Twelfth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

I consider American poets who generate an oracular or religious voice, similar to Duende, when writing about cathartic or traumatic experience. Often the language used to represent such experience is designed to induce in the poet the condition of ekstasis, an elevated state of illumination where one is able to stand outside oneself. Ekstasis as a form of religious experience is postulated as key component of Longinius’s concept of the Sublime. In the Western tradition, discovering (or questioning) one’s spiritual beliefs can be triggered by an incidence of ekstasis, where the poet is able to reach a deeper level of ecstatic truth by experiencing a catharsis. Such a catharsis often becomes represented in a poem’s text in the form of epiphanic language, when the poet is exposed to (or becomes the vehicle for) an oracular experience. A Biblical example would be Moses’ wandering in the wilderness and finally coming to hear and report God’s voice coming from within the burning bush. There are numerous examples of such oracular language to be found in the work of modern and contemporary American poets. In my paper, I more closely examine the use of oracular language and representations of ekstasis in five poets whose work reflects the structure of oracular experience: three whose work is rooted in Delphic narratives of Christianity and two whose work is rooted in narratives of Judaism. The first three are Robinson Jeffers, Elizabeth Bishop, and W.S. Merwin; the second two are Gerald Stern and Philip Levine.

Presenters

Alan Soldofsky
Professor of English; Director of the Creative Writing Program, English and Comparative Literature Department, San Jose State University, California, United States