Responding to Amazing Grace

Reading Response to Amazing Grace

Joshua Haltom

ENG125

Olabisi Adenekan

Ashford University

October, 30, 2012

            Poetic literature has intrinsic quality of relevant, human, existentiality.  The poet may write about everything they sense, feel, experience, or imagine.  Saying that poetry is built into our life experience, is another way of saying that human experiences are more complex than they seem.  (Clugston, 2010)  In a way, we are all poets when we attempt to relate the outward environment to our internal condition.  Since perception is reality, the imagery within poetry is only as limited as the reader's spiritual capacity.  Poetry is unique in pervasive depth of symbolic content.

       Compositions of poetic nature are structured and built with their own special, literary elements.  A poem compresses ideas in an expressive and provocative array of ideas.  Poems are made of literary attributes such as rhyme, tone and aphorisms, which make them memorable.  I will now expound on each of these elements in the traditional, American poem, often recited in churches, Amazing Grace by John Newton.

            Despite Newton's uncertain and unhappy childhood, that was the time when he was largely influenced by his parents.  His mother, who was a devout Christian lady, died of tuberculosis when he was only six years old, and his largely absent father was too estranged to have formed any real intimacy.  His mother had spent most of her remaining time on earth schooling her only son in the ways of Westminster's Shorter Catechism of 1647 and Dr. Isaac Watts A Short View of the Whole of Scriptural History (1732).  (Aitken, 2007)

            The poem, "Amazing Grace", is an ode to Newton's personal Salvation, which he calls Grace.  It employs vocabulary from the article of the Christian faith such as 'saved', 'lost', 'found', 'appeared', and 'believed', in the first few lines alone.  The literary element of rhyme is used to accent the lines.  The definition of rhyme is simple:  two words that sound alike.  In "Amazing Grace", the end of every other line rhymes.

            Another literary element in this poem is tone.  The tone is the mood a poem creates.  "Amazing Grace" has gentle, measured tone.  It is meant to sooth the reader or listener to appreciate the free gift of salvation.  "The Lord has promised good to me; His word my hope secures; He will my shield and portion be; As long as life endures."  This last portion of the poem most notably reveals the gentleness of the theme.  When original thoughts of this kind have a memorable quality, they are called aphorisms or maxims.  (Clugston, 2010)

            In conclusion, poems like "Amazing Grace" parallel the message of what its very title suggests, that salvation by grace is an amazing concept.  Its unique rhythm patterns can reflect ethnic traditions; its solemn intonations can swell and culminate in religious expression.  (Clugston, 2010)  "Amazing Grace" is classic, catchy, church hymn.  It goes to show how poems can be engraved into social consciousness and stand the test of time.

                       

REFERENCES:

Aitken, Johnathan  (2007); John Newton:  From Disgrace to Amazing Grace;Crossway Books

Clugston, R. W. (2010). Journey into literature. San Diego, California: Bridgepoint Education, Inc.