Abstract: Robert Smith makes the case that “poetic art in the Book of Mormon is highly developed” — you just need to have the eye to recognize it. Though many readers are aware of the stunning examples of chiasmus in the Book of Mormon, thanks to the pioneering work by John W. Welch, fewer are acquainted with the other important forms of parallelism that pervade the text, often placed strategically to highlight the importance of a particular passage. Smith also shows why apocalpytic texts, sometimes thought to originate at a later period, can be found, for example, in the first chapter of the Book of Mormon.

[Editor’s Note: Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article is reprinted here as a service to the LDS community. Original pagination and page numbers have necessarily changed, otherwise the reprint has the same content as the original.

See Robert F. Smith, “Poesy and Prosody in the Book of Mormon,” in “To Seek the Law of the Lord”: Essays in Honor of John W. Welch, ed. Paul Y. Hoskisson and Daniel C. Peterson (Orem, UT: The Interpreter Foundation, 2017), 429–67. Further information at https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/to-seek-the-law-of-the-lord-essays-in-honor-of-john-w-welch-2/.]

 

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[Page 42]It has often been said that there is no real poetry in the Book of Mormon—no real English poetry, that is.

Hugh W. Nibley1

 

Poetic art in the Book of Mormon is highly developed. We can see this clearly despite our having to read it in translation and despite the lack of poetic presentation in most published sources. Of course, not all the Book of Mormon is poetic. Most of it is prose narrative and much of it is oracular narrative, as is also true of major portions of the Bible.

A characteristic of Book of Mormon poesy, which it has in common with classical Hebrew poetry, is orality. It bears the marks of oral composition not only in the visions and declamations of Lehi (presumably written down for him then or later by Nephi, just as Baruch took dictation from Jeremiah)2 but also in the formulaic, symmetrical, and sometimes lyric poetry found elsewhere in the Book of Mormon.

The writers and final editor of the Book of Mormon have sometimes chosen to use or place poetry strategically within the overall prose structure, inserting poetry at emotional or spiritual high points,