American poets pioneered free-form verse. Though Walt Whitman did write sometimes in traditional rhyme and meter, he is most famous for his stunning free-form poetry. It was controversial not only for ...

This encyclopedia provides a surprisingly complete collection of entries on American poetry and poets from the early colonial to the contemporary era. Included are both major and lesser-known poets ...

Christian Poetry in America Since 1940: An Anthology, edited by Micah Mattix and Sally Thomas, calls to mind the old quote attributed to Mark Twain, "Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated." As ...

Religious language, believing and non-. David Citino’s collection The Invention of Secrecy takes perhaps the most conventional route by presenting faith as something that has lapsed into an element of ...

Poetry is close to my heart. I would be lost without its very specific magic, its ability to spark wonder and shock and to open up fresh vistas on life in God. But as W. H. Auden famously says in his ...

I recently taught a short six-class course for Homeschool Connections on “Poems Every Catholic Should Know.” The text for the course was my book of the same title, which is an anthology of Christian ...

Poet and professor of divinity Christian Wiman says that there are all kinds of poems he’s turned to during this pandemic. He especially enjoys poems that are joyful and have helped him perceive the ...

In Spencer Reece’s poem “Ayer,” from his new collection, Acts, the priest-poet talks about his bishop, who “had spent the day visiting churches/ and a gypsy that was begging for the host.” The worth ...

To English poetry George Herbert made a notable contribution, — he devised the religious love-lyric. This forms his substantial claim to originality. To state, illustrate, and qualify that claim is ...

In the contemporary world, religious poetry is often dismissed as didactic or pietistic. But religious poetry in its themes and art is deeply allied to spirituality: Poetry's focus on meaning, ...

“Modern poets are talking about their digestive systems, their empty skulls, and of the refuse of humanity.” Quite the literary jab in 1962—from a nun, no less. But Mary Madeleva Wolff, C.S.C., was ...