Thick and dazzling darkness : religious poetry in a secular age / Peter O'Leary.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

O'Leary, Peter, 1968- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Religious poetry, American--History and criticism.

Religious poetry, American.

American poetry--20th century--History and criticism.

American poetry.

Religion in literature.

Religion and literature.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

xiii, 260 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Columbia University Press, [2018]

Summary:

In Thick and Dazzling Darkness, Peter O'Leary offers a new reading of modern and contemporary poets' treatment of religion and the nature of the divine in a secular age. The book seeks to come to terms with an often obscured spiritual impulse that drives 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. He 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. 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.

Contents:

Introduction : religious poetry in a secular age

A mystical theology of angelic despair : writing religious poetry and the Trilogy of Frank Samperi

Robinson Jeffers, the man from whom God hid everything

Spiritual osmosis : absorbing the influence in Geoffrey Hill's later poetry

Prophetic frustrations : Robert Duncan's Tribunals

What lies beneath my copy of eternity? : religious language in the poetry of Lissa Wolsak

Catholics : reading Fanny Howe

Robert Duncan's celestial hierarchy

The long huthered hajj : Nathaniel Mackey's esotericism

Apocalypticism : a way forward for poetry

Conclusion : why not be totally changed into fire?

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 225-255) and index.

Other Format:

Online version: O'Leary, Peter, 1968- author. Thick and dazzling darkness

ISBN:

9780231173308

023117330X

OCLC:

987628540

Publisher Number:

99975325171