Thick And Dazzling Darkness: Religious Poetry In A Secular Age
by Peter O'Leary /
2017 / English / EPUB
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How do poets use language to render the transcendent, often
dizzyingly inexpressible nature of the divine? In an age of
secularism, does spirituality have a place in modern American
poetry? In
How do poets use language to render the transcendent, often
dizzyingly inexpressible nature of the divine? In an age of
secularism, does spirituality have a place in modern American
poetry? InThick and Dazzling Darkness
Thick and Dazzling Darkness, Peter O’Leary reads
a diverse set of writers to argue for the existence and importance
of religious poetry in twentieth- and twenty-first-century American
literature. He traces a poetic genealogy that begins with Whitman
and Dickinson and continues in the work of contemporary writers to
illuminate an often obscured but still central spiritual impulse
that has shaped the production and imagination of American
poetry.
, Peter O’Leary reads
a diverse set of writers to argue for the existence and importance
of religious poetry in twentieth- and twenty-first-century American
literature. He traces a poetic genealogy that begins with Whitman
and Dickinson and continues in the work of contemporary writers to
illuminate an often obscured but still central spiritual impulse
that has shaped the production and imagination of American
poetry.
O’Leary presents close and comprehensive readings of the modernist,
late-modernist, and postmodern poets Robinson Jeffers, Frank
Samperi, and Robert Duncan, as well as the contemporary poets
Joseph Donahue, Geoffrey Hill, Fanny Howe, Nathaniel Mackey, Pam
Rehm, and Lissa Wolsak. Examining how these poets drew on a variety
of traditions, including Catholicism, Gnosticism, the Kabbalah, and
mysticism, the book considers how modern and contemporary poets
have articulated the spiritual in their work. O’Leary also argues
that an anxiety of misunderstanding exists in the study and writing
of poetry between secular and religious impulses and that the
religious nature of poets’ works is too often marginalized or
misunderstood. Examining the works of a specific poet in each
chapter, O’Leary reveals their complexity and offers a defense of
the value and meaning of religious poetry against the grain of a
secular society.
O’Leary presents close and comprehensive readings of the modernist,
late-modernist, and postmodern poets Robinson Jeffers, Frank
Samperi, and Robert Duncan, as well as the contemporary poets
Joseph Donahue, Geoffrey Hill, Fanny Howe, Nathaniel Mackey, Pam
Rehm, and Lissa Wolsak. Examining how these poets drew on a variety
of traditions, including Catholicism, Gnosticism, the Kabbalah, and
mysticism, the book considers how modern and contemporary poets
have articulated the spiritual in their work. O’Leary also argues
that an anxiety of misunderstanding exists in the study and writing
of poetry between secular and religious impulses and that the
religious nature of poets’ works is too often marginalized or
misunderstood. Examining the works of a specific poet in each
chapter, O’Leary reveals their complexity and offers a defense of
the value and meaning of religious poetry against the grain of a
secular society.