Sounds of Aleph and Aum.

Two new reviews of Thick and Dazzling Darkness. One comes from Nick Ripatrazone, published at The Millions. Writes Ripatrazone, "In Thick and Dazzling Darkness, O’Leary offers readers a reminder of the complexity of earnest religious poetry. He also offers critics a guidebook on how to examine religious verse: with the respect they should afford earnest subjects. If a poet chooses to believe, let’s hear her song."

Another comes from Kylan Rice, appearing in Literature and Belief. Here is a PDF of the review. Writes Rice: "Despite its unusual engagement with [the] terms of [its] debate, O'Leary's book is a methodologically diverse, playful, and attentive reading of ten contemporary poets. O'Leary's prose, which reflects the 'occult convolutions' he sees rippling through the history of American poetry, is alone worth the sale price."

That sale price got you down? If you order the book from the Columbia University Press website, and you plug in the coupon code CUP30, you can buy the book at a 30% discount. You should really do it.

In other news, I will be at Calvin College in Grand Rapids from June 12-15, at a symposium on Christian poetics.

What's going on with the title of this post?

               Sounds of Aleph and Aum

                         through forests of gristle,

      My skull and Lord Hereford's Knob equal,

                                             All Albion one.

One of the all-time greatest poems. I lived in Saint Louis for eighteen months beginning in August 2000. Eero Saarinen's magnificent Thomas Jefferson Gateway Arch is a glorious minimal aleph in maximal size. The photo above was taken on August 21, 2017, the day of the total solar eclipse.

Thick and Dazzling Darkness.

A new book of critical prose, Thick and Dazzling Darkness: Religious Poetry in a Secular Age, will be published this November by Columbia University Press. I am stoked. This represents over fifteen years of work; its appearance (I'm tempted to say "epiphany") fulfills long labor.

Here is the description of the book:

In Thick and Dazzling Darkness, Peter O’Leary offers a new reading of modern and contemporary poets’ treatment of religion and the nature of the divine in a secular age. The book seeks to come to terms with an often obscured spiritual impulse that drives the production and imagination of American poetry.

O’Leary presents close and comprehensive readings of the modernist, late-modernist, and postmodern poets Robinson Jeffers, Frank Samperi, and Robert Duncan, as well as the contemporary poets Joseph Donahue, Geoffrey Hill, Fanny Howe, Nathaniel Mackey, Pam Rehm, and Lissa Wolsak. He argues that an anxiety of misunderstanding exists in the study and writing of poetry between secular and religious impulses and that the religious nature of poets’ works is too often marginalized. Examining the works of a specific poet in each chapter, O’Leary reveals their complexity and offers a defense of the value and meaning of religious poetry against the grain of a secular society.

And here is an endorsement by G.C. Waldrep:

Thick and Dazzling Darkness undertakes the daunting task of exploring spirituality (qua poetry) in a way that connects such otherwise dissimilar poets as the self-consciously backward-looking Robinson Jeffers, the peculiarly American modernism of Robert Duncan, and the (at)tendent postmodernism of Fanny Howe and Nathaniel Mackey. O'Leary creates a conceptual fabric through which we can "read" this diverse group of poets—some well-served in scholarly circles, others rapidly falling off the American poetry radar. Given our cultural predicament as Americans, this work could not be more timely.

And here is the table of contents:

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Religious Poetry in a Secular Age
1. A Mystical Theology of Angelic Despair: Writing Religious Poetry and the Trilogy of Frank Samperi
2. Robinson Jeffers, the Man from Whom God Hid Everything
3. Spiritual Osmosis: Absorbing the Influence in Geoffrey Hill’s Later Poetry
4. Prophetic Frustrations: Robert Duncan’s Tribunals
5. What Lies Beneath My Copy of Eternity? Religious Language in the Poetry of Lissa Wolsak
6. Catholics: Reading Fanny Howe
7. Robert Duncan’s Celestial Hierarchy
8. The Long Huthered Hajj: Nathaniel Mackey’s Esotericism
9. Apocalypticism: A Way Forward for Poetry
Conclusion: Why Not Be Totally Changed Into Fire?
Permissions
Notes
Bibliography
Index

It is my understanding that this book will also be available through the Knowledge Unlatched platform. Stay tuned for details. And in the meantime, convince your libraries - local and university - to buy a copy!