'Between the blank page and the poem': Reading Simone Weil in Contemporary American Poets

This essay considers how Simone Weil figures in—and has been re-configured through—the work of three contemporary American poets for whom her legacy is a source of continuing inspiration—and consternation. The essay looks at how Weil's biography and philosophical writing figure in the work of Fanny Howe and Stephanie Strickland, and briefly at Jorie Graham, whose poetics are largely drawn from the paradoxical dialectic of Weil's life and works. The liminality of Weil's beliefs and her elusive, intermediary authorial status encourage poets to embody, quote, and paraphrase her work, seeking to grapple with the possibilities of the life of the spirit in the modern world.