{"id":8661,"date":"2011-04-20T13:51:08","date_gmt":"2011-04-20T17:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/?p=8661"},"modified":"2013-05-10T15:20:27","modified_gmt":"2013-05-10T19:20:27","slug":"r-s-thomas-poet-of-the-cross","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2011\/04\/20\/r-s-thomas-poet-of-the-cross\/8661\/","title":{"rendered":"R.S. Thomas: Poet of the Cross"},"content":{"rendered":"

by David E. Anderson<\/strong><\/p>\n

R.S. Thomas<\/a>, the Welsh poet and Anglican priest who died a little more than a decade ago, left a body of work that is slowly becoming recognized as among the best and most important religious poetry of the twentieth century.<\/p>\n

Like the century itself, however, it is not easily orthodox or pretty. Its bleak moods and near despair reflect the pull of doubt that defined those decades for many, including believers. As such, it stands outside the mainstream of the dominant, God-affirming, sacramental poetry that looks back to Gerard Manley Hopkins<\/a>\u2019s affirmation that \u201cthe world is charged with the grandeur of God.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet Hopkins was also the poet of the \u201cterrible sonnets\u201d\u2014bitter spiritual laments that Thomas described as \u201cbut a human repetition of the cry from the cross\u201d: My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me? Thomas\u2019s own prolific poetic outpouring explored this very question, and his work continues to resonate with compelling freshness and urgency as a new century of uncertainty unfolds.<\/p>\n

His is, in many ways, an appropriate poetry for Good Friday, exemplified by his emblematic but enigmatic phrase, \u201cThe cross is always avant garde.\u201d The line is from The Echoes Return Slow<\/em>, a long autobiographical piece written in alternating pages of prose and poetry, and it suggests that for Thomas the cross always goes before us, and it presents a radical challenge to any easy resolution of the tough questions of faith.<\/p>\n

A cluster of recurring images, symbols, and metaphors mark Thomas\u2019s religious poems: silence, prayer, kneeling, waiting, watching, empty churches, a wound, the pierced side of Jesus-God-the natural world, a bare tree\u2014and the cross, repeatedly described by Thomas as empty or \u201cuntenanted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thomas is mostly interested in God\u2019s silence or absence, the deus absconditus<\/em> or hidden God, and what that means for forging an identity in the modern world. What language might be used to address such a God in a meaningful way? As Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has written, R.S. Thomas was\u2014like one of the poet\u2019s spiritual mentors, Soren Kierkegaard\u2014a \u201cgreat articulator of uneasy faith.\u201d<\/p>\n

An early poem, \u201cIn a Country Church,\u201d from the 1955 book Song at the Year\u2019s Turning<\/em>, announces some of the themes that would dominate Thomas\u2019s later poetry:<\/p>\n

To one kneeling down no word came,
\nOnly the wind’s song, saddening the lips
\nOf the grave saints, rigid in glass;
\nOr the dry whisper of unseen wings,
\nBats not angels, in the high roof.<\/em><\/p>\n

Was he balked by silence? He kneeled long,
\nAnd saw love in a dark crown
\nOf thorns blazing, and a winter tree
\nGolden with fruit of a man’s body.<\/em><\/p>\n

The opening stanza is a powerful image of silence. The only sounds comes not from words but from the wind, not from the wings of angels but of bats. While there is no word from God, the poet gropes for a signal of grace and wrests from the silence a vision of a wintry image of love and crucifixion\u2014perhaps a divine response.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Church,\u201d a poem from Thomas\u2019s 1966 book Pieta<\/em>, returns to the theme:<\/p>\n

Often I try
\nTo analyze the quality
\nOf its silences. Is this where God hides
\nFrom my searching? I have stopped to listen,
\nAfter the few people have gone,
\nTo the air recomposing itself
\nFor vigil. It has waited like this
\nSince the stones grouped themselves about it.
\nThese are the hard ribs
\nOf a body that our prayers have failed
\nTo animate. Shadows advance
\nFrom their corners to take possession
\nOf places the light held
\nFor an hour. The bats resume
\nTheir business. The uneasiness of the pews
\nCeases. There is no other sound
\nIn the darkness but the sound of a man
\nBreathing, testing his faith
\nOn emptiness, nailing his questions
\nOne by one to an untenanted cross.<\/em><\/p>\n

This poem, with its hard-won final images, is far more powerful, complex, and successful than \u201cIn a Country Church.\u201d It confronts the paradox of presence and absence, faith and doubt in a profound way. Philosopher of religion and critic D.Z. Phillips, in his book R.S. Thomas: Poet of the Hidden God<\/em>, reads the last lines as a realization that the poet-priest \u201chas to die to his old questions. It is only by dying to the old questions that wonder can come in at the right place.\u201d Baylor University professor of English William V. Davis, in R.S. Thomas: Poetry and Theology<\/em>, offers a more orthodox reading: \u201cIf\u2026the cross is empty, untenanted, as it is in the Protestant tradition, this is not to deny the fact of the crucifixion but the truth of the resurrection.\u201d Davis sees Thomas suggesting that \u201cJesus, as Christ, even in his absence\u2014indeed, perhaps because of, and by, his absence\u2014symbolizes and thus affirms his continuing presence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\n\n
\"post03-rsthomas\"
\nCrucifix<\/em> by Eric Gill, circa 1913<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

It may seem a strange and contradictory stance for a poet who is also a priest, standing as it does in the face of so many people\u2019s comfortable orthodoxy, but throughout his long career Thomas insisted he found no contradiction in his two vocations, even as he acknowledged he was not especially orthodox. \u201cA lot of people seem to be worried about how I combine my work as a poet and my work as a priest,\u201d he told the BBC in 1972. \u201cThis is something that never worried me at all.\u201d He went on to insist, echoing Matthew Arnold, that \u201cin any case, poetry is religion, religion is poetry\u201d and \u201cChrist was a poet, the New Testament is a metaphor, the resurrection is a metaphor\u201d\u2014explaining metaphor as \u201can attempt to convey an experience of a kind of new life, an eruption of the deity into ordinary life, a lifting up of ordinary life into a higher level.\u201d<\/p>\n

At other times Thomas acknowledged, \u201cI\u2019m obviously not orthodox, I don\u2019t know how many real poets have been orthodox. \u2026I find it very difficult to be a kind of orthodox believer in Jesus as my Savior and that sort of thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet throughout his long career, Thomas showed no desire to leave the priesthood and continued his priestly functions administering the sacraments, preaching the word, including, at one church, delivering a sermon in Welsh once a month. He served many rural parishes before he retired at Easter in 1978. He was also an outspoken Welsh nationalist, a pacifist involved in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and a tireless critic of what he took to be the despoiling of the Welsh countryside by English developers.<\/p>\n

Thomas\u2019s poetry confronts not just the absence of God but what literary critic J. Hillis Miller has termed \u201cthe disappearance of God.\u201d For Miller, the nineteenth century and its experience of the eclipse of God was a major turning point in the spiritual history of humanity. It is a perception described powerfully by Matthew Arnold in his essays and poetry, most famously in \u201cDover Beach,\u201d where he portrays Victorian religious experience as the \u201cmelancholy, long, withdrawing roar\u201d of the sea of faith.<\/p>\n

For Arnold and a poetic tradition that runs at least up through American poet Wallace Stevens, the temptation was to substitute poetry for religion. \u201cMore and more,\u201d Arnold wrote in his famous essay on \u201cThe Study of Poetry,\u201d \u201cmankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us. Without poetry, our science will appear incomplete; and most of what passes with us for religion and philosophy will be replaced by poetry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arnold\u2019s experience was not the happy exuberance of a Nietzsche and his proclamation that God is dead. It was, rather, that God has withdrawn. \u201cOur duty,\u201d\u2019 Miller says of Arnold\u2019s view, \u201cis to testify bravely to the existence of God in a time when our dwelling place is in the desert.\u201d<\/p>\n

This confrontation with the absence of God comes to the forefront of Thomas\u2019s poetry in the 1970s. The first poem in his collection H\u2019m<\/em> begins: \u201cGod looked at space and I appeared \/ Rubbing my eyes at what I saw.\u201d In \u201cPetition,\u201d the speaker, seeing the \u201crueful acts\u201d of theft, murder, and rape committed by human beings, says, \u201cI have said \/ New prayers, or said the old \/ In a new way \/ Seeking the poem \/ in the pain.\u201d The poem concludes with a sense of disappointment: \u201cOne thing I have asked \/ Of the disposer of the issues of life: that truth should defer \/ To beauty. It was not granted.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Coming\u201d alludes in its own fashion to the Good Friday story:<\/p>\n

And God held in his hand
\nA small globe. Look, he said.
\nThe son looked. Far off,
\nAs through water, he saw
\nA scorched land of fierce
\nColour. The light burned
\nThere; crusted buildings
\nCast their shadows: a bright
\nSerpent, a river
\nUncoiled itself, radiant
\nWith slime.
\nOn a bare
\nHill a bare tree saddened
\nThe sky. Many people
\nHeld out their thin arms
\nTo it, as though waiting
\nFor a vanished April
\nTo return to its crossed
\nBoughs. The son watched
\nThem. Let me go there, he said.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the poem \u201cPieta\u201d Thomas writes:<\/em><\/p>\n

Always the same hills
\nCrown the horizon,
\nRemote witnesses
\nOf the still scene
\nAnd in the foreground
\nThe tall Cross,
\nSombre, untenanted,
\nAches for the Body
\nThat is back in the cradle
\nof a maid’s arms.<\/em><\/p>\n

In \u201cThe Combat,\u201d Thomas invokes the Old Testament story of Jacob wrestling with God to comment on a major twentieth-century theme of the failure of language to adequately express religious insight or experience: \u201cYou have no name. \/ We have wrestled with you all Day, and now night approaches \u2026. For the failure of language \/ there is no redress.”<\/p>\n

Sometimes the failure belongs to God, as in Thomas\u2019s poem \u201cNuclear\u201d:<\/p>\n

It’s not that he can’t speak;
\nwho created languages
\nbut God? Nor that he won’t;
\nto say that is to imply
\nmalice. It is just that
\nhe doesn’t, or does so at times
\nwhen we are not listening, in
\nways we have yet to recognize
\nas speech<\/em><\/p>\n

John Powell Ward, one of Thomas\u2019s most astute readers, has written that in the poetry \u201cthe biblical symbol that most gets rewritten is that of the wound in Christ\u2019s side,\u201d becoming \u201ca new symbol of great significance.\u201d But it is not just Jesus\u2019 wound. In \u201cSoliloquy,\u201d God says \u201cthe sun was torn \/ from my side.\u201d Powell also points to the poem \u201cGod\u2019s Story,\u201d where God \u201cfingered the hole \/ in his side, where the green tree \/ came from.\u201d According to Powell, \u201cIf the wound in the side can be so universalized, it becomes something of a rupture at the heart of existence itself, the very mark of identity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The absence of God also means Thomas at times rejects any easy sacramental sense of God\u2019s presence in the natural world, as he writes in \u201cThreshold\u201d:<\/p>\n

I emerge from the mind\u2019s
\ncave into the worse darkness
\noutside, where things pass and
\nthe Lord is in none of them.<\/em><\/p>\n

I have heard the still, small voice
\nand it was that of the bacteria
\ndemolishing my cosmos. I
\nhave lingered too long on<\/em><\/p>\n

this threshold, but where can I go?
\nTo look back is to lose the soul
\nI was leading upwards towards
\nthe light. To look forward? Ah,<\/em><\/p>\n

what balance is needed at
\nthe edges of such an abyss.
\nI am alone on the surface
\nof a turning planet. What<\/em><\/p>\n

to do but, like Michelangelo\u2019s
\nAdam, put my hand
\nout into unknown space,
\nhoping for the reciprocating touch?<\/em><\/p>\n

But the absence of God does not mean the nonexistence of God. Many of Thomas\u2019s poems dwell on the immediacy of God\u2019s absence, an absence in which God has just been missed, as in these lines from \u201cPilgrimage\u201d: \u201cSuch a fast \/ God, always before us and \/ leaving as we arrive.\u201d Or in the poem \u201cAdjustments\u201d: \u201cWe never catch \/ him at work, but can only say, \/ coming suddenly upon an amendment, \/ that here he had been.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thomas does not offer an easy resolution of the paradox of absence and presence, but in the long encounter he waged with doubt and silence\u2014often on his knees, as many of the poems tell us\u2014he seems to have won his way to a rugged kind of faith, an affirmation of love as the meaning of the cross, and a posture of patient waiting. On the theme of waiting William V. Davis finds some provocative connections between Thomas and his contemporary, theologian Paul Tillich. In The Echoes Return Slow<\/em>, Thomas wrote of faith: \u201cYou have to imagine \/ a waiting that is not impatient \/ because it is timeless.\u201d Davis sees this as the same sentiment Tillich expressed in a sermon on \u201cWaiting\u201d in his 1948 collection The Shaking of the Foundations<\/em>: “He is God for us just in so far as we do not possess Him. \u2026 We have God through not having him.\u201d Later Tillich adds, \u201cWaiting is not despair. It is the acceptance of our not having, in the power of that which we already have.\u201d For Thomas, the struggle was to learn just that: waiting is not despair.<\/p>\n

Thomas was a poet who lived with questions, not answers, as described in the final lines of the poem \u201cPilgrimages\u201d:<\/p>\n

It is I
\nwho ask. Was the pilgrimage
\nI made to come to my own
\nself, to learn that in times
\nlike these and for one like me
\nGod will never be plain and
\nout there, but dark rather and
\ninexplicable, as though he were in here?<\/em><\/p>\n

Here the quest for God is also the pilgrimage into one\u2019s self, and the lesson learned is that in embracing the mystery of God \u201cout there\u201d one begins to understand the mystery \u201cin the finitude of the here and now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rowan Williams, in his essay \u201cR.S. Thomas and Kierkegaard\u201d in the collection Echoes to the Amen: Essays after R.S. Thomas<\/em>, argues that a kind of complex love begins to address, not resolve, this paradox. He cites a passage from The Echoes Return Slow<\/em>:<\/p>\n

But love answers it
\nin its turn: I am old now and have died
\nmany times, but my rebirth is surer
\nthan the truth embalming itself
\nin the second law of your Thermo-Dynamics.<\/em><\/p>\n

The lines point a slow coming to a kind of faith, a faith in the poet\u2019s own resurrection of some sort that he posits, at least momentarily, is as certain as the dead laws of science and technology. There is in the poem something of the dying to self in order to be born again. Williams concludes that \u201cGod, for Thomas, is both the frustration of every expectation and the only exit from despair. And that God is encountered only in the embrace of finitude.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a 1981 radio broadcast, Thomas said that in the incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection of Christ God has given the answer to suffering. But the poet\u2019s emphasis remained on the cross, trusted and finally understood, according to Tony Brown of the University of Wales, in his volume R.S. Thomas<\/em>, as \u201cthe ultimate demonstration of love defeating time and mortality.\u201d<\/p>\n

David E. Anderson is senior editor of Religion News Service. In 2009, he wrote for Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly on Easter and writer John Updike<\/a>. <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welsh poet and Anglican priest R.S. Thomas (1913-2000) has been described as “a poet of the cross, the unanswered prayer, the bleak trek through darkness.\u201d More →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":72,"featured_media":17345,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[6568,6428,9751,7414,3010,278,6195,5910,9754],"class_list":["post-8661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-anglican-church","tag-cross","tag-crucifixion","tag-lent","tag-poet","tag-poetry","tag-priest","tag-rs-thomas","tag-wales","topics-faith-and-spirituality"],"yoast_head":"\nR.S. Thomas: Poet of the Cross | April 20, 2011 | Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly | PBS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Welsh poet and Anglican priest R.S. Thomas (1913-2000) has been described as "a poet of the cross, the unanswered prayer, the bleak trek through darkness.\u201d\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2011\/04\/20\/r-s-thomas-poet-of-the-cross\/8661\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"R.S. Thomas: Poet of the Cross | April 20, 2011 | Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly | PBS\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Welsh poet and Anglican priest R.S. Thomas (1913-2000) has been described as "a poet of the cross, the unanswered prayer, the bleak trek through darkness.\u201d\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2011\/04\/20\/r-s-thomas-poet-of-the-cross\/8661\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/PBS.ReligionEthics\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-04-20T17:51:08+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2013-05-10T19:20:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/files\/2011\/04\/thumb01-rsthomas.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Fred Yi\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ReligionEthics\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@ReligionEthics\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Fred Yi\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"13 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2011\/04\/20\/r-s-thomas-poet-of-the-cross\/8661\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2011\/04\/20\/r-s-thomas-poet-of-the-cross\/8661\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Fred Yi\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/#\/schema\/person\/0576fe5f06986bc0418635994a2bcd47\"},\"headline\":\"R.S. Thomas: Poet of the Cross\",\"datePublished\":\"2011-04-20T17:51:08+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2013-05-10T19:20:27+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2011\/04\/20\/r-s-thomas-poet-of-the-cross\/8661\/\"},\"wordCount\":2569,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2011\/04\/20\/r-s-thomas-poet-of-the-cross\/8661\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/files\/2011\/04\/thumb01-rsthomas.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Anglican Church\",\"Cross\",\"crucifixion\",\"Lent\",\"Poet\",\"Poetry\",\"Priest\",\"R.S. Thomas\",\"Wales\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2011\/04\/20\/r-s-thomas-poet-of-the-cross\/8661\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2011\/04\/20\/r-s-thomas-poet-of-the-cross\/8661\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2011\/04\/20\/r-s-thomas-poet-of-the-cross\/8661\/\",\"name\":\"R.S. Thomas: Poet of the Cross | April 20, 2011 | Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly | PBS\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2011\/04\/20\/r-s-thomas-poet-of-the-cross\/8661\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2011\/04\/20\/r-s-thomas-poet-of-the-cross\/8661\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/files\/2011\/04\/thumb01-rsthomas.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2011-04-20T17:51:08+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2013-05-10T19:20:27+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/#\/schema\/person\/0576fe5f06986bc0418635994a2bcd47\"},\"description\":\"Welsh poet and Anglican priest R.S. Thomas (1913-2000) has been described as \\\"a poet of the cross, the unanswered prayer, the bleak trek through darkness.\u201d\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2011\/04\/20\/r-s-thomas-poet-of-the-cross\/8661\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2011\/04\/20\/r-s-thomas-poet-of-the-cross\/8661\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/files\/2011\/04\/thumb01-rsthomas.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/files\/2011\/04\/thumb01-rsthomas.jpg\"},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/\",\"name\":\"Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly\",\"description\":\"An examination of religion's role and the ethical dimensions behind top news headlines.\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/search-results\/?q={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/#\/schema\/person\/0576fe5f06986bc0418635994a2bcd47\",\"name\":\"Fred Yi\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/author\/yif\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"R.S. Thomas: Poet of the Cross | April 20, 2011 | Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly | PBS","description":"Welsh poet and Anglican priest R.S. Thomas (1913-2000) has been described as \"a poet of the cross, the unanswered prayer, the bleak trek through darkness.\u201d","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2011\/04\/20\/r-s-thomas-poet-of-the-cross\/8661\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"R.S. Thomas: Poet of the Cross | April 20, 2011 | Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly | PBS","og_description":"Welsh poet and Anglican priest R.S. Thomas (1913-2000) has been described as \"a poet of the cross, the unanswered prayer, the bleak trek through darkness.\u201d","og_url":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2011\/04\/20\/r-s-thomas-poet-of-the-cross\/8661\/","og_site_name":"Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/PBS.ReligionEthics\/","article_published_time":"2011-04-20T17:51:08+00:00","article_modified_time":"2013-05-10T19:20:27+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/files\/2011\/04\/thumb01-rsthomas.jpg","width":1,"height":1,"type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Fred Yi","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@ReligionEthics","twitter_site":"@ReligionEthics","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Fred Yi","Est. reading time":"13 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2011\/04\/20\/r-s-thomas-poet-of-the-cross\/8661\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2011\/04\/20\/r-s-thomas-poet-of-the-cross\/8661\/"},"author":{"name":"Fred Yi","@id":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/#\/schema\/person\/0576fe5f06986bc0418635994a2bcd47"},"headline":"R.S. Thomas: Poet of the Cross","datePublished":"2011-04-20T17:51:08+00:00","dateModified":"2013-05-10T19:20:27+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2011\/04\/20\/r-s-thomas-poet-of-the-cross\/8661\/"},"wordCount":2569,"commentCount":0,"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2011\/04\/20\/r-s-thomas-poet-of-the-cross\/8661\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/files\/2011\/04\/thumb01-rsthomas.jpg","keywords":["Anglican Church","Cross","crucifixion","Lent","Poet","Poetry","Priest","R.S. Thomas","Wales"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2011\/04\/20\/r-s-thomas-poet-of-the-cross\/8661\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2011\/04\/20\/r-s-thomas-poet-of-the-cross\/8661\/","url":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2011\/04\/20\/r-s-thomas-poet-of-the-cross\/8661\/","name":"R.S. Thomas: Poet of the Cross | April 20, 2011 | Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly | PBS","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2011\/04\/20\/r-s-thomas-poet-of-the-cross\/8661\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2011\/04\/20\/r-s-thomas-poet-of-the-cross\/8661\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/files\/2011\/04\/thumb01-rsthomas.jpg","datePublished":"2011-04-20T17:51:08+00:00","dateModified":"2013-05-10T19:20:27+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/#\/schema\/person\/0576fe5f06986bc0418635994a2bcd47"},"description":"Welsh poet and Anglican priest R.S. Thomas (1913-2000) has been described as \"a poet of the cross, the unanswered prayer, the bleak trek through darkness.\u201d","inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2011\/04\/20\/r-s-thomas-poet-of-the-cross\/8661\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/2011\/04\/20\/r-s-thomas-poet-of-the-cross\/8661\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/files\/2011\/04\/thumb01-rsthomas.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/files\/2011\/04\/thumb01-rsthomas.jpg"},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/","name":"Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly","description":"An examination of religion's role and the ethical dimensions behind top news headlines.","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/search-results\/?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/#\/schema\/person\/0576fe5f06986bc0418635994a2bcd47","name":"Fred Yi","url":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/author\/yif\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/72"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8661\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/religionandethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}