JRR Tolkien is the greatest Poet of the 20th century, and (so far) of the 21st

And this despite his writing mostly in prose.

That he wrote fiction is not a disqualifier, but a limiter — and I’ll talk about that in a moment.

His prose: taken as a body of work — and I will be speaking of his Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit, not his other works — is a grand story of warring evil and good, and the various characters in the long story, characters small and great, hearts both endearing and repugnant, with high drama in an epic tale the gestalt of which is poetry on grand scale — the essence of poetry in its beauty, honor, horror, and vision.

The limiting is this, great as the story is, it does not allow the carry-on of one’s utter heart and life into it, leaving us outside longing for the real beneath the fiction. I cannot “carry-on” into its narrative the heavy baggage of my living soul, for my soul is actual, and while LOTR is highly intuitive of things actual, it is not actual itself. My soul is inspired and filled, but left outside Tolkien’s adventures.

For real hardships, injustices, suffering accompany us in our fragile lives, and the trilogy, being fiction, cannot enter into our suffering to comfort and sustain us. There is only One who can — in a true story — so enter our lives and hearts in reality in the midst of a present world filled with evil and deception beyond even our ken — to take us aboard His real and substantial care.

One cannot live in Tolkien’s world, but one can in Christ’s story, and His world without end.

This, though, can be said: We see by the Poet’s heart and hand glimpses of courage, loyalty, friendship, hope, perseverance, and unearthly strength — which wend their way into our hearts and lives — even in our own small fellowships, glimpses into the Light by which he wrote, the light of Christ Jesus and His band of flawed but faithful followers.

Tolkien may not have the power to take us onboard his tale, but his tale — his vision — may show us images of the real story beneath the wondrous mirage of his imagination, that being the reality of we men and women who bear our Lord’s name, and walk in His Spirit and ways, His heart the heart of us all who are His.

In times of great and real darkness — like the legendary shadow of Mordor — seeing in JRRT’s world men and women of virtue, heart, and courage face overwhelming opposition with sheer and pure grit come what may, knowing that in the world beyond theirs they will be raised in glory and honor — is bracing to us. To capture this in a fictional tale is rare and wonder-full, and is why Tolkien is loved by us who live on the real field of battle, and approaching Armageddon.

Thus says the Poet of Israel, of A Great and Terrible Love.