| In an age of uncertainty, often characterized as postmodern, one may wonder what contemporary religious poetry might look like, how it might reflect literature of the past and how it might contain nuances unlike religious writing from any other period. In the late twentieth century and up to the present day, a religious poetics of the Christian faith in American poetry is enriched and enlightened by transformative conversations on notions of God, the Other, the world, and the self; furthermore, this poetry contributes to contemporary conversations in ways that challenge and resituate such notions within the Christian faith. In light of much contemporary critique of the notion of selfhood, the poetry in this study suggests resituations of selfhood and Otherness. The poetry asserts a self that is realizable in one's relationship with the divine, which culminates simultaneously in a union with the divine and one's ethical response to the Other. In this study that pays close attention to grace and ethics, gender, and dialogue with the Holy Other, there is a gathering of metaphors of a religious and ethical nature which can speak to the postmodern condition in ways that affirm, value, and critique primarily the religious traditions of Christianity. Maya Angelou, Wendell Berry, John Berryman, Lucille Clifton, Maura Eichner, Louise Erdrich, Jane Kenyon, Robert Lax, Denise Levertov, Marilyn Nelson, Kathleen Norris, Anne Sexton, William Stafford, Alice Walker, Robert Penn Warren, and Richard Wilbur provide insights for how religious faiths can be valued in today's societies and viewed as significant elements of change in the world.; This study focuses on a thematic religious poetics (often illustrated through close readings of the poetry) that is prevalent in contemporary American poetry. Various literary critics discuss religious poetics at the level of individual poets; however, no critic in print focuses on religious poetics as a predominant theme (intersecting with Christianity or otherwise) in contemporary American poetry. This dissertation enacts readings informed by contemporary literary theory, Christian thought, theology, philosophy, feminism, womanism, multiculturalism, as well as historical, material, social, and cultural contexts, primarily in relation to poststructuralism and postmodernity. |
