{"product_id":"blowing-clover-falling-rain-paperback","title":"Blowing Clover, Falling Rain: A Theological Commentary on the Poetic Canon of the American Religion - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eW. Travis Helms\u003c\/b\u003e (Author), \u003cb\u003eMalcolm Guite\u003c\/b\u003e (Foreword by)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe field of theopoetics explores the ways in which we \"make God\" (present)--particularly through language. This book explores questions of theopoetics as they relate to the central poetry of the American Sublime. It offers a fresh, theological engagement with what literary critic Harold Bloom terms the American religion (transcendentalism: Emerson's homespun mysticism). Specifically, it seeks to rehabilitate Emerson's concept of self-reliance from the charge of gross egoism, by situating it in the context of normative mysticisms Eastern and Western. It undertakes a more poetic approach to reading theologically-inflected poetry, by exegeting four poets collectively constituting Bloom's American religious \"canon\" Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Wallace Stevens, and Hart Crane. It utilizes a modified version of the ancient fourfold allegorical mode of reading Scripture, to draw out theological dimensions of four quintessential texts (Nature, \"Song of Myself,\" \"Sunday Morning,\" \"Lachrymae Christi\"), in order to offer a more imaginative way of reading imaginative writing. Building on Emerson's contention, \"just as there is creative writing, there is creative reading,\" and Bloom's claim, \"a theory of poetry . . . must be poetry, before it can be of any use in interpreting poems,\" it demonstrates the unique, viable ways in which poems are able to \"do\" theology--and perform or embody theopoetic truths.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eTravis Helms serves as priest to the Episcopal Student Center at the University of Texas. He is also the founder and curator of LOGOS Poetry Collective, a liturgically-inflected reading series that congregates in east Austin. His poetry and essays have appeared in a number of journals, including \u003ci\u003eBook 2.0\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eNorth America Review\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eNew Haven Review\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eNoesis\u003c\/i\u003e. He was the inaugural William W. Cook Frost Place Fellow, and winner of the Arthur Sale Poetry Prize.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n        \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 232\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.49 x 9 x 6 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e November 06, 2020\u003c\/div\u003e\n            ","brand":"Books by splitShops","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42101133181063,"sku":"9781725258402","price":46.08,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0601\/2623\/2711\/files\/ed15025fec03dc1ef9e008d4e83b99f5.webp?v=1732391229","url":"https:\/\/booksby.splitshops.com\/products\/blowing-clover-falling-rain-paperback","provider":"Books by splitShops","version":"1.0","type":"link"}