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"Theopoetics" is a term that refers loosely to the aesthetic theories and poetics of using poetry to regain participatory access to the divine. Though the exact definition of theopoetics is somewhat contested, there seems to be overall agreement within the field defined by the term that it has something to do with recovering the experience of the presence of God as a poetic complement to theological rigor. What remains elusive, however, is a practical definition of theopoetical poetry: how would we recognize a theopoetical poem when we saw one? This article moves toward clarity on all three of these questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How might a Christian poetics of care open up new ground for formations of Christianity more attuned to material care for others, including nonhuman animals and the world? I argue that the openness afforded by a Christian poesis , where one is free to form various ways of being Christian through the aesthetic acts of unmaking, remaking, and making, unbeholden to a narrow presumption of authorized "truth," offers the chance to create variations of and on the Christian, variations that should be finally evaluated by the care they create in and for the world. Because some parts of the Christian past and some parts of the profession of literary studies have been and continue to be so careless, I suggest that such a Christian poetics might help shift Christianity and literary studies into more caring forms of being in the world and the academy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article tries to draw this forum together in three ways. First, a Christian poetics has to do with hermeneutics, informed by a long tradition of biblical interpretation. Second, a Christian poetics takes up the discipline of wonder, which remains crucial to the scholarly work of research and teaching. Finally, a Christian poetics combines a sense of wonder with an emphasis on care. It asks how awe and action relate, seeking to understand the many ways texts not just transcend this world, but also transform it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A unique consultation took place in May 2021 that assembled literary scholars and theologians from across the U.S. and U.K. to reconsider the shape of a Christian poetics for the 21st century. This introduction highlights the goals and insights that arose from our three-day session, and then considers how the vision of Wendell Berry sheds light on our calling as scholars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay approaches the topic of Christian poetics via a postcritical reading of the figure of Father Brown. I look to Chesterton's literary creation as an opportunity for thinking about Christian charity and its importance for the way in which literary critics practice critique. Along the way, the essay explores the meaning of the postcritical, plays with the conventions of the detective genre, and focuses on some of the recent contributions to the so-called method wars by scholars such as Bruce Robbins and Rita Felski. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the importance of a visionary experience that Amy Clampitt had while visiting the Cloisters in New York City in 1956. Immediately afterwards, Clampitt began writing poetry for the first time, and her letters describing the experience evoke what is most distinctive about her later work: wonder before the world’s richness; an embrace of temporality and flux; the understanding that perception is the surest route to mystery. Clampitt remained an incarnational poet even after she left the church, committed to the claim that, as she put it, “whatever we know of incorporeal reality is to date inseparable from the channels that received it.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores a noteworthy difference between Alan Jacobs’s interpretation of Auden’s oratorio and mine. Jacobs sees the oratorio as a Christian poem and proof of Auden’s Christianity—which coincides with Auden’s turn away from his Romantic roots. I interpret the piece as a sign of Auden’s continuing commitment to his Romantic inheritance and intent to serve as an aesthetic (not religious) hero, exploring the aesthetic possibilities to which his imagination is drawn. After delineating the problems each of us has in applying our respective claims, I explain mine as offering the more troublesome challenge of the two. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Orientius's Cotnmonitorium contains a well-known passage describing the damage done to the landscape of Gaul following the barbarian invasions of the early fifth century. This article examines the juxtaposition of the ruined physical world and the spiritual world beyond in the Commonitorium and three other poetic texts from this period--the Epigramma Paulini, Ad coniugem, and De prouidentia Dei. Compared to his contemporaries, Orientius is shown to be less absolute in his renunciation of the world around him. Situating these works in the ecclesiastical context of Gaul in the fifth century, I argue that Orientius offers a pastoral perspective on the Christian's relationship with the wider world, whereas his fellow poets represent the more exclusive views of the emerging ascetic elite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]