Lawrence Raab: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Original Sin

 

That was one idea my mother

always disliked. She preferred her god

to be reasonable, like Emerson or Thoreau

without their stranger moments.

Even the Old Testament God’s sudden

angers and twisted ways of getting

what he wanted she could accept

as metaphor. But original sin

was different. Plus no one agreed

if it was personal, meaning

all Adam’s fault, or else some kind

of temporary absence of the holy,

which was Adam’s fault as well.

In any case, it made no sense

that we’d need to be saved before

we’d even had the chance

to be wrong. Yes, eventually everyone

falls into error, but when my sister and I

were babies she could see we were perfect,

as we opened our eyes and gazed up at her

with what she took for granted as love,

long before either of us knew the word

and what damage it could cause.

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Lawrence Raab is the author of ten books of poems, including Mistaking Each Other for Ghosts (Tupelo, 2015), which was longlisted for the National Book Award and named one of the Ten Best Poetry Books of 2015 by The New York Times, and What We Don’t Know About Each Other (Penguin, 1993), a winner of the National Poetry Series and a finalist for the National Book Award. His latest collection is April at the Ruins (Tupelo, 2022). [“Original Sin” appears in Mistaking Each Other for Ghosts].

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           Lucas Cranach the Elder, Detail of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, 1530, Oil on Panel, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria

                                                                

Comments

[Bernard Welt]

Thank you. Shorter than Paradise Lost, and pithier, but theologically compelling.
I remember people in the '70s saying, "'Original sin'? Seriously, that's the same old sin that's been around for *ages*. You want original sin, I'll show you original sin. Idiosyncratic sin. Vanguard sin. *Highly* original sin."
Or words to that effect.

[David Lehman]

This is an admirable poem by a very talented, perennially underrated poet whose rhetorical skills and frankly intellectual cast of mind enliven a mode too little seen in contemporary verse. Thank you, Larry. . .and Terence whose pick this is. . .and Bernard for the very charming comment.

[John Clarke]

Thank you. Original blessing is the God's own truth.

[Grace Cavalieri]

How Poetry makes Theology better---

[Gardner McFall]

Thank you, Larry, for this fine poem. Thank you, Terence, for bringing to us! It makes me want to get back to my writing desk.

[Terence Winch]

Thanks back to you, Gardner. Nice to hear from you.

[Denise Duhamel]

Beautiful! Thank you, Terence. I am a big fan of Lawrence's work.

[Terence Winch]

Thanks for that comment, Denise.

[Geoffrey Himes]

I like this poem for distilling scripture to the bassinet. And for reminding me of the forgotten new-wave singer Holly Vincent, who on her best song shouted over noisy guitars: “Love on a sidewalk, Touch me but don't talk … Unoriginal Sin, Unoriginal Sin.”

[Sherman Alexie]

Wow, that last line. Wow. And the theology of using "could" instead of "would."

[Susan Campbell]

Great poem.

[Michael Mark]

A reasonable god - yes, I'm with the mom. Such an unassuming voice sharing what is so terribly weighty.

[Peter Kearney]

I think Matthew Fox had it right when he spoke of Original Blessing instead of Original Sin. The correction got him into trouble, but surely his words were a blessing rather than a sin.

[Jiwon Choi]

Yes, we all "fall into error" -- I fall into it like 20 times a day!-- but I wouldn't want it any other way. Who needs perfection when you can have gin martinis!

Timely pick this one as we ponder lent and pine for easter.

[Dr. Earle Hitchner]

“Original Sin" could have come straight out of King Lear’s mouth: “I am a man / More sinn’d against than sinning.” The gall of God to slap us with sin before we had the chance to sin! Add my Raab rave to the others here. Forming a loose diptych with Raab’s poem is “Why I Think I’m a Writer,” a poem by his friend Stephen Dunn (1939-2021) about the Catholic confessional where he “never told the truth” about his sins.