The Mystery of It All: The Vocation of Poetry in the Twilight of Modernity

by Paul Mariani

Overview

Paul Mariani has spent fifty years writing poetry that celebrates the vibrant sacramentality of life in the twilight of Modernity, and writing the lives of some of our greatest modern poets. This is a life-spanning collection of his prose explorations of what it means to be a person of wonder and imagination.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781640603332
Publisher:	Paraclete Press
Publication date:	08/06/2019
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Paul Mariani is the University Professor of English at Boston College. He is the author of twenty, including eight volumes of poetry and biographies of Robert Lowell, John Berryman, Hart Crane, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and William Carlos Williams, which was a National Book Award finalist. His life of Hart Crane, The Broken Tower, was made into a feature film directed by and starring James Franco. He lives in western Massachusetts.

Table of Contents

Preface 9

Introduction The Vocation Of The Catholic Poet Today 15

I On The Quiver Of Mystery Gerard Manley Hopkins And His Influence 35

1 Hopkins And The Poetics Of Jesuit Spirituality 37

2 The Havoc And The Glory 72

3 The Franciscan Hearts Of Hopkins And Merton 86

4 "The One Sane Milkman, I Fear" 94

5 The Dublin Notebook 122

6 When Poets Write Letters 128

7 What The World Can Tell Us 135

II In Ordinary Time Variations On A Theme In Modern American Poetry 139

8 Wallace Stevens, Mystery Man 141

9 The Auroras Of Autumn 148

10 The River Of Language 154

11 "Not Less Than Everything" 161

12 Difficult Henry And The Dream Songs 171

13 What Lies Beyond Language 178

III Poetry In A Post-Christian Age 185

14 Charism And the Literary Imagination 187

15 "Who Is That on The Other Side of You?" 201

16 The Cry Of The Poor 206

17 In The Footsteps Of Ignatius 211

18 Can One Still Write A Christ-Centered Poetry? 216

Epilogue On The Work Still To Be Done 225

Notes 233

Editorial Reviews

Mariani remains our finest reader of Gerard Manley Hopkins, and his appreciation for that British Jesuit’s genius is borne from the synthesis of skilled close-reading and consideration of a complex life. In this book, Mariani pivots from Hopkins to a bevy of modern Catholic poets, before concluding with an insightful look at the state of the Catholic intellectual tradition at American universities. An expansive book that offers both wisdom and hope.” —Nick Ripatrazone, culture editor for Image Magazine, author of the novel, This Darksome Burn, and a collection of stories, Ember Days

“To read the never prosaic, always poetic, prose of Paul Mariani's The Mystery of It All is to feel called to action and then guided by a voice at once both lovingly personal and yet passionately prophetic, the voice of not just an intellectual but also a spiritual father, calling writers, teachers, and editors to preserve the "incomprehensible certainty" of the Mystery and a sacramental understanding of our world.” —Mary Ann B. Miller, professor of English, Caldwell University, and founding editor, Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry
 

From the Publisher