REL 3170 - Poetry and the Sacred

Goals: Since the beginning of time, poets have given voice to the longing for, and discovery of the sacred. Poetry has been called “the song of our species,” and “the supreme result of language,” “fires for the cold” and “ropes let down to the lost.” From the biblical poets’ mysticism and prophetic impulse to the Sufi, Rumi’s ghazals, Dante’s map of heaven and hell, the visions of Kashmiri poet Lalla, Hindu mystic Mirabai, to Jewish poet Yehuda Amichai, American Buddhist poets Gary Snyder and Jane Hirschfield, to Joy Harjo, Rainier Maria Rilke and others, poets stir us at the level of our essential self. Poetry preserves mysteries and helps us experience kinds of truth not available to the reasoning mind. Poets can leave us feeling we are in the presence of God.

Content: Texts for this course will include: Holy Fire, ed., Halpern; In Mad Love and War, Joy Harjo; The Poems of Nazim Hikmet; Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman, Final Harvest, Emily Dickinson, Mary Oliver’s Poetry Handbook, Burning Bright, ed., Hampl, and others.

Credits: 4