Whether “roses are red, violets are blue” is the extent of your poetic knowledge or you’ve memorized an anthology of Emily Dickinson, it turns out that poetry has specific relevance for the Christian. Five books of the Bible are volumes of poetry, from the deep laments in Job to the rapturous, romantic stanzas of Song of Solomon. And the link between poetry and faith doesn’t stop there—you can find the connection all throughout history.

Karen Swallow Prior interviewed Christopher Stokes, author of Romantic Prayer: Reinventing the Poetics of Devotion, 1773–1832, to talk about the role of poetry in the practice of prayer. Stokes highlights Anna Letitia Barbauld, a prominent English poet, whose work explored the beauty of prayer as a communal act not only with God but with our loved ones as well.

“I think she finds the most authentic religious passions are found not in a single mind reflecting on the infinite, but those generated through shared experiences within family or chapel,” says Sokes. “Elegantly, she writes in 1792: “We neither laugh alone, nor weep alone, why then should we pray alone?”

Prayer can be a great many things—a jumble of stumbling words, an hour in a closet, a moment with others in the pews. So, too, can prayer be a poem.