Jeffry wrote:
>Who I consider two of the topmost American poets, Susan Howe and Cole
>Swensen, have been filling their post-modernism with more and more
>frank material about--- Jesus {eek!} and Christology. They both, in
>fact, focussed on the same New Testament passage, where "The Risen
>Christ" tells Mary M. not to touch him ("Noli me tangere"), perhaps a
>denial holding some multi-dimensional poignancy for women writers.
>Swensen originally seemed to approach the material through a safer,
>distanced device: her good book ~Try~ focussed on Renaissance
>paintings (ekphrasis), which was this pretext that allowed her to
>describe and write "meditations upon" madonnas, pietas, etc. But her
>latest, ~Such Rich Hours~ now uses the Tres Riches Heures illuminated
>MS breviary to the same ends, . . . although with a somewhat wider
>historical sweep this time: Annunciations!
Makes me also think of HD, whose work is often full of Christian images and
concerns - esp Trilogy, Flowwering of the Rod and Tribute to the Angels -
all beautiful and seriously religious poems, though hardly _devotional_ in
that sappy sense.
I've been thinking a fair bit lately about those Mediaeval woman mystics,
whose language is so physical (of eating, hunger, or frankly erotic) or
which (like Margery of Kemp) moved ecstatic and inner experience beyond
language into cries, groans, screams and so on. St John of the Cross comes
straight out of that tradition. The history of the Western subject is
formed to a fascinating extent by the writings of these women, and clearly
in their time it was liberatory language. I certainly see absolute
connections to some of my work, though I'm hardly a Christian mystic - and
I'm quite certain I'm not alone in that!
Best
Alison
>
>At the same time, --- which is what fascinates me --- they're sort of
>cagey about this (embarassed?) and never spill over into the sort of
>rhapsodies or sentimentality that deform inspirational verse, that
>might definitely label them as oxymoronic Post-Modern Christian Poets
>(!). They still maintain their very staunch, intelligent thinky-ness,
>so it's not at all the sort of belly-up capitulation that the most
>frequently cited case, Eliot, went through, where a return to the
>church meant tossing out reason, in his poetry.
>
>I'm grateful that PoetryEtc is a safe haven and refuge where poets are
>able to work through these unpresentable transitional phases. I don't
>think I could talk about this on the larger American Lists.
>
>+ :)
Alison Croggon
Home page
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