Prayerful Reading and Writing

Born in England, where his parents were so dismayed by his poor academic performance that they considered apprenticing him to a London butcher, Kevin Hart eventually moved to Australia, where he experienced a life-changing transformation, converted to Catholicism, and became one of the country's most distinguished scholars and poets. Discussing his new book of poems, Morning Knowledge, on Australia's abc Radio National, he acknowledges that most of his poems grow out of his Catholicism, especially its emphasis on prayer. "In Catholicism," he says, "prayer suffuses all of one's life by virtue of the sacraments. Prayer is not something that occurs just on Sunday; it doesn't occur only at particular moments of intensity or by particular conventions; one's whole life is given up to prayer in many, many modes."

Hart then explains that he is drawn principally to the mystical and contemplative aspects of prayer:

The mystical strain is the strain whereby the whole day can be given over to prayer through what we call lectio divina, prayerful reading of Scripture, through practice of meditation when one uses the imagination and the intellect with respect to images, and then, finally, and most difficult of all, contemplation, where one empties the mind of all images and all ideas, all concepts, in order to be completely attentive to God. What you find . . . in this mystical strain of Catholicism is that you're put in relationship with God, and you have many opportunities not only of talking with God in petitionary prayer, but also of listening to God, being attentive to God.

Hart has traveled many roads to reach his complex understanding of mystical prayer. His mastery of philosophy, literary theory, theology, and poetry has made him a jack-of-all-trades. As Hart moved from continent to continent and department to department, he published a dozen scholarly books ranging in subject from Maurice Blanchot, Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Luc Marion, and Jacques Derrida, to Samuel Johnson and A. D. Hope. He has also published nine books of poetry, establishing a reputation—in Harold Bloom's words—as "the most outstanding Australian poet of his generation."

Hart's Morning Knowledge is an impressive addition to his ever-expanding oeuvre. He explores many subjects in his new book—the deaths of his parents, youthful romance, old Australian friends, domestic chores, flora and fauna in different parts of the world, his boyhood trip to the London butcher to get a job—but his poems repeatedly return to his religious concerns. One of two poems titled "Prayer" typifies his religious approach to experience. He begins by addressing his conception of a mystical God immanent in all beings, then recounts his paradoxical approach to God as a retreat into the past when he felt particularly close to the divine, "When crumpled water showed its dark, wild life / And brooding morning shadows held me safe / And everything was overfull with us." In the other poem titled "Prayer" he pleads for a return to a similar revelatory moment in the past when he felt unified with the natural world and its divine Creator.

Thinking of a spring day in which dogwood flowers appeared as "petal-prayer[s]" and "bee angels" flew to them "to smell / What prayer is," he ends his litany with a solicitation to God: "Give me that month / And let it be the one great prayer I breathe / Without a word." Like Gerard Manley Hopkins, a poet who has had an enduring influence on his poetry, Hart imagines Creation to be "charged with the grandeur of God." During certain visionary moments natural objects—trees and bees, birds and flowers—"flame out" in an expression of the Creator's awe-inspiring mystery. Hart's goal is to re-create and redeem those moments in his poems.

Like many writers who have wanted to pay tribute to the sublimity of the Creator and Creation, Hart is caught in a dilemma. He realizes that his prayers and paeans are constructed of words that can only gesture—like...