Alfred Corn notices the way work of the 17th-century English poet and Anglican priest, George Herbert, resonates with those who aren’t Christians, or have no religious attachment at all. One reason why? Unflinching honesty:
The single-word title doesn’t tell much and therefore acts to draw in its readers, who want to know how the topic will be treated. Using just one word is rather blunt, and when the title is “Affliction,” the powerful implication of suffering acts like a gavel calling the court to order so that serious business can be conducted. The suffering dealt with in this poem is multiple, and Herbert the plaintiff brings up sources of his pain one by one, presenting them to a deity inseparable from the qualities of goodness and mercy. On the face of it, making an inventory of complaints to be presented to God doesn’t strike us as a pious action. No, but it does seem honest, freeing the poem from the charges of hypocrisy and sanctimony that are often leveled at devotional verse. It isn’t possible to think that Herbert is inventing his discomforts. On one level they make him look self-pitying, lacking in the fortitude expected of an ordained person. Experience teaches, though, that all people at least inwardly complain, some few of these managing to avoid direct expression of their sufferings. Stoicism is admirable in daily life, but the poet’s job is to show us how feelings, even negative ones, can find expression in words and formal means of expression that are in themselves solacing.
Herbert’s “Affliction I” can be read here. Above is a reading of another Herbert poem, “Love (III).”
The Dish 