Poetry and Prayer: The Power of the Word II ed. by Francesca Bugliani Knox, John Took (review)

Never has there been a doubt about the Christian community’s reliance upon the practice of praying with the poetry of the Bible: The Psalms. However, early in the twentieth century, the relationship between poetry and prayer—their seemingly shared practices of attentiveness, contemplation, imagination, and intuition—became a source of literary, theological, and mystical/spiritual debate. The French literary critic and theologian, Henri Bremond, is generally credited with launching the modern debate with his work Prère et Poése (1926), in which he argued that both poetry and prayer share a common grounding in the human capacity for contemplation, such that, when we read or listen to poetry, we potentially move into a psychological space of quiet reflection. According to Bremond, the significant distinction between these two experiences is that while poetry may point in the direction of prayerfulness, only prayer itself, with its requisite divine grace, leads us into the higher realms of mystical prayer. Bremond’s text inaugurated a century-long debate among theologians, literary critics, philosophers, and scholars of Christian spirituality over the shared (or not) sources, practices, and outcomes associated with both poetry and prayer. Are the poet and one who prays with poetry on similar paths? Can non-biblical poetry serve to lead to mystical experience?

In furtherance of this ongoing dialogue a disparate group of scholars, representing multiple disciplines, have gathered in recent years under the moniker of “The International Power of the Word.” The second of these conferences, hosted by the University of London in 2012, provides the material for Poetry and Prayer: The Power of the Word II, edited by Francesca Bugliani Knox and John Took. This excellent collection of articles offers theoretical and practical engagements with the topic at hand. Especially noteworthy is the editors’ decision to include separate sections on pre-modern and twentieth century case studies of individual poems and poets. Given the rich diversity of materials included in this volume, I will highlight a representative sampling of articles; however, I assure you that none of the thirteen articles included in this volume disappoints with its content, expression, and conclusion.

The first part of the book considers five theoretical perspectives. David Lonsdale, who surveys representative approaches to the twentieth century disputes concerning poetry and prayer, offers the first point of view. Beginning with Bremond’s central claim that poetry and prayer, qua experience, share a common mystical quality even though the latter is of an entirely different order from the former, Lonsdale proceeds to survey some of Bremond’s subsequent interlocutors, including T.S. Eliott, William T. Noon, Karl Rahner, and Enda McDonagh. Most notable here are Lonsdale’s careful reviews of (1) Noon’s general objections to Bremond’s perspectives and, (2) Rahner’s take on prayer generally and a theology of the Word in particular.

In his article entitled “Poetry at the Threshold of Prayer,” Antonio Spadaro, SJ, draws from an interesting collection of sources, including the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the poetry of Emily Dickinson, Samuel Coleridge, John Donne, and Michelangelo, to propose that “God can even be present through His absence, the empty form of an unrecognizable presence . . . These are poets who have experienced, in one way or another, a profound connection between their poetic inspiration and the form of expression that is prayer” (64).

Jay Parini, in his article “Poetry as Immanence: How Language Informs Reality,” proposes that poetry and prayer are cousins, which “are intimately involved in ‘seeing’ nature, and therefore in working with the spiritual aspects of reality” (68). In short, both forms of expression provide a sort of incarnation, putting into words unspoken things and offering material images for spiritual truths. Parini borrows from the logos tradition in Christian scripture and history to assert that poetic language offers a sort of incarnation, an enactment of spiritual creation. To support his claim, he cites...