Helen Steiner Rice and the Heavens

 

“The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.” - G. K. Chesterton

In his book Literature: What Every Catholic Should Know, Joseph Pearce mentions just two American poets in his chapters, Edgar Allan Poe and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, but only Longfellow makes his list of "Great Works of Literature Every Catholic Should Know."

Okay, he also include T. S. Eliot, but Eliot was an expatriate who renounced his U. S. citizenship.

In another of his books, Poems Every Catholic Should Know, Pearce is more generous. He includes Longfellow, Emily Dickinson, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Jones Very. 

Hmm, no Robert Frost. Or Carl Sandburg. Or Walt Whitman. So be it.

One also poet who also did not make his books and lists, indeed, who makes no scholarly lists, is Helen Steiner Rice.

Rice wrote popular inspirational and religious poetry. She strove to get her head and those of her readers "into the heavens."

Indeed, her faith and her ability to express the emotions so many feel made her collections sell millions of copies. She touched many lives, and became know as the "poet laureate of inspirational verse."

Moreover, while so many critics, academic, and intellectuals sorts - logician types! - might dismiss her poetry, other did not. One person who appreciated her poetry was Pope St. John Paul II, and no one can dismiss his intellectual and literary abilities.

As for me, I've long been a fan of her verse. What prompted me to think of her recently was finding a copy of one of her collections in our parish ongoing rummage sale room, Prayerfully, a collection of her prayer poems.

I once even wrote a clerihew about her:

Critics of Helen Steiner Rice
say her poems are just too sweet and nice.
But I suspect those poems will be read
long after those critics are dead.

Let's end with one of hers: 

Never Borrow Sorrow From Tomorrow

Deal only with the present —
never step into tomorrow,
For God asks us just to trust Him
and to never borrow sorrow,
For the future is not ours to know,
and it may never be,
So let us live and give our best
and give it lavishly. . .
For to meet tomorrow’s troubles
before they are even ours
Is to anticipate the Savior
and to doubt His all-wise powers,
So let us be content to solve
our problems one by one,
Asking nothing of tomorrow
except “Thy will be done.”