciences, Faculty of Education. She currently teaches undergraduate
and graduate classes in Postcolonial literature and theory, film adaptation, and
courses in English literature, culture and didactics for teacher students. Her pre-
vious research has been on the poetry of Ezra Pound. Her current research inter-
ests include animal poetry and education, and the portrayal of monsters and
monstrosity in cultural expressions across the ages.
Juliet Munden works with English as a second language at The Inland
University of Applied Science in Norway. After completing a degree in philoso-
phy and psychology, she went on to a career in pig farming and vegetable grow-
ing. Later she gained a PhD in the reception of Eritrean literature. During the
last twenty years Juliet has trained teachers, written school textbooks, and
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 Notes on Contributors xiii

­ roduced course books for teacher education at primary, middle and high school
p
level.
Anne M. Pasero is Professor of Spanish and Chair, Languages, Literatures and
Cultures, Marquette University. She specializes in Renaissance and twentieth-­
century Spanish women’s poetry, focusing on feminine/feminist and spiritual
expression especially, as exemplified in the Spanish saint Teresa of Avila, canon-
ized in 1622, and the well-known contemporary writer Clara Janés, recently
inducted into Spain’s prestigious Royal Academy of Letters.
Hallie Smith Richmond is a poet and instructor in the English Department at
the University of Virginia, where she received her doctorate. Her current research
and teaching interests include translation, American poetry, and creative
writing.
April Salerno is an assistant professor in the Curry School of Education at the
University of Virginia, where she coordinates the online program for teachers
seeking ESL endorsement. Her current research and teaching interests include
language learning, discourse analysis, teacher research, and English teacher
education.
Christina Sandhaug wrote her MA on Renaissance psalm translations and is
currently completing her PhD on the rhetoric of Stuart court masques. She has
taught English literature at several Norwegian universities, and is now associate
professor of English literature and teaching at Inland Norway University of
Applied Sciences, where she is currently Head of the Department of Humanities.
She has published on Renaissance rhetoric and literature and co-authored a
book on English teaching with Juliet Munden.
Torunn Skjærstad works with English as a second language and English sub-
ject didactics at Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences. After complet-
ing a degree in language and culture at University College Cork, she worked for
a number of years as a teacher at various levels in Norway. With a Master’s
degree in history from the University of Oslo, she has written extensively about
history locally and nationally. This is her first academic contribution in this field.
Angela Sorby is Professor of American Literature and Creative Writing at
Marquette University and has published three poetry collections, most recently
The Sleeve Waves (2014); a critical monograph, Schoolroom Poets (2005); and an
anthology of nineteenth-century children’s poetry, Over the River and Through
the Wood (2013), co-edited with Karen Kilcup.
xiv Notes on Contributors

Tracy Thompson is Professor of Chemistry and Department Head at Alverno

College, an innovative women’s college with an abilities-based approach to
undergraduate education. She has a strong interest in interdisciplinary teaching
and has published and presented widely in the fields of ethical pedagogy, univer-
sal design, and integrated communication.
Richard Tobin is a Certified Public Accountant and holds an MBA. He bal-
ances debits/credits, work/life, and twin daughters named Maeve and Merielle.
He teaches Accounting Communication at Marquette University.
Brian Yothers is the Frances Spatz Leighton Endowed D ​ istinguished Professor
of English at the University of Texas at El Paso. He is the author of Reading
Abolition: The Critical Reception of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Frederick Douglass
(2016), Sacred Uncertainty: Religious Difference and the Shape of Melville’s Career
(2015), Melville’s Mirrors: Literary Criticism and America’s Most Elusive Author
(2011), and The Romance of the Holy Land in American Travel Writing, 1790–
1876 (2007).
Jesse Zuba is the author of The First Book: Twentieth-Century Poetic Careers in
America (Princeton University Press, 2016) and associate professor of English at
Delaware State University. His articles on contemporary poetry have appeared
in American Literature and Twentieth-Century Literature, and he has recently
published a review of Cassandra Laity’s “Eco-Geologies of Queer Desire”—
about Elizabeth Bishop and Charles Darwin—in the Journal of Literature and
Science.
 Introduction

The title of this book—Poetry and Pedagogy across the Lifespan: Disciplines,
Classrooms, Contexts—promises to fill a tall order. Yet we realize with a
mix of disappointment and excitement that we have only scratched the
surface of possible topics. This is not a disclaimer, but rather an invitation
to think of poetry as a locus of pedagogical power in almost any context.
Literary scholars have long understood that poetry—from Sapphic odes
to Victorian eulogies to slam performances—plays an historically-­variable
but fundamental role in human society, meeting multiple aesthetic, com-
municative, and emotional needs. Even in highly technocratic Western
societies, parents still teach their children nursery rhymes, regardless of
whether they see themselves as poetry-readers. From an early age, chil-
dren delight in playful verse forms; as Morag Styles points out, “children
are hard-wired to musical language, taking pleasure in the rhythm,
rhyme, repetition, and other patternings of language that are a marked
feature of childhood.”1
Yet somewhere in the course of contemporary education and cultural
conditioning, at least in Europe and the United States, teachers and
­students come to see poetry as unnecessary, or even scary, preferring to
compartmentalize it into its own little corner of the humanities. If poetry
is the most intimate and familiar childhood genre, it somehow becomes
alien and forbidding to readers as they age. This state of affairs is neither
natural nor universal; in Iran, for instance, adults compete recreationally
xv
xvi Introduction

on television poetry game shows. There is nothing inevitable about the

way many people learn to “age out” of poetry. As our contributors sug-
gest, the pedagogical (and recreational) potential of poetry can be tapped
through experimental and experiential work in the classroom.
In this volume we seek to re-imagine the practice of poetry as a flexi-
ble, multi-modal medium that can reach students (and others) across the
lifespan. A number of our contributors have noted the ways that poetry
can help us to think differently about other disciplines, from chemistry to
visual art. Others have found that disrupting the usual ways that poems
are taught helps readers access them, not just academically, but also kin-
esthetically, therapeutically, and spiritually. Such experiments do not
imply that academic contexts should be abandoned; rather, they suggest
that poetry can help us expand how we understand teaching and learn-
ing. When poetry crosses the boundaries of disciplines, as it does in many
of the chapters in this book, teachers and learners are invited to reflect
upon and to challenge the habits of mind that tend to divide academic
disciplines (K-12 education, college teaching, even accounting) and that
also frequently silo analytical, creative, and affective approaches to
learning.
As we assembled this volume, we found our initial sense confirmed:
poetry can and should be taught across the lifespan as an interdisciplinary
pursuit. Poetry is first and foremost made out of words, and therefore
promotes literacy, but as our diverse contributors implicitly attest, the
type of literacy poetry stimulates is very broad: getting comfortable with
seeing contradictory words side by side (also known as oxymoron) can
help develop an appreciation for diversity and complexity rather than fear
of the unfamiliar; auditory patterns stimulate aesthetic appreciation and
pleasure in innovation; discovering that words can say, mean, and do in a
large variety of different ways boosts critical thinking, self-expression, and
creativity. Pleasure, innovation, critical thinking, self-expression, creativ-
ity and appreciation of diversity and complexity are not ­discipline-­specific,
or even age-specific, skill sets. Rather, poetry offers educators a trove of
texts that can be used to support multiple learning styles and educational
outcomes, as well as helping students to discover—as Jack Kerouac put
it—“the origins of joy in poetry.”2
 Introduction xvii

This volume casts a deliberately wide net, capturing contributors work-

ing within disparate disciplinary norms. For example, Jim Cocola writes
as an American literary critic, whereas Johann Alfredsson’s essay outlines
the practical challenges of incorporating poetry into Scandinavian teacher
training. One would not expect to find Cocola and Alfredsson in the
same book: their diction, assumptions, and “natural” audiences are differ-
ent. However, we believe that such juxtapositions can work, like images
in a lyric poem, to generate unexpected and unpredictable connections.
To move poetry out of its “little corner of the humanities” means—neces-
sarily—allowing it to circulate freely.
In the spirit of free circulation, then, the first three chapters of the
book invite us to consider ways in which poetry can engage with far-­
flung disciplines: accounting, chemistry, and dance, respectively. In Rich
Tobin’s opening chapter, “Poetry and Accounting,” he describes incorpo-
rating poetry-based activities into two different types of classrooms:
accounting for college students and for adults continuing their educa-
tion. His starting point is that communication and interpersonal skills
are crucial for success in the accounting business, and his delightful
methods of asking students to reduce lengthy business reports into a few
lines or even a haiku illustrate how the conciseness of poetry can promote
professional skills such as economy of language and intellectual creativity.
His subtitle—“What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious
life?”—is taken from Mary Oliver’s poem “The Summer Day,” and prods
students to reflect on larger issues than career-building. In other words,
while his approach has a practical aim (teaching linguistic economy) it
also acknowledges the sense that all lives—including those of accoun-
tants—are wild and precious.
In Chap. 2, “The Chemistry of Poetry: Transfer Across Disciplines,”
Angela Sorby and Tracy Thompson note that when “students learn to
recognize that a set of core abilities can underpin their success in any
field, they become empowered and flexible.” Yet they discover through
their classroom experiments that bringing poetry and science together is
not a straightforward process. They construct a pedagogical dialogue by
including students in activities that build on the strengths of both disci-
plines (and on their professional and personal friendship), while not
ignoring the divergent epistemological assumptions of their fields. To a
xviii Introduction

certain extent, employing the close-reading method of mapping what a

poem says, does, and means, is transferable to understanding the data of
thin layer chromatography. The students (and authors) ultimately became
able to articulate how critical reading of poetry and scientific analysis are
complementary—but not analogous. They also note that reading and
discovery of all types, in both the arts and the sciences, advances most
productively when it is grounded in conversations and relationships.
Just as Sorby and Thompson discovered that the subjective/objective
dichotomy between poetry and chemistry broke down during their in-­
class dialogues, so too in Chap. 3, “Teaching Poetry Through Dance,”
does Vivian Delchamps underline “the importance of unsettling the
binary that presents mind and body as distinct.” Both of these chapters
(as well as this book) take issue with the compartmentalization of subjects
in every meaning of the word. Delchamps discusses how the contempo-
rary education system polices student bodies by making them increas-
ingly more sedentary as they advance through the grades. By incorporating
dance methodologies into the poetry classroom, she shows how poetry
can and should be embodied, and how students can benefit in terms of
both mental and physical health by combining poetry with dance. Her
interdisciplinary methods promote a return to bodily agency in learning,
which is seen as especially valuable for students of different ranges of
mobility and students of color.
The gendered body is also highly relevant in this context and Chaps. 4
and 5 consider how historical and contemporary women have dealt with
the challenges and possibilities of writing with, against, and beyond a
male-dominated canon. In Chap. 4, “Poetry and Pedagogy in St. Teresa of
Avila (1515–1582),” Anne Pasero considers that the autobiographical and
poetic texts of St. Teresa “represent the assertive feminist life-writing that
is prevalent today.” Teresa’s significant body of poetry has been understud-
ied, and Pasero examines how the poet navigates the difficult terrain of
expressing mystical pleasure—jouissance—in an environment of religious
and social confines. By combining mystical and quasi-erotic passages in
her poetry, Teresa manages to express her innermost passions while
shrewdly avoiding the condemnation of her male superiors. Pasero shows
how the pedagogical lessons from Teresa’s poetry are highly relevant for
today’s classrooms because they advance a set of values (spiritual, internal)
 Introduction xix

that are hard to assess or quantify, but that are all the more worthwhile
because they offer an alternative to our testing-and-audit culture.
Chapter 5 picks up on Pasero’s feminist thread by considering precisely
poetry and gender in the classroom. In “Teaching Poetry with Painting:
‘Why Do You Thus Devise Evil Against Her?’” Sandra Kleppe examines
how women poets have been excluded from the canon of ekphrasis—
poetry about painting—and offers some theoretical and practical peda-
gogical solutions. Kleppe has found that teaching poems alongside
paintings reduces students’ skepticism to poetry, yet the resistance to
women poets is surprisingly tenacious. Making students aware of the
long history of female exclusion in the discourse surrounding poetry and
painting, and gradually exposing learners to more female poets and paint-
ers, are some of the methods offered to address the continued gender
imbalance in the contemporary classroom.
The final three chapters of the first section reflect on poetry in a variety
of socio-cultural contexts: veterans facing combat trauma, the role of the
lyric in criminology, and blackness as a cultural signifier. In Chap. 6,
“Whatever Gets You through the Night: Poetry and Combat Trauma,”
Kristin Kelly proposes that poetry is an underutilized resource for healing
combat trauma, and she presents her work with war veterans in poetry-­
reading groups. Reading and writing poetry with groups of veterans is
examined as both a meaningful and a practical form of healing. Poetry is
directly connected to the emotions, and poems are short enough literary
forms for trauma victims with acute concentration issues. Kelly’s findings
are backed by the research in art therapy as well as her own experiments
with individuals and groups returning from the wars who consider
­powerful poems such as Margaret Atwood’s “It Is Dangerous to Read
Newspapers” and Yusef Komunyakaa’s “Facing It.”
Poems by Komunyakaa are also the focus of Chap. 7, “Pedagogies of
Personhood: The Place of Lyric in Cultural Criminology,” by Jesse Zuba.
Zuba argues that narrative has been privileged over lyric in interdisciplin-
ary projects in cultural criminology because lyric is perceived as personal
and cut off from history and society. He reconsiders the lyric poem as an
interdisciplinary pedagogical resource in this context, and his readings of
a series of poems by Komunyakaa bring home the relevance of lyric for
cultural criminology in particular. Such a pedagogy exposes, among
xx Introduction

topics, the constructedness of crime and crime control and the role-play-
ing that complicates personhood, especially that of African American
speakers, in the lyric.
African American poetry is also explored in the final chapter of Part I:
Chap. 8 “Multimodal Encounter: Two Case Studies in the Recovery of
the Black Signifier” by Cocola. All too often, blackness has been edited
out, altered, or reframed in poetry by African Americans. By tracing
changes through a number of different editions, anthologies, and re-­
titlings, as well as posthumous reframings, Cocola examines closely how
this process has diminished the black signifier in many poems and in
those by Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou in particular. Recovering
the black signifier through examining several modalities is a pedagogical
tool that “constitutes a dynamic kind of recovery work in the classroom.”
For Cocola, poetry cannot be divorced from the ways that classroom texts
frame (or occlude) their meaning.
The classroom is precisely the focus of Part II of this book, “Poetry
Pedagogies and Theories in the Classroom,” and it opens with a chapter
that illustrates how the sections are interconnected rather than compart-
mentalized. In Chap. 9, “Push the Envelope: An Alternative to Testing
and the Teaching of Emily Dickinson’s Manuscripts,” Jacqueline Barrios
examines the material surfaces of Dickinson’s writing as an alternative to
the more conventional ways of studying her poems through edited vol-
umes, textbooks, and standardized exams. Arguing that the materiality of
the poem is a pedagogical tool for its reading, Barrios offers A.P. students
ways of engaging with Dickinson’s works that reach beyond current exam
formats such as the timed essay, but also that allow them to discover how
testing ideologies contribute to constructing specific responses. Asking
students to collect, write on, and organize paper fragments such as enve-
lopes makes “the labor of communication palpable” in relation to both
the students’ writing performances and the historical situation of
Dickinson’s own production.
While Barrios examines the bits and pieces of paper her students and
Dickinson wrote on, in Chap. 10, “‘Ten Fat Sausages’: Poetic Sense Units,
Vocabulary Chunks, and Language Acquisition in Young Learners,”
Christina Sandhaug turns to the bits and pieces of language that make up
poems. Her pedagogical approach considers young (primary school)
 Introduction xxi

readers’ potential to learn vocabulary through poetic sense units and

chunks of language. Children’s foreign-language learning can be enhanced
in several ways by reading poetry, especially the exposure to repetition
through variation that poetry provides in its creative and unfamiliar uses
of language. Sandhaug chooses contemporary poet Moira Andrews’ his-
torical poem “November Night Countdown” to illustrate relevant cogni-
tive theories and processes of learning through sense units, chunks, and
other contexts.
The focus of learning shifts from cognitive theories of (poetic) lan-
guage in Chap. 10, to literary theories in Chap. 11, “Helping High
School Readers Interpret Challenging Texts Using Lenses from Literary
Theory,” co-authored by Hallie Richmond and April Salerno. Through
teaching joint seminars that bring together students of English and
Education, the authors trace how literary theory can be a beneficial and
hands-on tool to guide student-teachers through challenging poetry.
They present their findings in a dialogue to show the workings of inter-
sectionality and how their collaboration can benefit future English teach-
ers of high school students faced with challenging texts and diverse
learners. Pedagogical and literary theories, usually compartmentalized,
come together as teacher-trainees explore how their choices of theoretical
perspective influence their decisions about what and how to teach poems.
Three sample lessons are provided for Gwendolyn Brooks’ “A Bronzeville
Mother Loiters in Mississippi; Meanwhile, a Mississippi Mother Burns
Bacon.”
Teacher education continues as the theme of Chaps. 12 and 13. In
Chap. 12, “The ‘Effanineffable’ Weakness of Poetry: The Duality of
Bringing Poetry into the Teacher Training Classroom,” Johan Alfredsson
embraces the ambiguity of poetry—its duality—as a resource for teacher
education. Many teacher trainees believe poetry is important in the class-
room, but they still consider it difficult, serious, and even scary. Pointing
out that there are no guarantees for pinpointing meanings in poetry,
Alfredsson capitalizes on what he calls (following Gert Biesta) weakness
in education to open up avenues for poetry exploration that allow teacher
and student vulnerability, and that enable teacher trainees to see the dual-
ity between the classrooms they attend and those they will teach in.
Vulnerability in the poetry classroom is a topic several authors in this
xxii Introduction

volume approach, especially in the co-authored essays where the scholars

are from two different fields and know only a portion of what they will
co-teach. Alfredsson takes this a step further by showing how education
in general can benefit from allowing such weakness to be liberating: play-
fulness, creativity, and fun can go hand in hand with the seriousness and
difficulty of challenging poetic texts.
In Chap. 13, “English Poetry in the Foreign Language Classroom,”
Juliet Munden and Torunn Skjærstad follow up on some of the concerns
raised by Alfredsson when they interview primary and secondary school
teachers about their uses of poetry in the classroom. Though they focus
on a group of English teachers in Norway, their findings “are broadly
applicable to any classroom where teachers and their students wish to
enjoy and learn through poetry.” This duality of learning and enjoying is
important because the authors also point to skepticism of poetry, what
they call “malaise of poetry teaching,” that is a red thread running through
several chapters in this book. Instead of debating whether poetry should
be taught as poetry or used to learn language, the authors present their
findings of the wide variety of how school teachers actually employ poetry
in the classroom, noting that the distinction between learning and plea-
sure is not easy to make, nor should it be.
In Chap. 14, “Why Teach Poems about Animals? Animal Poetry across
Disciplines and the Life Span,” Heidi Moen turns to the variety of ways
animals appear in poetry and discusses the importance of teaching in
ways that promote intercultural competence. Though the field of Literary
Animal Studies has grown during the last decades, few scholars have
treated specifically the topic of animals in poetry. Through a close reading
of Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky,” Moen illuminates many of the sensitive
and understudied issues connected with animal representation, for exam-
ple, how the meanings of the poem shift if we allow the perspective of the
Jabberwocky. She also provides insightful readings of animal representa-
tions in poems by Arja Salafranca, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Harold
Farmer.
In Chap. 15, Brian Yothers proposes teaching the poems of nineteenth-­
century authors who are typically valued as novelists: Herman Melville,
Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Frances E. W. Harper. This approach encour-
ages students to see how poetry circulated differently, and in some ways
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 Introduction xxiii

more widely, in the nineteenth century. Yothers also refuses to oversim-

plify this work, which can be difficult because it engages multiple formal
patterns that students find unfamiliar. Instead, he shows how reading
these three poets together can illuminate how they were in conversation
with one another, with the texts of novels, and with the wider culture.
Ultimately, thinking about nineteenth-century contexts can help students
understand how poetry, in the nineteenth century as well as today, is a
“networked” genre that operates across generic and social boundaries.
The final chapter of the book brings the discussion back to the twenty-­
first century. In “Expanding the Turn: Using Poetry to Prepare Students
for a Post-truth World,” Conor Bracken suggests that poetry can be an
antidote to fake news and a way of increasing critical literacy. He also
addresses the well-known student aversion to poetry, discussed several
places in this book, and provides a pedagogical approach that can disrupt
this “enduring distaste for poetry.” By examining the structures of and
turns within poetry it is possible to help students understand what makes
a poem a poem. Bracken demonstrates how the poetic turn is a universal
feature of all poetry and also present in students’ lives in daily genres such
as jokes and arguments. Learning to identify the turn in a poem can pro-
vide a vocabulary for all types of poetry regardless of style or period and
help train students to identify objective features of texts, whether poetry,
news, or social media.

Conclusion
The essays in this volume are meant to spur active application and adap-
tation by educators. Every pedagogical situation is different; to misquote
Heraclites, no one steps into the same classroom twice. The process of
editing has been an education in itself, as we encountered different
authors speaking from radically different disciplinary norms (education,
literary criticism, chemistry) across the academy. Some contributors,
such as Yothers, are academics specializing in literature; others, such as
Tobin, are trained in other fields. Taken together, all of the essays in this
volume demonstrate the ways that poetry can become a wellspring of
pleasure and transformation for any interested reader. Not every attempt
xxiv Introduction

to introduce poetry into the classroom will be an unmixed success, but,

as the contributors to this volume show, the work of synthesis can be
productive even if (or especially when) it is difficult. Poetry asks students
to think differently and maybe a little harder—and in return, it gives
them access not just to the work of creative writers but also to their own
capacities as creative readers. In other words, when students engage with
poetry they engage with a powerful force that can cross boundaries and
re-imagine the world through language.

Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences Sandra Lee Kleppe

Hamar, Norway
Marquette University Angela Sorby
Milwaukee, WI, USA

Notes
1. Morag Styles, “The Case for Children’s Poetry,” University of Cambridge, 11
Oct. 2011, www.cam.ac.uk/research/discussion/the-case-for-children%
E2%80%99s-poetry. Online. Accessed 6 April 2018.
2. Jack Kerouac, “The Origins of Joy in Poetry,” in Scattered Poems (San
Francisco: City Lights Books, 1971), 63.
 Part I
Poetry Across the Disciplines and
Modalities
 1
Poetry and Accounting: “What Is It
You Plan to Do with Your One Wild
and Precious Life?”
Richard Tobin

Introduction
Poetry and Accounting may seem like an unlikely pedagogical pairing;
however, this essay explains how poetry-based learning activities can
develop accounting students professionally and intellectually. Accountants
are often misperceived as reticent number crunchers that peck at calcula-
tors in the isolation of their office cubicles. Although the profession
undoubtedly values quantitative ability, this outdated caricature does not
reflect the modern day reality for accountants. In order to best serve their
client or employer an accountant must communicate the value derived
from their quantitative analyses both verbally and in writing. Universities
are responding to the needs of the profession by offering Accounting
Communication courses, but traditional lecture and demonstration
methods of accounting instruction are insufficient on their own. Poetry-­
based learning activities are effective complements to existing methods.

R. Tobin (*)
Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, USA
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2018 3

S. L. Kleppe, A. Sorby (eds.), Poetry and Pedagogy across the Lifespan,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90433-7_1
4 R. Tobin

They help accountants distill the story behind the numbers. They put the
precision of a student’s word choice on par with the precision of their
calculations. They also improve the ability to engage complex accounting
issues while maintaining economy of language. These communication
abilities, when paired with elite technical skills, provide accounting stu-
dents with a distinct competitive advantage in the workforce. Perhaps
more importantly, poetry-based learning activities also foster intellectual
curiosity, which is a hallmark of both personal and professional
fulfillment.

Moment of Discovery
The connection between poetry and accounting first occurred to me
when I was practicing as a Certified Public Accountant for a firm in
Denver, Colorado. By day I was an auditor that carefully scrutinized
financial statements to see beyond the obvious. By night I was reading
Mary Oliver poems, marveling at her ability to carefully scrutinize ele-
ments of nature and seeing well beyond the obvious. However, my enthu-
siasm for poetry could not simply switch off during working hours. While
planning an audit of a casino in Blackhawk, Colorado, I found myself
fixated on an impossibly large snowflake falling outside conference room
window. As my colleagues around the conference room table attended to
the details of their accounting ledgers and journal entries, I lapsed into a
poetry induced trance in which I attended to the details of this snowflake,
and I created a journal entry of my own.

Against the blue grey backdrop of a mid-November sky,

a solitary snowflake pauses midflight to pose and posture,
as it often happens in workplace daydreams.

Its precise floral pattern appears etched in crystal.

At its center, a pistil from which this creation is born, from it
a petunia bloom with five, streaked petals.

From this bloom emerge six spokes, sharp as lancets.

The tip of each is adorned with a distinctive, ornate crown,
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and not at creation quote this as the fourth commandment, and omit
the original precept, which God himself proclaimed, where all these
facts are distinctly stated.[154]
But while Moses in this rehearsal omits a large part of the fourth
commandment, he refers to the original precept for the whole matter,
and then appends to this rehearsal a powerful plea of obligation on
the part of the Hebrews to keep the Sabbath. It should be
remembered that many of the people had steadily persisted in the
violation of the Sabbath, and that this is the last time that Moses
speaks in its behalf. Thus he says:—

“And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of

Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence
through a mighty hand and by a stretched-out arm: therefore
the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day.”

These words are often cited as proof that the Sabbath originated
at the departure of Israel from Egypt, and that it was ordained at that
time as a memorial of their deliverance from thence. But it will be
observed, 1. That this text says not one word respecting the origin of
the Sabbath or rest-day of the Lord. 2. That the facts on this point
are all given in the original fourth commandment, and are there
referred to creation. 3. That there is no reason to believe that God
rested upon the seventh day at the time of this flight from Egypt; nor
did he then bless and hallow the day. 4. That the Sabbath has
nothing in it of a kind to commemorate the deliverance from Egypt,
as that was a flight and this is a rest; and that flight was upon the
fifteenth of the first month, and this rest, upon the seventh day of
each week. Thus one would occur annually; the other, weekly. 5. But
God did ordain a fitting memorial of that deliverance to be observed
by the Hebrews: the passover, on the fourteenth day of the first
month, in memory of God’s passing over them when he smote the
Egyptians; and the feast of unleavened bread, in memory of their
eating this bread when they fled out of Egypt.[155]
 But what then do these words imply? Perhaps their meaning may
be more readily perceived by comparing them with an exact parallel
found in the same book and from the pen of the same writer:—

“Thou shalt not pervert the judgment of the stranger, nor of

the fatherless; nor take a widow’s raiment to pledge; but thou
shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in Egypt, and the
Lord thy God redeemed thee thence; therefore I command
thee to do this thing.”[156]

It will be seen at a glance that this precept was not given to

commemorate the deliverance of Israel from Egyptian bondage; nor
could that deliverance give existence to the moral obligation
expressed in it. If the language in the one case proves that men
were not under obligation to keep the Sabbath before the
deliverance of Israel from Egypt, it proves with equal conclusiveness
in the other that before that deliverance they were not under
obligation to treat with justice and mercy the stranger, the fatherless,
and the widow. And if the Sabbath is shown in the one case to be
Jewish, in the other, the statute of the great Law-giver in behalf of
the needy and the helpless must share the same fate. It is manifest
that this language is in each case an appeal to their sense of
gratitude. You were slaves in Egypt, and God rescued you; therefore
remember others who are in distress, and oppress them not. You
were bondmen in Egypt, and God redeemed you; therefore sanctify
unto the Lord the day which he has reserved unto himself; a most
powerful appeal to those who had hitherto persisted in polluting it.
Deliverance from abject servitude was necessary, indeed, in each
case, in order that the things enjoined might be fully observed; but
that deliverance did not give existence to either of these duties. It
was indeed one of the acts by which the Sabbath of the Lord was
given to that nation, but it was not one of the acts by which God
made the Sabbath, nor did it render the rest-day of the Lord a Jewish
institution.
That the words engraven upon stone were simply the ten
commandments is evident.
 1. It is said of the first tables:—

“And the Lord spake unto you out of the midst of the fire: ye
heard the voice of the words, but saw no similitude; only ye
heard a voice. And he declared unto you his covenant, which
he commanded you to perform, even ten commandments;
and he wrote them upon two tables of stone.”[157]

2. Thus the first tables of stone contained the ten commandments

alone. That the second tables were an exact copy of what was
written upon the first, is plainly stated:—

“And the Lord said unto Moses, Hew thee two tables of
stone like unto the first: and I will write upon these tables the
words that were in the first tables, which thou breakest.” “And
I will write on the tables the words that were in the first tables
which thou breakest, and thou shalt put them in the ark.”[158]

3. This is confirmed by the following decisive testimony:—

“And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant,

the ten commandments,” margin, Heb., “words.” “And he
wrote on the tables, according to the first writing, the ten
commandments [margin, words], which the Lord spake unto
you in the mount, out of the midst of the fire in the day of the
assembly: and the Lord gave them unto me.”[159]

These texts will explain the following language: “And the Lord
delivered unto me two tables of stone written with the finger of God;
and on them was written according to all the words which the Lord
spake with you in the mount out of the midst of the fire in the day of
the assembly.”[160] Thus God is said to have written upon the tables
according to all the words which he spoke in the day of the
assembly; and these words which he thus wrote, are said to have
been ten words. But the preface to the decalogue was not one of
these ten words, and hence was not written by the finger of God
upon stone. That this distinction must be attended to, will be seen by
examining the following text and its connection:—

“These words the Lord spake unto all your assembly in

the mount, out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud, and of the
thick darkness, with a great voice: and he added no more.
And he wrote them in two tables of stone, and delivered them
unto me.”[161]

These words here brought to view as written by the finger of God

after having been uttered by him in the hearing of all the people,
must be understood as one of two things. 1. They are simply the ten
words of the law of God; or, 2. They are all the words used by Moses
in this rehearsal of the decalogue. But they cannot refer to the words
used in this rehearsal; for, 1. Moses omits an important part of the
fourth precept as given by God in its proclamation from the mount. 2.
In this rehearsal of that precept he cites back to the original for that
which is omitted.[162] 3. He appends to this precept an appeal in its
behalf to their gratitude which was not made by God in giving it. 4.
This language only purports to be a rehearsal and not the original
itself; and this is further evinced by many verbal deviations from the
original decalogue.[163] These facts are decisive as to what was
placed upon the tables of stone. It was not an incomplete copy, citing
elsewhere for the original, but the original code itself. And hence
when Moses speaks of these words as engraven upon the tables,
he refers not to the words used by himself in this rehearsal, but to
the ten words of the law of God, and excludes all else.
Thus have we traced the Sabbath through the books of Moses.
We have found its origin in paradise when man was in his
uprightness; we have seen the Hebrews set apart from all mankind
as the depositaries of divine truth; we have seen the Sabbath and
the whole moral law committed as a sacred trust to them; we have
seen the Sabbath proclaimed by God as one of the ten
commandments; we have seen it written by the finger of God upon
stone in the bosom of the moral law; we have seen that law
possessing no Jewish, but simply moral and divine, features, placed
beneath the mercy-seat in the ark of God’s testament; we have seen
that various precepts pertaining to the Sabbath were given to the
Hebrews and designed only for them; we have seen that the
Hebrews did greatly pollute the Sabbath during their sojourn in the
wilderness; and we have heard the final appeal made in its behalf by
Moses to that rebellious people.
We rest the foundation of the Sabbatic institution upon its
sanctification before the fall of man; the fourth commandment is its
great citadel of defense; its place in the midst of the moral law
beneath the mercy-seat shows its relation to the atonement and its
immutable obligation.
 CHAPTER VII.
THE FEASTS, NEW MOONS AND SABBATHS OF THE HEBREWS.

Enumeration of the Hebrew festivals—The passover—The pentecost—

The feast of tabernacles—The new moons—The first and second
annual sabbaths—The third—The fourth—The fifth—The sixth and
seventh—The sabbath of the land—The jubilee—None of these
festivals in force until the Hebrews entered their own land—The
contrast between the Sabbath of the Lord and the sabbaths of the
Hebrews—Testimony of Isaiah—Of Hosea—Of Jeremiah—Final
cessation of these festivals.
We have followed the Sabbath of the Lord through the books of
Moses. A brief survey of the Jewish festivals is necessary to the
complete view of the subject before us. Of these there were three
feasts: the passover, the Pentecost, and the feast of tabernacles;
each new moon, that is, the first day of each month throughout the
year; then there were seven annual sabbaths, namely, 1. The first
day of unleavened bread. 2. The seventh day of that feast. 3. The
day of Pentecost. 4. The first day of the seventh month. 5. The tenth
day of that month. 6. The fifteenth day of that month. 7. The twenty-
second day of the same. In addition to all these, every seventh year
was to be the sabbath of the land, and every fiftieth year the year of
jubilee.
The passover takes its name from the fact that the angel of the
Lord passed over the houses of the Hebrews on that eventful night
when the firstborn in every Egyptian family was slain. This feast was
ordained in commemoration of the deliverance of that people from
Egyptian bondage. It began with the slaying of the paschal lamb on
the fourteenth day of the first month, and extended through a period
of seven days, in which nothing but unleavened bread was to be
eaten. Its great antitype was reached when Christ our passover was
sacrificed for us.[164]
The Pentecost was the second of the Jewish feasts, and occupied
but a single day. It was celebrated on the fiftieth day after the first-
fruits of barley harvest had been waved before the Lord. At the time
of this feast the first-fruits of wheat harvest were offered unto God.
The antitype of this festival was reached on the fiftieth day after the
resurrection of Christ, when the great outpouring of the Holy Ghost
took place.[165]
The feast of tabernacles was the last of the Jewish feasts. It was
celebrated in the seventh month when they had gathered in the fruit
of the land, and extended from the fifteenth to the twenty-first day of
that month. It was ordained as a festival of rejoicing before the Lord;
and during this period the children of Israel dwelt in booths in
commemoration of their dwelling thus during their sojourn in the
wilderness. It probably typifies the great rejoicing after the final
gathering of all the people of God into his kingdom.[166]
In connection with these feasts it was ordained that each new
moon, that is, the first day of every month, should be observed with
certain specified offerings, and with tokens of rejoicing.[167] The
annual sabbaths of the Hebrews have been already enumerated.
The first two of these sabbaths were the first and seventh days of the
feast of unleavened bread, that is, the fifteenth and twenty-first days
of the first month. They were thus ordained by God:—

“Seven days shall ye eat unleavened bread; even the first

day ye shall put away leaven out of your houses.... And in the
first day there shall be an holy convocation, and in the
seventh day there shall be an holy convocation to you; no
manner of work shall be done in them, save that which every
man must eat, that only may be done of you.”[168]

The third in order of the annual sabbaths was the day of

Pentecost. This festival was ordained as a rest-day in the following
language:—

“And ye shall proclaim on the selfsame day, that it may be

an holy convocation unto you: ye shall do no servile work
 therein; it shall be a statute forever in all your dwellings
throughout your generations.”[169]

The first day of the seventh month was the fourth annual sabbath
of the Hebrews. It was thus ordained:—

“Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, In the seventh

month, in the first day of the month, shall ye have a sabbath,
a memorial of blowing of trumpets, an holy convocation. Ye
shall do no servile work therein; but ye shall offer an offering
made by fire unto the Lord.”[170]

The great day of atonement was the fifth of these sabbaths. Thus
spake the Lord unto Moses:—

“Also on the tenth day of this seventh month there shall be

a day of atonement; it shall be an holy convocation unto
you.... Ye shall do no manner of work; it shall be a statute
forever throughout your generations in all your dwellings. It
shall be unto you a sabbath of rest, and ye shall afflict your
souls: in the ninth day of the month at even, from even unto
even, shall ye celebrate your sabbath.”[171]

The sixth and seventh of these annual sabbaths were the fifteenth
and twenty-second days of the seventh month, that is, the first day of
the feast of tabernacles, and the day after its conclusion. Thus were
they enjoined by God:—

“Also in the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when ye

have gathered in the fruit of the land, ye shall keep a feast
unto the Lord seven days; on the first day shall be a sabbath,
and on the eighth day shall be a sabbath.”[172]
 Besides all these, every seventh year was a sabbath of rest unto
the land. The people might labor as usual in other business, but they
were forbidden to till the land, that the land itself might rest.[173] After
seven of these sabbaths, the following or fiftieth year was to be the
year of jubilee, in which every man was to be restored unto his
inheritance.[174] There is no evidence that the jubilee was ever
observed, and it is certain that the sabbatical year was almost
entirely disregarded.[175]
Such were the feasts, new moons, and sabbaths, of the Hebrews.
A few words will suffice to point out the broad distinction between
them and the Sabbath of the Lord. The first of the three feasts was
ordained in memory of their deliverance from Egyptian bondage, and
was to be observed when they should enter their own land.[176] The
second feast, as we have seen, could not be observed until after the
settlement of the Hebrews in Canaan; for it was to be celebrated
when the first fruits of wheat harvest should be offered before the
Lord. The third feast was ordained in memory of their sojourn in the
wilderness, and was to be celebrated by them each year after the
ingathering of the entire harvest. Of course this feast, like the others,
could not be observed until the settlement of the people in their own
land. The new moons, as has been already seen, were not ordained
until after these feasts had been instituted. The annual sabbaths
were part and parcel of these feasts, and could have no existence
until after the feasts to which they belonged had been instituted.
Thus the first and second of these sabbaths were the first and
seventh days of the paschal feast. The third annual sabbath was
identical with the feast of Pentecost. The fourth of these sabbaths
was the same as the new moon in the seventh month. The fifth one
was the great day of atonement. The sixth and the seventh of these
annual sabbaths were the fifteenth and twenty-second days of the
seventh month, that is, the first day of the feast of tabernacles, and
the next day after the close of that feast. As these feasts were not to
be observed until the Hebrews should possess their own land, the
annual sabbaths could have no existence until that time. And so of
the sabbaths of the land. These could have no existence until after
the Hebrews should possess and cultivate their own land; after six
years of cultivation, the land should rest the seventh year, and
remain untilled. After seven of these sabbaths of the land came the
year of jubilee.
The contrast between the Sabbath of the Lord and these sabbaths
of the Hebrews[177] is strongly marked. 1. The Sabbath of the Lord
was instituted at the close of the first week of time; while these were
ordained in connection with the Jewish feasts. 2. The one was
blessed and hallowed by God, because that he had rested upon it
from the work of creation; the others have no such claim to our
regard. 3. When the children of Israel came into the wilderness, the
Sabbath of the Lord was an existing institution, obligatory upon
them; but the annual sabbaths then came into existence. It is easy to
point to the very act of God, while leading that people, that gave
existence to these sabbaths; while every reference to the Sabbath of
the Lord shows that it had been ordained before God chose that
people. 4. The children of Israel were excluded from the promised
land for violating the Sabbath of the Lord in the wilderness; but the
annual sabbaths were not to be observed until they should enter that
land. This contrast would be strange indeed were it true that the
Sabbath of the Lord was not instituted until the children of Israel
came into the wilderness of Sin; for it is certain that two of the annual
sabbaths were instituted before they left the land of Egypt.[178] 5.
The Sabbath of the Lord was made for man; but the annual sabbaths
were designed only for residents in the land of Palestine. 6. The one
was weekly, a memorial of the Creator’s rest; the others were
annual, connected with the memorials of the deliverance of the
Hebrews from Egypt. 7. The one is termed “the Sabbath of the Lord,”
“my Sabbaths,” “my holy day,” and the like; while the others are
designated as “your sabbaths,” “her sabbaths,” and similar
expressions.[179] 8. The one was proclaimed by God as one of the
ten commandments, and was written with his finger in the midst of
the moral law upon the tables of stone, and was deposited in the ark
beneath the mercy-seat; the others did not pertain to the moral law,
but were embodied in that handwriting of ordinances that was a
shadow of good things to come. 9. The distinction between these
festivals and the Sabbaths of the Lord was carefully marked by God
when he ordained the festivals and their associated sabbaths. Thus
he said: “These are the feasts of the Lord, which ye shall proclaim to
be holy convocations, ... beside the Sabbaths of the Lord.”[180]
The annual sabbaths are presented by Isaiah in a very different
light from that in which he presents the Sabbath of the Lord. Of the
one he says:—

“Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination

unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of
assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn
meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul
hateth; they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear
them.”[181]

In striking contrast with this, the same prophet speaks of the

Lord’s Sabbath:—

“Thus saith the Lord, Keep ye judgment, and do justice: for

my salvation is near to come, and my righteousness to be
revealed. Blessed is the man that doeth this, and the son of
man that layeth hold on it; that keepeth the Sabbath from
polluting it, and keepeth his hand from doing any evil. Neither
let the son of the stranger, that hath joined himself to the Lord,
speak, saying, The Lord hath utterly separated me from his
people; neither let the eunuch say, Behold, I am a dry tree.
For thus saith the Lord unto the eunuchs that keep my
Sabbaths, and choose the things that please me, and take
hold of my covenant; even unto them will I give in mine house
and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons
and of daughters; I will give them an everlasting name, that
shall not be cut off. Also the sons of the stranger, that join
themselves to the Lord, to serve him, and to love the name of
the Lord, to be his servants, every one that keepeth the
Sabbath from polluting it, and taketh hold of my covenant;
even them will I bring to my holy mountain, and make them
 joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt-offerings and their
sacrifices shall be accepted upon mine altar; for mine house
shall be called a house of prayer for all people.”[182]

Hosea carefully designates the annual sabbaths in the following

prediction:—

“I will also cause all her mirth to cease, her feast-days, her
new moons, and her sabbaths, and all her solemn
feasts.”[183]

This prediction was uttered about b. c. 785. It was fulfilled in part

about two hundred years after this, when Jerusalem was destroyed
by Nebuchadnezzar. Of this event, Jeremiah, about b. c. 588,
speaks as follows:—

“Her people fell into the hand of the enemy, and none did
help her: the adversaries saw her, and did mock at her
sabbaths.... The Lord was as an enemy; he hath swallowed
up Israel, he hath swallowed up all her palaces; he hath
destroyed his strongholds, and hath increased in the daughter
of Judah mourning and lamentation. And he hath violently
taken away his tabernacle, as if it were of a garden; he hath
destroyed his places of the assembly; the Lord hath caused
the solemn feasts and sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion, and
hath despised in the indignation of his anger the king and the
priest. The Lord hath cast off his altar, he hath abhorred his
sanctuary, he hath given up into the hand of the enemy the
walls of her palaces; they have made a noise in the house of
the Lord, as in the day of a solemn feast.”[184]

The feasts of the Lord were to be holden in the place which the
Lord should choose, namely, Jerusalem;[185] and when that city, the
place of their solemn assemblies, was destroyed and the people
themselves carried into captivity, the complete cessation of their
feasts, and, as a consequence, of the annual sabbaths, which were
specified days in those feasts, must occur. The adversaries mocked
at her sabbaths, by making a “noise in the house of the Lord as in
the day of a solemn feast.” But the observance of the Lord’s Sabbath
did not cease with the dispersion of the Hebrews from their own
land; for it was not a local institution, like the annual sabbaths. Its
violation was one chief cause of the Babylonish captivity;[186] and
their final restoration to their own land was made conditional upon
their observing it in their dispersion.[187] The feasts, new moons, and
annual sabbaths, were restored when the Hebrews returned from
captivity, and with some interruptions, were kept up until the final
destruction of their city and nation by the Romans. But ere the
providence of God thus struck out of existence these Jewish
festivals, the whole typical system was abolished, having reached
the commencement of its antitype, when our Lord Jesus Christ
expired upon the cross. The handwriting of ordinances being thus
abolished, no one is to be judged respecting its meats, or drinks, or
holy days, or new moons, or sabbaths, “which are a shadow of
things to come; but the body is of Christ.” But the Sabbath of the
Lord did not form a part of this handwriting of ordinances; for it was
instituted before sin had entered the world, and consequently before
there was any shadow of redemption; it was written by the finger of
God, not in the midst of types and shadows, but in the bosom of the
moral law; and the day following that on which the typical sabbaths
were nailed to the cross, the Sabbath commandment of the moral
law is expressly recognized. Moreover, when the Jewish festivals
were utterly extinguished with the final destruction of Jerusalem,
even then was the Sabbath of the Lord brought to the minds of his
people.[188] Thus have we traced the annual sabbaths until their final
cessation, as predicted by Hosea. It remains that we trace the
Sabbath of the Lord until we reach the endless ages of the new
earth, when we shall find the whole multitude of the redeemed
assembling before God for worship on each successive Sabbath.
 CHAPTER VIII.
THE SABBATH FROM DAVID TO NEHEMIAH.

Silence of six successive books of the Bible relative to the Sabbath—This

silence compared to that of the book of Genesis—The siege of
Jericho—The standing still of the sun—David’s act of eating the
shew-bread—The Sabbath of the Lord, how connected with and how
distinguished from the annual sabbaths—Earliest reference to the
Sabbath after the days of Moses—Incidental allusions to the Sabbath
—Testimony of Amos—Of Isaiah—The Sabbath a blessing to
mankind—The condition of being gathered to the holy land—Not a
local institution—Commentary on the fourth commandment—
Testimony of Jeremiah—Jerusalem to be saved if she would keep the
Sabbath—This gracious offer despised—The Sabbath distinguished
from the other days of the week—The Sabbath after the Babylonish
captivity—Time for the commencing of the Sabbath—The violation of
the Sabbath caused the destruction of Jerusalem.
When we leave the books of Moses there is a long-continued
break in the history of the Sabbath. No mention of it is found in the
book of Joshua, nor in that of Judges, nor in the book of Ruth, nor in
that of first Samuel, nor in the book of second Samuel, nor in that of
first Kings. It is not until we reach the book of second Kings[189] that
the Sabbath is even mentioned. In the book of first Chronicles,
however, which as a narrative is parallel to the two books of Samuel,
the Sabbath is mentioned[190] with reference to the events of David’s
life. Yet this leaves a period of five hundred years, which the Bible
passes in silence respecting the Sabbath.
During this period we have a circumstantial history of the Hebrew
people from their entrance into the promised land forward to the
establishment of David as their king, embracing many particulars in
the life of Joshua, of the elders and judges of Israel, of Gideon, of
Barak, of Jephthah, of Samson, of Eli, of Naomi and Ruth, of
Hannah and Samuel, of Saul, of Jonathan and of David. Yet in all
this minute record we have no direct mention of the Sabbath.
 It is a favorite argument with anti-Sabbatarians in proof of the total
neglect of the Sabbath in the patriarchal age, that the book of
Genesis, which does give a distinct view of the origin of the Sabbath
in Paradise, at the close of the first week of time, does not in
recording the lives of the patriarchs, say anything relative to its
observance. Yet in that one book are crowded the events of two
thousand three hundred and seventy years. What then should they
say of the fact that six successive books of the Bible, relating with
comparative minuteness the events of five hundred years, and
involving many circumstances that would call out a mention of the
Sabbath, do not mention it at all? Does the silence of one book,
which nevertheless does give the institution of the Sabbath at its
very commencement, and which brings into its record almost twenty-
four hundred years, prove that there were no Sabbath-keepers prior
to Moses? What then is proved by the fact that six successive books
of the Bible, confining themselves to the events of five hundred
years, an average of less than one hundred years apiece, the whole
period covered by them being about one-fifth that embraced in the
book of Genesis, do nevertheless preserve total silence respecting
the Sabbath?
No one will adduce this silence as evidence of total neglect of the
Sabbath during this period; yet why should they not? Is it because
that when the narrative after this long silence brings in the Sabbath
again, it does this incidentally and not as a new institution? Precisely
such is the case with the second mention of the Sabbath in the
Mosaic record, that is, with its mention after the silence in Genesis.
[191] Is it because the fourth commandment had been given to the
Hebrews whereas no such precept had previously been given to
mankind? This answer cannot be admitted, for we have seen that
the substance of the fourth commandment was given to the head of
the human family; and it is certain that when the Hebrews came out
of Egypt they were under obligation to keep the Sabbath in
consequence of existing law.[192] The argument therefore is certainly
more conclusive that there were no Sabbath-keepers from Moses to
David, than that there were none from Adam to Moses; yet no one
will attempt to maintain the first position, however many there will be
to affirm the latter.
Several facts are narrated in the history of this period of five
centuries that have a claim to our notice. The first of these is found in
the record of the siege of Jericho.[193] By the command of God the
city was encompassed by the Hebrews each day for seven days; on
the last day of the seven they encompassed it seven times, when by
divine interposition the walls were thrown down before them and the
city taken by assault. One day of this seven must have been the
Sabbath of the Lord. Did not the people of God therefore violate the
Sabbath in their acting thus? Let the following facts answer: 1. That
which they did in this case was by direct command of God. 2. That
which is forbidden in the fourth commandment is our own work:
“Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work; but the seventh
day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” He who reserved the
seventh day unto himself, had the right to require its appropriation to
his service as he saw fit. 3. The act of encompassing the city was
strictly as a religious procession. The ark of the covenant of the Lord
was borne before the people; and before the ark went seven priests
blowing with trumpets of rams’ horns. 4. Nor could the city have
been very extensive, else the going round it seven times on the last
day, and their having time left for its complete destruction, would
have been impossible. 5. Nor can it be believed that the Hebrews, by
God’s command carrying the ark before them, which contained
simply the ten words of the Most High, were violating the fourth of
those words, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” It is
certain that one of those seven days on which they encompassed
Jericho was the Sabbath; but there is no necessity for supposing this
to have been the day in which the city was taken. Nor is this a
reasonable conjecture when all the facts in the case are considered.
On this incident Dr. Clarke remarks as follows:—

“It does not appear that there could be any breach in the
Sabbath by the people simply going round the city, the ark in
company, and the priests sounding the sacred trumpets. This
 was a mere religious procession, performed at the command
of God, in which no servile work was done.”[194]

At the word of Joshua it pleased God to arrest the earth in its

revolution, and thus to cause the sun to remain stationary for a
season, that the Canaanites might be overthrown before Israel.[195]
Did not this great miracle derange the Sabbath? Not at all; for the
lengthening of one of the six days by God’s intervention could not
prevent the actual arrival of the seventh day, though it would delay it;
nor could it destroy its identity. The case involves a difficulty for those
who hold the theory that God sanctified the seventh part of time, and
not the seventh day; for in this case the seventh part of time was not
allotted to the Sabbath; but there is no difficulty involved for those
who believe that God set apart the seventh day to be kept as it
arrives, in memory of his own rest. One of the six days was allotted a
greater length than ever before or since; yet this did not in the
slightest degree conflict with the seventh day, which nevertheless did
come. Moreover all this was while inspired men were upon the stage
of action; and it was by the direct providence of God; and what is
also to be particularly remembered, it was at a time when no one will
deny that the fourth commandment was in full force.
The case of David’s eating the shew-bread is worthy of notice, as
it probably took place upon the Sabbath, and because it is cited by
our Lord in a memorable conversation with the Pharisees.[196] The
law of the shew-bread enjoined the setting forth of twelve loaves in
the sanctuary upon the pure table before the Lord every Sabbath.
[197] When new bread was thus placed before the Lord each

Sabbath, the old was taken away to be eaten by the priests.[198] It

appears that the shew-bread which was given to David had that day
been taken from before the Lord to put hot bread in its place, and
consequently that day was the Sabbath. Thus, when David asked
bread, the priest said, “There is no common bread under mine hand,
but there is hallowed bread.” And David said, “The bread is in a
manner common, especially [as the margin has it] when this day
there is other sanctified in the vessel.” And so the sacred writer
adds: “The priest gave him hallowed bread; for there was no bread
there but the shew-bread, that was taken from before the Lord, to put
hot bread in the day when it was taken away.” The circumstances of
this case all favor the view that this was upon the Sabbath. 1. There
was no common bread with the priest. This is not strange when it is
remembered that the shew-bread was to be taken from before the
Lord each Sabbath and eaten by the priests. 2. That the priest did
not offer to prepare other bread is not singular if it be understood that
this was the Sabbath. 3. The surprise of the priest in meeting David
may have been in part owing to the fact that it was the Sabbath. 4.
This also may account for the detention of Doeg that day before the
Lord. 5. When our Lord was called upon to pronounce upon the
conduct of his disciples who had plucked and eaten the ears of corn
upon the Sabbath to satisfy their hunger, he cited this case of David,
and that of the priests offering sacrifices in the temple upon the
Sabbath as justifying the disciples. There is a wonderful propriety
and fitness in this citation, if it be understood that this act of David’s
took place upon the Sabbath. It will be found to present the matter in
a very different light from that in which anti-Sabbatarians present it.
[199]

A distinction may be here pointed out, which should never be lost

sight of. The presentation of the shew-bread and the offering of burnt
sacrifices upon the Sabbath as ordained in the ceremonial law,
formed no part of the original Sabbatic institution. For the Sabbath
was made before the fall of man; while burnt-offerings and
ceremonial rites in the sanctuary were introduced in consequence of
the fall. While these rites were in force they necessarily, to some
extent, connected the Sabbath with the festivals of the Jews in which
the like offerings were made. This is seen only in those scriptures
which record the provision made for these offerings.[200] When the
ceremonial law was nailed to the cross, all the Jewish festivals
ceased to exist; for they were ordained by it;[201] but the abrogation
of that law could only take away those rites which it had appended to
the Sabbath, leaving the original institution precisely as it came at
first from its author.
 The earliest reference to the Sabbath after the days of Moses is
found in what David and Samuel ordained respecting the offices of
the priests and Levites at the house of God. It is as follows:—

“And other of their brethren, of the sons of the Kohathites,

were over the shew-bread, to prepare it every Sabbath.”[202]

It will be observed that this is only an incidental mention of the

Sabbath. Such an allusion, occurring after so long a silence, is
decisive proof that the Sabbath had not been forgotten or lost during
the five centuries in which it had not been mentioned by the sacred
historians. After this no direct mention of the Sabbath is found from
the days of David to those of Elisha the prophet, a period of about
one hundred and fifty years. Perhaps the ninety-second psalm is an
exception to this statement, as its title, both in Hebrew and English,
declares that it was written for the Sabbath day;[203] and it is not
improbable that it was composed by David, the sweet singer of
Israel.
The son of the Shunammite woman being dead, she sought the
prophet Elisha. Her husband not knowing that the child was dead
said to her:—

“Wherefore wilt thou go to him to-day? It is neither new

moon, nor Sabbath. And she said, It shall be well.”[204]

It is probable that the Sabbath of the Lord is here intended, as it is

thrice used in a like connection.[205] If this be correct, it shows that
the Hebrews were accustomed to visit the prophets of God upon that
day for divine instruction; a very good commentary upon the words
used relative to gathering the manna: “Let no man go out of his place
on the seventh day.”[206] Incidental allusion is made to the Sabbath
at the accession of Jehoash to the throne of Judah,[207] about b. c.
778. In the reign of Uzziah, the grandson of Jehoash, the prophet
Amos, b. c. 787, uses the following language:—
 “Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make
the poor of the land to fail, saying, When will the new moon
be gone, that we may sell corn? and the Sabbath, that we
may set forth wheat, making the ephah small, and the shekel
great, and falsifying the balances by deceit? that we may buy
the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes; yea, and
sell the refuse of the wheat?”[208]

These words were spoken more directly concerning the ten tribes,
and indicate the sad state of apostasy which soon after resulted in
their overthrow as a people. About fifty years after this, at the close
of the reign of Ahaz, another allusion to the Sabbath is found.[209] In
the days of Hezekiah, about b. c. 712, the prophet Isaiah uses the
following language in enforcing the Sabbath:—

“Thus saith the Lord, Keep ye judgment and do justice; for

my salvation is near to come, and my righteousness to be
revealed. Blessed is the man that doeth this, and the son of
man that layeth hold on it; that keepeth the Sabbath from
polluting it, and keepeth his hand from doing any evil. Neither
let the son of the stranger, that hath joined himself to the Lord,
speak, saying, The Lord hath utterly separated me from his
people; neither let the eunuch say, Behold I am a dry tree. For
thus saith the Lord unto the eunuchs that keep my Sabbaths,
and choose the things that please me, and take hold of my
covenant, even unto them will I give in mine house and within
my walls, a place and a name better than of sons and of
daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not
be cut off. Also the sons of the stranger, that join themselves
to the Lord, to serve him, and to love the name of the Lord, to
be his servants, every one that keepeth the Sabbath from
polluting it, and taketh hold of my covenant; even them will I
bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house
of prayer; their burnt-offerings and their sacrifices shall be
accepted upon mine altar; for mine house shall be called a
house of prayer for all people. The Lord God which gathereth