The Religious Poetry of Ruth Pitter

Abstract

It is an unfortunate fact that Ruth Pitter (1897-1992)--an important twentieth-century British poet who won Hawthornden Prize 1937 for A Trophy of Arms (1936), William E. Heinemann Award for The Ermine (1953), and Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry 1955--is little known America. When her name is recognized, it is usually context of the woman who should have married C. S. Lewis. (2) Yet Pitter is an accomplished poet, having produced eighteen volumes of new and collected verse her lifetime. (3) Although it is too much call this article an attempt rehabilitate Pitter, it is accurate describe it as an effort expose how Pitter's poetic impulse, desire to express something of secret meanings which haunt life and language places her mainstream of twentieth-century British poetry. (4) Because she was never associated with a literary group or movement, she has not attracted widespread critical notice spite of many poets and writers who admired her work. (5) Pitter, contrast T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and W. H. Auden, is a traditional poet line of George Herbert, Thomas Traherne, Thomas Hardy, A. E. Housman, W. B. Yeats, and Philip Larkin. Unlike modernists, she rarely experiments with meter or verse form, nor does she explore modernist themes or offer critiques of modern English society. Instead, she works with familiar meters and verse forms, and her reluctance alter her voice follow modernist line explains part why critics have overlooked her poetry. She is not trendy, avant-garde, nor, thankfully, impenetrable. (6) As a result, for many years she labored at her craft in comparative but wholly unjustified obscurity (Schlueter). Moreover, when significant literary success came, contemporary critical recognition of her achievements was restrained. I believe failure bring a critical perspective her life and work is a serious aesthetic, intellectual, and literary oversight. The intensity, passion, yet controlled insight about human condition and her mystical reflections on natural world merit sustained scholarly attention and broad exposure. However, of particular importance is her religious poetry because one can chart through it a pilgrimage of faith--a journey beginning with a conciliatory acquiescence a veiled transcendence moving through acceptance of a distant, impersonal deity and ending with commitment orthodox Christianity. This journey of faith is reflected mature poetry of Pitter, most of it written from 1935 1953, a period dominated by growing threat of fascism and very real worry that Western civilization was on verge of destruction. The intent here is offer a broad overview of Pitter's spiritual maturation through her religious poetry as well as an indication of her gifts as a poet. A Trophy of Arms Her first mature volume of poetry, A Trophy of Arms: Poems 1926-1935 (1936) is a collection of poems that explores melancholic reality of human condition; yet, at same time, it is neither depressing nor despairing. Instead, it is a clarion call embrace sorrow, loss, and loneliness through either lens of nature or a veiled, transcendent power. Often, her poems focusing upon spiritual themes are vaguely hopeful. For instance, Sudden Heaven is a powerful affirmation of hope. Pitter combines a clipped, terse style with an incisive eye create a poem of startling power about unexpected, unsolicited joy: All was as it had ever been-- The worn familiar book, The oak beyond hawthorn seen, The misty woodland's look: The starling perched upon tree With his long tress of straw-When suddenly heaven blazed on me, And suddenly I saw: Saw all as it would ever be, In bliss too great tell; For ever safe, for ever free, All bright with miracle: Saw as heaven thorn arrayed, The tree beside door; And I must die--but O my shade Shall dwell there evermore. …