Title: The Religious/Erotic Poetry of Reynolds Price
Abstract: Although Reynolds Price's first novel, Long and Happy Life, has sold over million copies since it won first William Faulkner Prize in 1962, it was not until 1999 that he burst into really world-wide eminence. At that time, he joined his contemporaries John Updike, Joyce Carol Oates, and Toni Morrison in receiving what Morrison calls the (1)--which is to say that, on December 6, 1999, Price found himself on cover of TIME magazine, guaranteeing that at least one hundred million people would see his name on that cover. Unlike Updike, Oates, and Morrison, however, Price's face did not appear on cover; instead, Price's name was next to Renaissance portrait of Jesus alongside headline that reads, Novelist Reynolds Price offers new based on archeology and Bible. Inside magazine, this cover story begins with TIME'S statement that A great novelist and biblical scholar examines what faith and historical research tell us after 2,000 years and emerges with his own apocryphal Gospel (85). As pleasing as this anointing was to Price's admirers, there are two problems with article's statement. First, although Price indeed has searched apocryphal books of Bible--which he does believe deserve more respect than they often receive--it is misleading to call his translation of Gospels apocryphal. For some forty years, he has painstakingly, line by line, written his own translation of Gospels with meticulous eye toward legitimate scholarship, thereby earning widespread respect of community of Bible scholars. Secondly, although Price is best known as novelist, I would argue that his greatest book is his Collected Poems, five-hundred-page volume published in 1997. While it lacks cathedral scale and design of his major novels, poetry may, to paraphrase Robert Frost, make up in height for what it lacks in length. Price's arrival as poet occurred in 1982, with talk at South Atlantic Modern Language Association convention that he entitled Love Across Lines (later published as an essay). This title refers to a love, almost Wagnerian in intensity (313), of novelist for poetry and of poet for novels. As it happens, 1982 was also year Price brought out his first book of poems, Vital Provisions, forerunner of three later volumes: The Laws of Ice (1986), The Use of Fire (1990), and The Unaccountable Worth of World (1997). The latter volume occupies last hundred pages of The Collected Poems, in which all of Price's poems are gathered. (2) Price's delay until mid-career to begin writing poetry may have been advantageous for his poetic oeuvre. greatly erudite, aesthetically gifted man--like John Updike, fine graphic artist; like Joyce Carol Oates, passionate devotee of music--Price brought large and mature array of cultural interests to these five hundred pages, including narrative inventions based on Greek and biblical sources, graceful tributes to favorite singers (Leontyne Price, James Taylor) and movie stars (Vivien Leigh, James Dean), and elegiac memories of other poets (W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Robert Frost, Robert Lowell). Interwoven with these public poems are many devoted to intensely felt private intimacies, typically involving parent, lover, or deceased friend, though he leavens tone at times with affectionate poems about encounters with creatures of his rural neighborhood--a heron, deer, or snake. Across rich variety and abundance of this poetic corpus, no theme is more central or more fascinating than interplay between Christ and Eros--that is, between poet's devout religious imagination and his powerful erotic sensibility. In end, this topic evokes most powerful, original, and sustained stream of creativity in The Collected Poems, giving book as whole its central structure, narrative drive, and dramatic interest. …
Publication Year: 2002
Publication Date: 2002-03-22
Language: en
Type: article
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