Poetry as religion

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Vox Media Podcast Network

Politics, News, News Commentary, Philosophy, Society & Culture

4.5 • 11.1K Ratings

🗓️ 2 September 2024

⏱️ 54 minutes

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Summary

Sean Illing speaks with poet and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht, whose book The Wonder Paradox asks: If we don't have God or religion, what — if anything — do we lose? They discuss how religion accesses meaning — through things like prayer, ceremony, and ritual — and Jennifer speaks on the ways that poetry can play similar roles in a secular way. They also discuss some of the "tricks" that poets use, share favorite poems, and explore what it would mean to "live the questions" — and even learn to love them — without having the answers. Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), host, The Gray Area Guest: Jennifer Michael Hecht (@Freudeinstein), poet, historian; author References: The Wonder Paradox: Embracing the Weirdness of Existence and the Poetry of Our Lives by Jennifer Michael Hecht (FSG; 2023) Doubt: A History by Jennifer Michael Hecht (HarperOne; 2004) Rainer Maria Rilke, from a 1903 letter to Franz Kappus, published in Letters to a Young Poet (pub. 1929) Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman (1855) "Why do parrots live so long?" by Charles Q. Choi (LiveScience; May 23, 2022) "The survival of poetry depends on the failure of language," from The Tree of Meaning: Language, Mind, and Ecology by Robert Bringhurst (Counterpoint; 2009) "Traveler, There Is No Road" ("Caminante, no hay camino") by Antonio Machado (1917) "A Free Man's Worship" by Bertrand Russell (1903) Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority by Emmanuel Levinas (1961) Support The Gray Area by becoming a Vox member: https://www.vox.com/support-now Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Human beings have always chased after what we might call transcendence.
0:10.0	We're searching for some higher meaning, a way to connect with something beyond ourselves.
0:18.0	Things like truth and beauty. and yes, even the divine.
0:27.6	For much of our history, religion, for better or worse, has been the locus of so much of this seeking.
0:36.6	But the world, certainly the Western world,
0:40.5	is becoming less religious. For a lot of humanist types, this has been something like a tragedy.
0:53.9	The decline of religion meant that the language of spirituality also faded away
1:00.0	because these things were bound up with each other.
1:03.0	And the consequence of this has been a loss of the sense of the sacred in human life.
1:10.0	But does it have to be that way? of the sense of the sacred in human life.
1:11.6	But does it have to be that way?
1:14.5	Can we still speak of the sacred in our modern, secular world?
1:20.0	And if we can, what does that look like?
1:25.4	I'm Sean Elling, and this is The Gray Area.
1:37.1	My guest today is Jennifer Michael Hecht.
1:40.6	She's a poet and historian, which are two titles you don't often see next to each other.
1:46.0	But, as we'll talk about, she sees a lot of overlap between these disciplines.
1:52.0	She's written original poetry and has chronicled the histories of weighty ideas like doubt, the soul, and suicide.
2:01.6	Jennifer's book is called The Wonder Paradox,
2:04.6	Embracing the Weirdness of Existence and the Poetry of Our Lives.
2:08.6	In it, she tries to give new life to many things associated with religion,
2:14.6	like prayer and ritual and sanctity.
	...

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