Not Knowing About Poetry

Episode Four: Zaffar Kunial, George Herbert, and Şima


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Şima and Joel discuss Zaffar Kunial's poem 'Prayer' (from his 2018 collection *Us*) and one of George Herbert's poems of the same name from 1633. 


Kunial's poem can be found here - https://poems.poetrysociety.org.uk/poems/prayer-2/ . 


This is Herbert's poem: 

Prayer the church's banquet, angel's age,

God's breath in man returning to his birth,

The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,

The Christian plummet sounding heav'n and earth

Engine against th' Almighty, sinner's tow'r,

Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,

The six-days world transposing in an hour,

A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;

Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,

Exalted manna, gladness of the best,

Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,

The milky way, the bird of Paradise,

Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul's blood,

The land of spices; something understood.

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Not Knowing About PoetryBy J S