Words of Devotion

• Published in: Tikkun Vol. 30; no. 4; pp. 51 - 54
• Main Author: DANOFF, DAVID
• Format: Book Review Magazine Article
• Language: English
• Published: San Francisco The Institute for Labor and Mental Health 22.09.2015; Duke University Press; Institute of Labor and Mental Health
• Subjects: Activism; Christianity; Current Affairs; General Interest; Poetry; Poets; Religious music; Religious Studies; Spirituality
• DOI: 10.1215/08879982-3328937
• ISSN: 0887-9982

O gracious God, to thee I crye and yell. which in turn yields to the Cavalier playfulness of Robert Herrick's "To God": Lord, I am like to mistletoe, Which has no root, and cannot grow Or prosper, but by that same tree It clings about; so I by Thee. which in time is succeeded by the earnest emotionalism of Christina Rossetti's "A Better Resurrection": My life is like a broken bowl, A broken bowl that cannot hold One drop of water for my soul Or cordial in the searching cold; Cast in the fire the perish'd thing; Melt and remould it, till it be A royal cup for Him, my King: O Jesus, drink of me. and so on, up through the plainspoken directness of Marie Howe's "Prayer": Every day I want to speak with you. [...]the scope of belief expands to encompass the deism of Alexander Pope ("The Universal Prayer"), the pantheism of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman ("A Noiseless Patient Spider"), and the pained agnosticism of Thomas Hardy ("To the Unknown God"). There are frequent compound words ("stabdazzling darkness," "icequiet," "blacksleek streets"), as well as sharp enjambments that break words across the line breaks ("little up- / ruptures re- / settling / as of dust," "in that back- // seat, sweat- / soaked, skin- // habited heaven / of days").