Well, I asked _salvation from what?_ or something like, suspecting that it
was being used in what I called a Pauline sense; but I have apologised for
my abruptness and I think I'll stick with that.
Doug, you say that it had never occurred to you to connect salvation with
writing poems; and I am with you if it is _the you must be saved_ form of
salvation that was intended.
We shan't know unless we are told.
I suppose there could be salvation from boredom, not a state I fall into
often. Salvation from bullshit.
Salvation and imagination is odd, unless we are speaking of having the
imagination not to think you need to be saved. As far as I can see, cats
manage that; and their main imaginative exercise seems to be investing the
inanimate with animation
There is, less grumpily, a quote which I adopted as a superscript to a
poem from Karen Armstrong _study has become my prayer_
and -- jump cut -- poetry without _the spiritual_ would not be up to much
I used to debate with one who held we should not read any poetry by people
who believe(d) in God. Seriously. So no John Donne, for instance.
In retrospect, I see that I treated him as one suffering mental disturbance.
The problem solved itself when I found him to be a self-seeking liar --
which, for me, brought into question anything he claimed as being a
principle -- and now we don't speak
L
On Tue, November 1, 2011 15:11, Douglas Barbour wrote:
> As far as I can see, it's the word 'salvation' that has caused all the
> brouhaha, & it's certainly a term that would never occur to me in
> relation to writing poems.
>
> That some kind of 'spirituality' might inhere in a play of language, when
> that concept is not attached to religion as such certainly strikes me as
> possible, &, as David suggested, there is a line of poets (& their
> poems)m that achieve something like....
>
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