> I am not sure that 'religious poetry' is warranted here.
> This is a wonderful contemporary poetry site and despite
> the fact that it endeavours to welcome all types of poetry,
> religious poetry is I feel,would only appeal to a minority.
Now I think you're prejudging *us*, David
> Having said that, I have two wonderful books,that deal specifically
> with this topic.The author is a wonderful christian man,
> in his eighties now. Geoffrey Bingham.
> "All things of the Spirit" and "The Spirit of all Things"
> published by New Creation Publications.
Could you give us the gist or his ideas, or mabe post a selected excerpt?
And maybe an example of a contemporary religious poem that you admire.
When I kicked this idea into play, I swore I'd keep my mouth buttoned and
give other people a chance -- nothing worse than asking a question and
answering it yourself -- but I think enough's now been said to allow me a
second bite at the cherry.
Anyway, this swings back to a remark Joanna made early on, that there's a
place also for a discussion of the general question of religious poetry (if
I'm not-misparaphrasing Joanna to drastically) ...
When I posted "The Good Thief", of my several reasons (another being, rather
mischievously, I wondered how David would react to it <g>) was it seems to
me to lead into one way of defining religious poetry -- there are religious
references and a religious tale -- the poem reflects the Crucifixion after
all. But does that make it religious, and in what sense? Then speaker is a
workingclass Glasgow Catholic Celtic supporter -- does that figure in? It's
certainly a crucial aspect of the poem.
Could it even be considered "blasphemous"? That might be one reason (but
who can penetrate the mind of a printer?) that there was so much trouble
getting it printed in the first place, in the late sixties.
When I posted the Ann Sexton poem (which seems to have attracted less
response -- none at all to date) it was partly because it seems to me to
stand at the opposite extreme -- extreme "religious" feeling but few overt
references.
(Obviously in both cases, my primary reason was that I consider them both
fine poems.)
So, crudely, what is a religious poem, and how? (And this has just occured
to me, could you define an a religious poem by its *anti*religious dynamic?
There's a slight element of this in "The Good Thief" [Tom is a lapsed
Catholic] and more in some of his other Glasgow Language poems -- "Feed Ma
Lamz", for example, if I'm thinking of the right poem.)
Anyway, I'll leave it at that for the moment and see if anyone wants to pick
up on this.
The Enigmatic Stone-Dwelling Mouse
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