"Nothing can maim a poet’s practice like joy. As Henry de Montherlant noted, “Happiness writes white.” Few poets—in this century or any other—have founded an opus on joy. We can all drum a few ecstatic poems here and there, but poetry has often spread the virus of morbidity. It’s been shared comfort for the dispossessed. Yes, we have Whitman opening his arms to “the blab of the pave.” We have James Wright breaking into blossom, but he has to step out of his body to do so. We have the revelatory moments of Transtromer and the guilty pleasure and the religious striving of Milosz. W.H. Auden captured the ethos when he wrote, “The purpose of poetry is disenchantment.” Poetry in the recent past hasn’t allowed us much joy.
My own efforts to lighten this otherwise dour new collection seem pale. The poems about Christ salted through the book spend way more time on crucifixion than resurrection. I’ve written elegies galore, love poems bitter as those of Catullus. I’ve written from scorched-earth terror, and longing out the wazoo. My new asthetic struggle is to accommodate joy as part of my literary enterprise, but I still tend to be a gloomy and seratonin-challenged bitch.”
this is what I'm agonizing over re: my thesis and my paper "The Poet as Theologian". How can I glorify God when I write cheap, easy confessional poems?
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