Broken Altars: The Work of Form in George Herbert’s Temple

George Herbert’s collection of poetry is very visibly structured: his famous shape poems are only the most obvious in an entire collection that is cleverly and carefully shaped. While this formality has suggested to some an approach to poetry either rigid and conventional or quaint and fussy, the content of the poems is far less fixed. It is deep and meditative, doubtful and unsettled. The poet is in pursuit of an emotional or spiritual authenticity he finds elusive, and that seems specifically precluded, even on his own account, by the highly artful forms of his poems. Close attention to this apparent discrepancy between the form and the content of the poetry reveals a richer understanding of the way form works—or the work form does—in Herbert’s spiritual poetics.