Foreword to George Hobson’s A Far Country Here.
I am a poet today because of George Hobson. In the 1980s, the Hobsons befriended my family. My father worked at Radio Oxford, George was studying for his doctorate in theology, and I was a child under their feet. Like my father, George was an artist, an American far from home. Through being a part of their their friendship, I learned that making things, be it a poem, a painting, a good meal, a well-timed joke, or even a relationship, is what God designed us to do.
When I was eight, I remember popping into George and Victoria’s apartment with my mother one afternoon. George was arranging his photographs in preparation for a book. His living room was filled with A3 sized photos propped up along the sofa, on chairs, and all over the carpet like an unfinished mosaic. I remember being drawn to an image of a luminous glass bowl on a stone ledge. George moved the pictures around, comparing the nuances of color and content, seeking a narrative. He was totally absorbed. I realized that this is what artists do: they create beauty from a muddle. But, because we are only like God, and cannot simply think or breathe something into being, we must grapple with it. There is a practical side to creating art. It involves time arranging and re-arranging, making decisions and backtracking, being interrupted, taking coffee breaks, phone calls, and coming back to try again. Eventually, George published these images alongside his poetry in Rumors of Hope.
When I was thirteen, George and Victoria had long returned to Paris but were still present in our lives. George would send manuscripts of poetry to my father for feedback. I used to sneak the poems up to my room, lie on my stomach, and read them. Many of those same poems are here in Heights and Depths, including my favorite: “Signs of Love.” This poem taught me about the power of repetition, simile, but also that God calls out to us through the physical world. This poem captivated me; I fell in love both with God and poetry.
Stars, you are like crystals frosted
On night’s window-pane—
And you burn and do not melt:
Signs of love,
You burn and do not melt.
You are like sparks frozen
On the fireback of night—
And you flame and do not die:
Signs of love,
You flame and do not die.
You are like mica flakes
In night’s granitic wall—
And you glint and do not dim:
Signs of love,
You glint and do not dim.
The words I read in these huge manuscripts were portals into George’s world: a world filled with stars, sun patches flickering along stone walls, copper pan hanging low like an autumn moon, a kitchen mouse peeking up with hope in its bright black eyes. George’s writing is specific and sensory. I saw, smelt, and tasted what he saw, smelt, and tasted: dewy gardens, purple plums, umber fields, grey goats, the sound of bells, and rain.
After weeks of dryness,
It rained all night.
Morning woke up soaked and shook itself like a wet dog.
Sun came on stage like an Italian tenor
And sang a love aria to earth.
Earth blushed.
Rumpled clouds, exhausted, shambled off to the west.
Chunks of blue sky lay in puddles on the roads, gleaming.
Diamonds glittered in the fields.
Yet these are not escapist poems. Having traveled the world to pray with those who suffered trauma, his poems look at evil with eyes wide open: the genocide in Rwanda and Armenia, and looking further back in time, the horror of slave ships. I found the violent images utterly shocking when I read them all those years ago. George’s poetry shows the world for what it is. However, in the manner of a modern John Donne, he also writes about his inner battles, doubts, and frustrations. Like the Psalmists, George cries out to God. Life is good, but it is fragmented and filled with anguish.
My God, will you not put the pieces of my soul
Together? Will you not fit my jigsaw years
Into a whole? A puzzle I accept to be,
But as a lively pattern, with integrity.
How can I, pelted by the rain of tears
That battered my beginnings, find my role,
When all is under mud?
George’s openness before God and his readers, his use of language, and his ability to capture stories compelled me to write poetry with as much wonder and grit as I could muster at thirteen. I carefully included all the five senses, followed similar structures, and expressed my own lyric prayers. I remember my father smiling at the obvious Hobson influence. That’s how writers get started, dad said. By copying their mentors.
My family lived from hand to mouth when I grew up, but it was because of George and Victoria that we got to travel. They often invited us to stay in their stone house in France for the summer holidays. They always welcomed us on the first night with a feast, and then drove off to Paris. They left the fridge and cupboards packed with brioche, brie, saucisson, and Orangina. By opening their home for us to explore, I discovered the world of beauty. Their house was full of nooks and crannies. I remember seeing objects from his poems such as the copper pan, and the very same glass bowl from the photograph years ago. I heard the bells, smelled the goats, and tasted the plums. I also snooped through their bookshelves. This is how I discovered the work of T. S. Eliot, Emily Dickinson, Czesław Miłosz, and Micheal O'Siadhail – all influences on George’s work and therefore mine.
When I was twenty-five, I caught the train from Aberystwyth to Oxford because he was in town running a conference. It was January, I was half-way through my Ph.D. in creative writing, and I was stuck in a poetic rut. This time I was the one bearing a manuscript, and it was a mess. I wanted his opinion, but I also just wanted to see George. I was hollowed-out from a complicated relationship back in Wales. Going on a pilgrimage to see the Hobsons’ when facing a crisis was an Apichella tradition. Thankfully, they were never fazed by us, and they always fed us before getting to grips with the problem. This is what George did yet again. He took me to a deli, bought me a coronation chicken baguette, a bottle of water, and we ambled back to the church. We sat in the cold vestry with our coats on and ate. Then we spent a few hours talking about my work: things that were good, things to develop, and things to cut. George always took me seriously and encouraged me. My scrappy manuscript ended up becoming Psalmody and it was shortlisted for the Forward Prize in 2017. After we talked poetry, I told George all my relationship troubles and we prayed. George is a serious poet but also a kind, wise, and compassionate minister. This shines through in his work. He is a poet-priest who knows what it is to love radially, through sacrifice and self-giving.
In you, Savior, I meet the Other;
I meet my friends, my most dear wife,
Enemies, the wounded. You smother
Anxious, bleating self. You give life,
Lord. Yours. It’s your life you offer.
I took the train back to Wales inspired and focused.
Throughout each season of life, George has demonstrated that recognizing beauty in all things, and the conscious act of creating, are two sure ways to know, share, and celebrate God. I did not learn this from a textbook or a sermon. I learned it from conversations overheard in childhood between George and my father, seeing him persist at his photography and poetry, and through the love he shows towards my family, others in need, and to his wife Victoria – who deserves to be recognized here. She is more than a background muse. If it were not for Victoria, George would not be the man he is. In my memory, she was always razor-sharp, classically beautiful, charming as a film-star, generous as a Nonna, and witty as a New-Yorker columnist. I have had the privilege of knowing the Hobson’s personally, hearing their stories, staying in their house, eating their food, reading their books, and receiving their prayerful wisdom. Through reading this book, I hope you can do the same, vicariously. These poems crystallize all I have learned from George. And maybe you too will be compelled to create your own works of art – whatever form that takes. After all, it is what we are meant to do in the limited time we have on earth.
Maria Apichella
Author of Psalmody and Paga
mapichella.com
Foreword to George Hobson’s A Far Country Here.
Opening a book of poetry is not quite like anything else. With a work of fiction we expect a possibility, then a problem, and the promise of some outworking from the first page through the consummation of the plot. But with this kind of book one never knows just what he will find in that first poem, or the next, or the next. In George Hobson’s work, you will meet a creator-interpreter who speaks with intimacy about the entire universe in those places where its life and his own, and ours – and our Creator – all intersect.
For creatures in a fallen world, this often means the great themes of loss and restoration, grief and comfort, defeat and transfiguration considered and reconsidered within the flow of time and the irruptions of memory – but, like the Psalms, almost always ending redemptively. The few poems without that resolution only prepare us more acutely to receive our next gift of renewed, living hope. Hobson looks at what can be a very bleak world with unflinching rectitude, but never without profound feeling that is the heartache of God Himself. And illuminating it all, sometimes from a great height, sometimes encompassing us, is the Shekinah, the shining presence of the Lord Jesus Christ reminding us of His sacrifice, His utterly faithful love and the certainty of eternal life in Him. I can testify with great affection for George (and his lovely wife Victoria – my oldest friends) that this awareness infuses him as well as his writing, welling up from love and transparency before his Lord and us.
This makes for a vulnerability of great power and tenderness. I urge you to take in all that is disclosed from the heart, the depths of one man’s heart, for example in “The Figure at the End of the Pier,” where the poet speaks to the little boy he once was: “As a child, you didn’t have a family; As a man, I didn’t have a family either.” We meet the same little boy on a bare wooden porch on the dusty plains of Montana, and an aside tells all.
Water in these parts is frail, out of place;
It doesn’t speak the local language;
It sinks quickly into the hot soil,
Leaving only stains by the pump
And awkward memories of wetness.
Not that near-tragedy, however ennobled with his transmutation, is all this poet has to give. No one is more eager to reveal Nature in its exquisite, often humorous minutiae as well as its immensities. And there is high drama, sometimes of wonderful ambiguity that mixes mundane phenomena with the transcendent. In this, Hobson is a master of staging and personification, enabling us to discern the delightful interplay of God’s creatures (including their human pets or counterparts) as he parades them through their environments. Their animations can reveal quirks, beauties, and depths of personality far better than a direct dissection of adults ever could.
And what do you make of the following, quoted in its entirety?
Body-builder clouds flex their muscles.
They tower and glower.
Considering contemptuously the soft hills, they gloat.
They preen, boast, growl,
Smirk, snicker, stalk.
They will douse the hills,
Drown the land;
Their sword, wind, will rip trees,
Uproot orchards,
Destroy what men have made.
The sky will crack,
Day will turn to night.
Having shot their wad,
Having strained and strutted,
Having roared and bellowed,
The body-building bar-bell toting bumptious clouds
Will be spent.
Their bombast vented,
They will deflate like tires
And hobble bumpity-bump over the hills, muttering.
The sky will clear,
Then the sun will come out.
The blue day won’t even remember the braggarts.
The green hills,
Made of rock under their soft curves,
Will laugh.
The title of the poem is Pride. Many Christian poets have found ways to excoriate haughty abusiveness with verse that brings it right against our face, meaning to make its hideousness utterly (and understandably) revolting. With an amusing portrayal of Nature, diverting all by itself, Hobson takes up what may be the ultimate weapon against pride – comic ridicule – and shows it for the pathetic posturing it is, and the triumph of a creation content to be what her Maker has made, immortally resilient and literally having the last laugh.
Having grown up in New York City but with seasons on his father’s ranch in British Columbia and occasionally fighting fires in the forestry service, stays with his grandmother in Paris, and years at boarding school, Hobson has more than the usual range of living to draw on. That along with later life that shuttled him between Oxford and Paris and a remote part of the French countryside. He spins yarns drawn from the far west plains and mountains, and a country ballad to go with them; he pulls us into the darkness and pain of a cityscape. He can move from being matter-of-fact to hermetic and shadowy, stark and violent, tender and nuanced. I will not spoil your adventure but will leave it to you to discover the exceptional diversity of form, from sonnet to (almost, but not really) free verse. There is often fierce energy in words gyrating, piling up incongruously and colliding; then delicate discretion with something too fragile to be touched, only beheld. And as you get to know Hobson’s poetry in this and his other volumes, you will become acquainted with what I call his ‘nocturnes.’ They are his frequent ventures into the night, where a special musing seems to take hold of him as he contemplates, by turns, scary intergalactic vastness, whimsy, and eternal glory.
Rise, heart!
See the young moon up there on her deckchair
Surveying the fecundity of stars,
A playground of children squealing with light.
Finally, consider George Hobson’s work in this sense: on occasion we turn to the poetry of a Dickinson or Herbert because we hunger to hear their familiar but unique and utterly consistent voice fully as much as what they say with it. There are times when no one else will do; and for that very reason, there are other times it would not enter our head to read them. I wonder if you will find a poet in English who exceeds this one for sheer versatility, for a range of expression in voice and content where every manifestation is authentic no matter the form. It is not that Hobson is looking for ways to be different but for the way into the heart of what must be conveyed with fidelity to its inherent life, ineluctable structure, tone, accent, affect. It is simply a matter of what serves the message, as if he has not found it but it has found him. His capacity to become one with the subject ensures our experience of it will be as vivid as his own encounter, without any of that self-consciousness of the artificer who turns what should be a moment of immediacy into mere analysis.
This remarkable variety of expression in every collection of his work means that some poems will not appeal to you, and that may be that. But beware: I have found that a poem I turned from with just a “Hmmm…” on first reading arrested and held me when I happened on it a few months later. Was it a mood? Had I grown a bit more perceptive and open? Was it that on this occasion, unawares, I’d settled down and given it the full attentiveness all good poetry deserves? (There is, of course, excellent poetry that almost from the first syllable grabs the reader and interprets itself to him effortlessly, and George Hobson has written much of that, too, as we have just seen.) So be careful not to deprive yourself.
Every art form has its differing appeal and access. When it comes to music, most of us listen in our heads but aurally as well; how often do we think to give ourselves the same pleasure with poetry? That is, passages from these poems will lodge in your mind and some of them will become rooted in your heart, and you will be blessed as they come up before you. But do keep the hard copy nearby also (how many books of poetry do you have on your bedside table?). Pick it up and browse, letting it speak to you and nourish you along with those other things of beauty and truthfulness you have placed around you, things that remind you of their Presence and Source. It will add to the sum of your life.
John Paris
Senior Consultant in Executive Development and Organizational Effectiveness
Endorsement by Peter Bannister, composer and theologian, for A Far Country Here
“Hobson’s meticulously crafted poetry invites us to renew our attention to basic human experience and to our natural environment. Those familiar with the author’s writings on the horrors of modern history or the disturbing underpinnings of the Western techno-scientific project will know that his lyricism is no mere escapism, but rather a ringing affirmation in spite of everything, of the essential goodness of creation and a call to gratitude for the gift of life itself.”
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Endorsement by Nancy Miller, Bermudian poet, for A Far Country Here
“An anonymous French poet described the poetic process as ‘half vagrancy, half pilgrimage’, which befits Hobson’s poetic journey. I say journey, because George is on one. Always the beggar poet seeking daily bread. He moves from scavenger to pilgrim through the terrain of his abiding curiosity. This keeps the reader alert to the nuances of language….As George reads the ‘far country here’, he brings—returns—all readers to wonder.”
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Endorsement by Jeremy Begbie, Cambridge University for A Far Country Here
“George Hobson has proved himself again to be an accessible, readable, yet penetrating poet. In this volume he takes us once again into a world where beauty speaks to desolation, and grace to sorrow. I can’t imagine anyone not being enriched by this collection.”
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Endorsement by Luci Shaw, Regent College, Vancouver, for Faces of Memory
What a triumph this is—a trinity of (narrative) poems in which George Hobson partners with God to tell stories bursting with the results of his life-long contemplation and devotion. Read them aloud until their plangent images and rhythms swell and settle, leaving you enlightened and grateful.”
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Endorsement by Rowan Williams, Cambridge University for The Parthenon
“George Hobson’s words are like feelers slowly exploring the contours of the world around, feeling for the presence of grace and reporting what they find. These poems have a remarkable physicality, both in the simple evocation of the stuff of a God-drenched world, and in the startlingly fresh metaphors…that slip into the fabric and give it a further sheen.”
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Endorsement for The Parthenon, Maria Apichella, University of Maryland, European Division and Author of Psalmody and Paga
“George Hobson’s exquisite poetry comes from a life infused with love; love of people, place, and God. Love enables him to see and transmit beauty, even amid personal and communal suffering.”
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Endorsement by Jeremy Begbie for May Day Morning in Yerevan, Cambridge University
“There is an extraordinary richness in these poems. Every stanza unfurls a multiplicity of insight, a wealth of allusions. Holding it altogether is an unforgettable vision of creation praising God in all its teeming difference. Set within this, Hobson gives us a poignant evocation of the ‘pulsating land’ of Armenia that makes you feel you are there yourself. An extraordinary collection.”
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Foreword to
I was in a clothing store, waiting for my wife to try on some shoes. To distract the consumer, the waiting room had a large bound copy of the New York Times with headlines and editorials dating back to the 1930s. I opened the volume at random and there, prominently displayed, was an op-ed article by the American theologian J. Gresham Machen. Whatever the merits of the particular article, it was clear that theological opinion was taken seriously by readers of this influential newspaper. Today believers still write for the Times, but more often than not the reader identifies, not a view that thought leaders need to reckon with as to how to change the world, but fascination, often condescending, with figuring out which tribe the author belongs to and moving on with life.
Coming from many corners, there is a nearly universal sense that the voice of Christian theology in public life is muted at best, harmful at worst. Standard reflections on secularization have measured the receding influence of religion in public and private life. Like the Cheshire Cat, less and less remains, until the only imprint is an enigmatic smile. The older, “standard” sociological model predicted (and often prescribed) the waning of Christian influence in decision-making. Not so long ago, political policy was filled with references to Reinhold Niebuhr’s thoughts on sin, or Karl Barth’s critique of statist idolatry, or even J. G. Machen’s libertarian views. No longer.
It is true, however, that the standard secularization model has not proved enduring. One reason for that is the insistent way that homo religious refuses to sink beneath the waves. Even Enlightenment-based thinkers like Jürgen Habermas admit that there must be a place for Judeo-Christian convictions if society is to be sustained. French historian of jurisprudence Jacques Ellul has argued that while the Christian shape of religious life may have receded, new forms of religion have stood in the breach. Not everyone is convinced by the candidates he picks: hedonism, nation-building, and above all technology (or technique as he prefers it). But today there are only a few who still hold on to something like the standard model. God is Back as one book title has it.[1]Critics rightly ask whether he ever went away! It has simply taken us some time to notice what has been before our eyes all along. Has there been no real secularization? Of course there has. The return of religion is a bit more subtle, masking as spirituality and the like.
Most politicians are not riveted to Christian editorials in the New York Times. If they have faith, it is a rather private matter. In his powerful studies on the role of theology in public life, Miroslav Volf argues that theology has simply lost its audience.[2] He blames the audience, but he also blames academic theologians for becoming too in-house and specialized. “The general sense is that theology isn’t producing any genuine knowledge that accomplishes anything, that it trades with the irrationality of faith and is useless.”[3] Is that all there is to the story? Not quite.
What is to be done? Retreat into a Benedict Option until the storm passes? Lashout with resentment? Is there a silver bullet? No, certainly not. The essays you hold in your hands by George Hobson are hopeful beyond many measures. The reason? They center, directly or indirectly, on one of the most needed doctrines for our times: mankind made in the image of God. The shorthand, imago Dei, is not only elegant and meaningful, but tells us that it has been believed from ancient times. The fundamental nature of human beings is a nonnegotiable answer to many of the challenges of our day. Hobson has written before on the dangers, as well as the opportunities, afforded by technology. As social media seeps in by osmosis, molding us into information-based machines, doomed to lose the control that is promised, the imago tells us not to look across, but to look upward. We have our primary identity in God himself, who conferred our nature on us.
The doctrine does far more. Instead of acrimonious denunciations of therapeutic abortions, it reminds us of the grandeur of even the most vulnerable human being. Instead of caving in to pragmatism, it reminds us we are capable of beauty from the ashes. Instead of empty defenses of the propositional value of the Bible (a value which it has, of course), it makes us ask why God revealed himself to a lost people and how it was possible for him to do so. Though it is not because the image makes us deserve him, when he does redeem us he restores us to a fuller image than we had even before. Instead of the rhetoric, “I have a plan,” often heard from political candidates, it provides us with “I have a great God who leads us beyond plans into the house of the Lord forever, where goodness and love will follow us all the days of our lives” (Ps 23:6).
One of my mentors, the late Hans Rookmaaker, reveled in provocative statements. One of them was, “Christ did not come to make us more Christian, but more [TS1] human.” He knew, of course, that the statement was a redundancy. But his hope was to awaken his audience to what everyone today is talking about, but floundering to accomplish: human flourishing.
I don’t think we are on the brink of a revival. Although these pages contain the marvelous answer of the gospel for our times, they risk being lost in the maelstrom of “le cercle des bavards,” lost in the chatter, but for two things. First, the prose here is crystal clear, compellingly lucid, and deeply persuasive. Hobson is a considerable poet, and his gifts for lyrics serve him admirably here. Thus, his learning, far from making him mad (Acts 26:24), is translated into language we can all understand. This is a rarity. We need to listen, and then move into action. And second, most of these lectures, if not the three long essays, were delivered in local parishes. Here is Jesus’s front line. Without denying the Kuyperian point that he is Lord in every sphere, there is something unique—dare I say, sacramental—about communicating directly with a church audience.
George Hobson is one of those rare human beings who has climbed what David Brooks has called the “second mountain.”[4] The first mountain is one of achievement, accomplishment, success. It is a good place to be. But really to arrive at the place of true flourishing, one needs to ascend the second mountain, where selfish gains are shed in favor of selfless dedication to others, and to the worship of God. It is a better place to be. If I said more I would embarrass him. So I will say it this way: read these essays and enjoy the view from the second mountain.
[1] Micklethwait and Wooldridge, God is Back.
[2] See Volf, Public Faith; Volf and Croasmun, For the Life of the World.
[3]Volf and Croasmun,For the Life of the World, 44.
[4] Brooks, Second Mountain.
[TS1]Is this a published mment which requires a footnote and bibliographical entry, or something he said in conversations?
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Foreword to The Parthenon
written by Richard B. Hays
14 June 2019
The publication of The Parthenon will enable a new audience of readers to discover and savor the work of one of the remarkable Christian poets of our time. George Hobson’s previously published poetry collections (Rumours of Hope;Forgotten Genocides of the 20th Century; Faces of Memory; and Love Poems for my Wife, Victoria)have reached an audience of discerning readers in the UK and in Europe, but they have not yet been widely disseminated in North America. This Wipf and Stock edition offers a fresh gathering of poems that revel in the joy of the created world, probe the pain of the human condition, and proclaim the hope of God’s ultimate healing of all things.
Readers will find here a bold and distinctive poetic voice—or, rather, an ensemble of voices that express Hobson’s complex vision of the world. As I have lived with these poems over time, it has seemed to me that Hobson writes with at least three different voices, in three different registers, distinct but interwoven. At the risk of oversimplifying, I will name these the voices of the painter, the prophet, and the preacher.
George Hobson is not literally a painter, though he is a gifted artistic photographer. But he sees the variegated created world with a painter’s eye, discerning patterned epiphanies of God’s joyful,prodigal grace in creation. The painter’s voice in these poems is the lineal heir of the Psalmist who declared that “the heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament declares his handiwork” (Ps 19:1), as well as the heir of Gerard Manley Hopkins, who saw that “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” Hobson does not merely echo these mystical perceptions; he repeatedly discerns fresh ones:
What is that deep sea?
The sweep of foam down a wave’s face
Pictures unsolicited grace
Rolling from eternity
To cover broken time.
The painter’s voice not only describes creation but also, using the poetic device of apostrophe, speaksto it: shells, birds, cows, leaves, the moon, all are addressed lovingly by Hobson’s poet/painter voice.
This dialogical generosity extends also to the products of human craftsmanship and art: for example, “O bowl,” and—climacticallyin the collection’s brilliant title poem—theParthenon:
Oh, ride on, great bird, rider
Of the great waters, sea-bird poised
On the Attic rock above the dark
Aegean: ride on till all your stone
has turned to dust.
In this pivotal poem, it becomes clear that all human art, though it truly hints “at depths / Beyond the shallow pools / We spend our lives in” (as Hobson writes in the earlier poem Art), remains achingly insufficient to attain the eschatological truth that it seeks and reflects. The painter/poet weeps at the cold, tragic beauty of the Parthenon because its “grave harmonies in stone / Give glimmers of another world, / whose reality you could not know.”
The second voice that speaks in these poems is that of the prophet. In the latter part of the collection, Hobson’s prophetic voice lacerates human pretension to self-sufficiency and decries the flattened pseudo-scientific rationalism of a modernity that has abandoned transcendence. We could also call this the voice of the social critic, but to default to that apparently neutral terminology would be to capitulate subtly to the very reductionism that Hobson’s poetry skewers. This is more than social critique. These poems assail modernity not only because it is ugly, sterile, and alienating; these failings are but symptoms of the disease. Here, it is the voice of the anguished prophet who speaks, portraying faithlessness and desolation; this withering voice is the heir of Amos, Jeremiah, and of the T. S. Eliot who wrote The Hollow Men andChoruses from “The Rock.”These poems portray modernity’s malaise as a direct consequence of its blind flight from the God who desires to give life. The destination of that flight has proven to be a swampland covered by suffocating fog—as devastatingly portrayed in the lengthiest poem in the collection, The Fog.
There is however, finally another voice that sounds throughout this book, speaking in concert with the other two: the voice of the preacher.I do not say the voice of the theologian, though Hobson is indeed an Oxford-trained theologian. The theologian articulates the structure of doctrine, explains its grammar. These poems, however, do not explain; instead, they proclaim. Some popular Christian poets tiptoe about the margins of Christian confession, gesturing wistfully towards the traditions of a faith that they own only obliquely, or even, in some cases, with a certain embarrassment. For Hobson, no such indirection. With Barthian gusto, he robustly declares the truth of the faith once for all delivered to the saints and affirms that our hope lies there and only there. In one of the collection’s most moving poems, leaping dolphins in the Bay of Arcachon, recalled in memory in a time of bereavement, proclaim the resurrection of Jesus and echo the promise of Julian of Norwich (and, not insignificantly, Eliot’s Four Quartets) that “All shall be well.” For Hobson the preacher, this proclamation is not simply a matter of optimism or blind trust in a benign account of history. All shall be well precisely because Christ is risen and will come again to set all things right at last. Some readers may squirm at the proclamatory tone of Hobson’s poet/preacher voice; others will rejoice in it. Either way, there is no mistaking that his poetic vision depends upon reclaiming the truth of the Christian gospel.And, as he would have us recognize, the truth of the Christian gospel is the ground of all joy and love.
I have known George Hobson for almost fifty years. He has been for me a teacher, an inspiration, and a friend. He has devoted much of his life to ministry not only in England and France but also in settings of great suffering, in Rwanda and Armenia. His poetic oeuvre is emerging late in his life, but it eloquently embodies hard-won wisdom. It deserves to be set alongside the luminous work of other great Christian poets of our time, such as Micheal O’Siadhail and Malcolm Guite. What I have written here offers a tiny taste of the rich fare of this volume. I invite you, reader, to join George at the great feast.
Richard B. Hays
14 June 2019
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Recommendation from Baroness Caroline Cox for George Hobson’s Love Poems for my Wife Victoria.
In these tender poems, ranging over decades, George shares many life experiences as the devoted husband of a wonderful woman. The poems are a buoyant mixture of lyrical tones and forms, including narratives, dialogues, and traditional sonnets. They trace the radical impact of marriage on the two young lovers; the considerable accommodations needed to build a solid foundation for their lives together; the pain of occasional geographical separation; the increasing maturity of both spouses and their deepening appreciation of each other as they live out complex lives; and the massive challenge of Victoria’s memory problem as it emerges in the fifth decade of their union. I could almost feel the growth of their love as I read through these poignant lyrics.
I personally was privileged to be blessed by their company on one of our pilgrimages in the historically Armenian Christian land of Nagorno Karabakh, and, on another occasion, by the opportunity, at their invitation, to speak in the American Cathedral in Paris at a conference Victoria organized in 2001 to celebrate the 1700th Anniversary of the birth of Armenia as a Christian nation. So I have had a number of chances to witness their deep devotion to each other. George himself captures succinctly the springs of this devotion in The Psaltery (IX), the second long poem in his remarkable recent collection entitled Faces of Memory, a volume that, in epic form, enshrines the whole spectrum of human emotions, from the terror of man’s inhumanity to man—such as the horrific description of suffering inflicted in the Rwandan Genocide—to the tenderness of human love and the infinite hope we can experience in the love of God. He writes: “They are two, but knotted./ It is their bondedness that counts,/ That makes them what they are:/ Two in one, one in two:/ Foldedness, unfolding, infolding, dropping.”
Victoria is now suffering to some degree from memory loss, and George wishes to dedicate this book of love poems to her, trusting that Love will continue to bring its healing power. It is well known that such love transcends problems of communication and normal comprehension, as he and Victoria are experiencing every day. Therefore I trust, with them, that these poems—this gift of love—will bring deep comfort and ongoing restoration to the Victoria whom George cherishes, enshrining the timeless truth “”Ubi Caritas? Where Love is, God is.”
I pray that both Victoria and George will be abundantly blessed by this love.
Caroline Cox
(Baroness Cox, of Queensbury in Greater London)
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'These luminous poems are the work of a mind fully alive to the hope of the glory that will be revealed to us. In contrast to Wordsworth’s ‘intimations of immorality’, Hobson’s poetry discloses intimations of resurrection, not wistful reminiscences of a lost glory, but visionary anticipations of the life of the world to come, as glimpsed already in the pulsating, embodied life of creation. Hobson’s work moves us to join in the poet’s longing for the healing of a broken world, and challenges us, in an arid age, to reflect on the Love who is the source and hope of all things.'
Richard B. Hays, George Washington Ivey Professor of New Testement, The Divinity School, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
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'Each word and line of George Hobson’s captivating poems expresses a jubilant delight in the natural world around us and in the creative force that not only brought it into being, but pervades it, and illumines us if we are willing. The images he limns and the rhythms in which he speaks make me want to dance and sing in celebration with him'
Olivia de Havilland
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'George Hobson is why I write poetry. Growing up I read his manuscripts which were filled with vivid images: stars as barnacles, screeching gulls worshipping, praising and grieving for humanity; the rich earth of France, the purple plum trees; the reality and romance of a long-term marriage with Victoria; the love of God and the quest to know the numinous more deeply. These are poems of celebration and despair, praise and invective and above all, beauty.'
Maria Apichella, Assistant Professor at The University of Maryland, and award winning poet and author of Psalmody (Eyewear Publishing, 2016) and Paga (Cinnamon Press, 2015)
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'George Hobson is a seer, that is one who helps us to see deeply and well. Nothing is trivial— as the centre piece in this collection, ‘The Bells of Swettl’ shows so profoundly, one day, in its progression from dawn to dark, can be a metaphor for a whole life in its painful, glorious peculiarity. By sharing with us the significance of these details in his own life, Hobson’s work wakens us to the mystery and glory to be found in the ordinary details of our own lives. It helps us to see what a blessing and grace it is to be a God-image person in a world of miracles.'
Loren Wilkinson, Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and Philosophy, Regent College, Vancouver BC, Canada
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'George Hobson’s poems evoke a world in which the vision of the great Wisdom books of ancient Israel make sense. This is a world in which every landscape (including human landscape, the landscape of of intimate love and relation) is charged with a presence that is at once joyful, energetic, exuberant and orderly— like music. Although George’s world is one of intensely realised visual expressions, it is music that comes to mind as I try to express their many-layered quality. Eliot wrote of music moving in stillness; poems and photographs alike present ‘still life’ which is full of motion and active bliss. This is indeed a celebration of Holy Wisdom, God’s own life giving energy in creation drawing the world together moment by moment in a difficult but stable harmony, orchestrated by Christ crucified and risen.'
Lord Williams of Oystermouth, Master, Magdalene College, Cambridge University, Former Archbishop of Canterbury