Jennifer: perhaps you'd consider this tact, one taken somewhat agnostically
about a year back by me:
In Our Book Of Revelations
beginning at the end as we must
these words to introduce the silence
we're slowly getting at but only
now get to savor the meaning of.
Once more to have to face the face,
once more to come to that Genesis.
Cheers,
Jerry Schwartz
> Like you, Jennifer, I'd pick-out Baxter as a major example.
>
> But depending on how far you want to extend the term, there's maybe a
sense
> that the Scottish poet D.M.Black could be thought of as religious, at
least
> in some of his poems.
>
> [There are also bits of, earlier, MacDiarmid's "Drunk Man" (MacDairmid not
> being any sort of believer, in Christianity, at least) -- "O wha's the
bride
> wha carried the bunch ...", and in (even earlier) +Sangshaw+ -- The Bonnie
> Broukit Bairn" and "The eemis Stane".]
>
> Have you thought of translations in this area?
>
> (Peter Levi's translations of the Psalms suddenly spring to mind.)
>
> Or the way in which older religious material can be incorporated into
> contemporary poems?
>
> (A really trivial example, but years ago I worked a lot of English ubi
sunt
> stuff into a poem, and also incorporated the lines:
>
> Lord, you called to me
> And I nothing answered thee
> But "Thole a little, thole yet!"
> But "yet and yet" is endless,
> And "thole a little" a long way is.
>
> ... virtually word-for-word from a medieval lyric, but something I don't
> think I could in a month of Sundays [unfortunate cliche in this context]
> ever have written in any contemporary voice.)
>
> Robin
>
> <<
> From: Jennifer Compton
> ...
>
> Does any one know of contemporary poets who write on these subjects? That
> you admire?
> The most recent I can think of is James K. Baxter.
> I simply don't see believing poetry being published any more.
> Am I looking in the wrong place?
> (Not that I am a believer, of course. Well, if I was I would never admit
> it.)
|