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Mysticism in Postmodernist Long Poems

Contemplation of the Divine

Joe Moffett

Written from a literary critic’s perspective, Mysticism in Postmodernist Long Poems borrows insights from Religious Studies and critical theory to examine the role of spirituality in contemporary poetry, specifically the genre of the long poem. Descending from Whitman’s Song of Myself, the long poem is often considered the American twentieth-century equivalent of the epic poem, but unlike the epic, it carries few generic expectations aside from the fact that it simply must be long. This makes the form particularly pliable as a tool for spiritual inquiry. The period following World War II is often described as a secular age, but spirituality continued as a concern for poets, as evidenced by this study. These writers look beyond conventional faith systems and instead seek individual paths of understanding; they engage in mysticism, in other words. With chapters on H.D. and Brenda Hillman, Robert Duncan, James Merrill, Charles Wright, and Galway Kinnell and Gary Snyder, this study demonstrates how these poets engage the culture of consumption in the postwar years at the same time they search for opportunities for transcendence. Not content to throw over the earthly in favor of the otherworldly, these poets reject the familiar binary of the worldly and metaphysical to produce distinctive paths of spiritual understanding that fuel what Wright calls a “contemplation of the divine.”

University Press Copublishing Division / Lehigh University Press

Pages: 194 • Trim: 6½ x 9¼

978-1-61146-162-6 • Hardback • October 2014 • $105.00 • (£81.00)

978-1-61146-163-3 • eBook • October 2014 • $99.50 • (£77.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / American / General, Poetry / General, Religion / Mysticism

Mysticism in Postmodernist Long Poems

Contemplation of the Divine

Hardback

eBook

Summary

Written from a literary critic’s perspective, Mysticism in Postmodernist Long Poems borrows insights from Religious Studies and critical theory to examine the role of spirituality in contemporary poetry, specifically the genre of the long poem. Descending from Whitman’s Song of Myself, the long poem is often considered the American twentieth-century equivalent of the epic poem, but unlike the epic, it carries few generic expectations aside from the fact that it simply must be long. This makes the form particularly pliable as a tool for spiritual inquiry. The period following World War II is often described as a secular age, but spirituality continued as a concern for poets, as evidenced by this study. These writers look beyond conventional faith systems and instead seek individual paths of understanding; they engage in mysticism, in other words. With chapters on H.D. and Brenda Hillman, Robert Duncan, James Merrill, Charles Wright, and Galway Kinnell and Gary Snyder, this study demonstrates how these poets engage the culture of consumption in the postwar years at the same time they search for opportunities for transcendence. Not content to throw over the earthly in favor of the otherworldly, these poets reject the familiar binary of the worldly and metaphysical to produce distinctive paths of spiritual understanding that fuel what Wright calls a “contemplation of the divine.”

Details

University Press Copublishing Division / Lehigh University Press

Pages: 194 • Trim: 6½ x 9¼

978-1-61146-162-6 • Hardback • October 2014 • $105.00 • (£81.00)

978-1-61146-163-3 • eBook • October 2014 • $99.50 • (£77.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / American / General, Poetry / General, Religion / Mysticism

Author

Joe Moffett is assistant professor of English at Kentucky State University.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction: Mysticism and the Twentieth-Century Long Poem
Chapter 1: The Late Modernism of H.D.’s Trilogy and a Postmodernist Response: Brenda Hillman’s Death Tractates
Chapter 2: “In Language I Encounter God”: Robert Duncan’s Textual Mysticism in “Passages”
Chapter 3: The Kitsch Man Cometh: Myth and Popular Culture in James Merrill’s The Changing Light at Sandover
Chapter 4: Charles Wright’s “God Fearing Agnostic” in The Appalachian Book of the Dead
Chapter 5: Questioning Western Spirituality: Galway Kinnell’s TheBook of Nightmares and Gary Snyder’s Mountains and Rivers without End
Bibliography
About the Author

Mysticism in Postmodernist Long Poems

Contemplation of the Divine

Joe Moffett

Mysticism in Postmodernist Long Poems

Contemplation of the Divine

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