Contexts
Chapter 5 uses the model of the three “worlds of the text” to discuss the ways that poems are always spanning the ancient world and the worlds of their readers. It advocates for the necessity of both historical sensitivity and attention to the needs of the present moment. It discusses allusion as one way in which biblical poems can relate to one another. It argues that prophetic poetry in particular is both uniquely oriented to historical moments and at times paradoxically resistant to specific rhetorical purposes. It also considers how the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE was a traumatic catalyst for new creative work. The chapter ends with a reading of Psalm 137 as a poem of rage and trauma, in conversation with W. E. B. Du Bois and Reginald Dwayne Betts. Ultimately, this chapter argues that the work of reading poems is not easy, but is myriad, demanding, and morally complex. It requires patient consideration of the poem in its diverging contexts and the extension of empathy to readers and writers, past and present.
