R.S.+Gwynn

Melissa Jasso




 * Sects A to Z **

High Anglicans (or C. Of E.)

Are numerous far over the sea.

They ring a small bell a lot.

Read T.S. Eliot,

And burn incense in no small degree.

The Baptists put stock in immersion

And loudly will cast the aspersion

That a ritual that stops

With a few sprinkled drops

Is merely a watered-down version.

The blue-eyed Episcopal ladies

And gentlemen look like the Brady’s.

Their children are blond

And they are all quite fond

Of the Escalade and the Mercedes.

Fundamentalists think it’s apparent

That the Bible is strictly inerrant.

When one asks, once again,

“Well, so //who// married Cain?”

The claim Yahweh was, singly, her parent.

A.J.W (Jehovah’s Witness)

Should never be asked in to sit. Nes-

tle in, bolt your door

or you’ll let in a bore

Who will point out your soul’s lack of fitness.

The Mormons once had a hegemony

In Utah, allowing polygamy.

With their bearded heads hung,

The men thanked Brigham Young,

Who responded, “Yes, wasn’t that big of me ?”

The Oneidans detected sin’s essence

In all symptoms of manly tumescence,

So their men they unmanned,

Crying, “Take sin in hand!” –

A religiously planned obsolescence.

The Quakers possess inner lightning

And refrain from all feuding and fighting;

They enter their meetings

With “Bless Thee” for greetings,

But the service is hardly exciting.

The Shakers thought sexual activity

Was a wasteful sinful proclivity :

“No more sleeping in pairs !

Go make tables and chairs !

Sublimate and increase productivity !”

Unitarians pray, but they never

Say to whom, and thus claim the endeavor,

While it’s heavenward sent,

More precisely is meant

To address someone known as “Whoever.”

The number of folks who use //X//’s

In spelling out //Christmas// perplexes.

It’s truly inanity

(Just think, //Xianity// ! ) –

A small matter, I know, but it vexes.

Most zealots are eager to tell us

That their God is bad-tempered and jealous.

They go on for hours

Describing His powers

With a zeal that’s excessively zealous.

As someone who has grown up in the Bible belt, enjoys learning and observing all different types of religions this poem really stuck out to me. I think that the fact Gwynn also grew up in the deep south were there are so many different sects of Christianity certainly helps with understanding the message he is trying to convey through this poem. Criticizing religion is always a delicate subject especially when criticizing one particular religion and many of its different sects. Gwynn is not only criticizing just some of the Christian sects but really organized religion as a whole. The previous point becomes obvious only after self-reflection from the reader. The reader can really interchange any of the sects with another religion or another religion’s sects and still come up with real criticisms and stigmas and that is why i choose the picture with multiple major religions. Just by looking at each picture we already have an idea in our brain about what that religion is about. Even though the poem picks fun at sects it really focuses on criticizing religious zealots. I see the last paragraph as describing the way a zealot typically tries to convince others into conforming and eventually converting. If one were trying to look for an example of zealotry at work one would only need to look at the Westboro Baptist Church. The Westboro Baptist Church is the epitome of Christian zealotry in modern America with their declaration that America is doomed as a result of angering God with gross amounts of sin. The idea of God being judgmental and angry always reminds me of Jonathan Edwards //Sinners in the hands of an Angry// God poem. It is funny to me that even after two hundred and seventy five years, religious zealots still use scare tactics to try and coral the masses. What Gwynn managed to do was offer comic relief to a subject many would never dare poke fun at for the fear of the work being seen as blasphemous. Gwynn’s poem plays a heavy hand at satire and irony that can actually be read in the meter. When read aloud //Sects A to Z,// has a sing-songy rhyme to it. I feel that Gwynn did this intentionally to really counter the seriousness and insulting statements within the poem.

Sources: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse/186/4#!/20607088 Images: http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2014/06/arguing-religion.html Images: