Abstract
In reflections on poetry, much has been written in recent years on the relevance of epic and drama to theology. Much less has been said about lyric, presumably in large part because of the shortness of the form and its apparently highly personal character. In this learned and fulsome study, Elizabeth Dodd (who is Programme Director in postgraduate studies at Sarum College) seeks to rectify this perceived lack of balance. However, she does so in a way that readers may not expect. Her intention is not to pursue the theological content of certain familiar poems (whether historical or contemporary) but rather to provide a general grounding for the theological importance of lyric.
To that end, she challenges any analysis that places an exclusive emphasis on individual self-expression. Rather, as part of the communion with self, there is not only a wish to address the wider community but also a desire that space be made for the address of the Spirit. With a focus primarily on that latter role, she offers a survey of significant moments in the history of the English lyric, in which one can see how space is afforded for this wider dimension. Beginning with medieval carols, she demonstrates how ‘babble’ language (nonsense words like ‘nowell’/‘noel’) or lines in Latin dislocate and so suggest a sense of otherness or ineffability. In the treatment of prayer in Donne and Herbert we find a far from dispassionate analysis, with the Spirit heard most effectively in the brokenness of the sinner’s address. Contemporary poetry is different again, as in the work of Gillian Allnutt, in which ‘the shortness of the line, the large gaps and ineffable connections between lines, all confront the relationship between the poetic word and the space that surrounds it … in the dynamic coinherence of word and breath in the fragmented lyric’ (pp. 134–5).
Given the great number of poems discussed, it was presumably not feasible to provide their actual text. Inevitably, that absence can impose greater demands on comprehension. But for the most part there is enough said to encourage readers to look up the originals where these are less well known, such as with the various Caribbean poets she discusses, or Warsan Shire and Kae Tempest. Indeed, even without the text, her discussion of Geoffrey Hill’s poetry (pp. 135–47) is among the best that I have ever read. Towards the book’s end she addresses the objection that her acceptance of the fragmentary character of much lyric poetry must lend support to the conclusions of the philosopher Galen Strawson, that there is after all no unitary self over time (p. 150). No, she responds; episodic memory ‘can craft new forms of coherence’ (p. 154).
This is a work that has proved difficult to summarize. Hopefully, though, the vignettes above provide some sense of the richness of its challenging reflections.