Psalm 23 and “American” Poetics
THESIS & SERIES OF BRIEFS | Psalm 23 and “American” Poetics
by Ingrid Lilly
In this series on Psalm 23, I embed my experiences reading the Psalms in a collection of analyses — from an evangelical political ad about Donald Trump to the culture of evangelical praise songs to the icon of bighorn sheep on National Park posters to a Hebrew philology of political horror and precarity in the ancient Israelite song.
Inspired by Édouard Glissant’s poetics of Relation, I am primarily using these analyses to probe a political/spiritual/psychological tangle in American cultural poetics, a tangle that I myself was shaped by — a tangle that many increasingly understand to be broadly consequential in U.S. society and politics — a tangle that has been difficult to map, understand, and analyze: white evangelical politico-spirituality.
I am centering Psalm 23 because it is positioned in American histories and culture as a brilliant prism. As one of the Psalms of first-person speech, we can trace “experience” using its various poetic surfaces. As a truly famous and widely read biblical text, I want to analyze Psalm 23 in a poetics of Relation to help tease out the structures and flows of American power that have been largely mystified and invisible to the very people most psychologically tangled up in them — white evangelicals themselves.
“The ultimate mark of power may be its invisibility; the ultimate challenge, the exposition of its roots.”
Michel-Rolph Trouillot, preface to Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History
A Psalm of David
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
This writing project currently lives as a set of “briefs.” All current briefs are assembled below as a collection of sometimes tightly connected and other-times loosely related essays, sketches, outlines, and notes.
“We are never as steeped in history as when we pretend not to be, but if we stop pretending we may gain in understanding what we lost in false innocence. Naiveté is often an excuse for those who exercise power. For those upon whom that power is exercised, naiveté is always a mistake. … History is the fruit of power, but power itself is never so transparent that its analysis becomes superfluous. The ultimate mark of power may be its invisibility; the ultimate challenge, the exposition of its roots.” (Michel-Rolph Trouillot, preface to Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History)
Image Credit(s)
(Banner) Poster illustration by J. Hirt for the National Parks Service and the Department of the Interior. 1938. The poster is part of the Works Projects Administration Poster Collection in the Library of Congress. The full image depicts two bighorn sheep standing above a lake in what is likely Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado with the text: "The National Parks Preserve Wild Life."
All other images are credited on the essay pages. Please click through and scroll to the bottom for each image credit.