The title, and to some extent, the thematics of this book, is based on the volume's epigraph, a sentence of Geoffrey Hartman's: "The sacred has so inscribed itself in language that while it must be interpreted, it cannot be removed." I explore this sense of inscription and trace as it relates to poetry, especially with respect to aspects of Judaic thought and Buddhist influences, the "poetics" of Walter Benjamin and Heidegger, in relation to a number of the Objectivist poets (Oppen, Reznikoff and Rakosi), the Israeli poet, Hyam Bialik, Wallace Stevens, H.D., Robert Duncan and Allen Grossman.
The writings constitute a continuation of the interests and themes developed in my poetry and in my three previous essay collections, mainly reflections that focus primarily on poetic language among the poets whom I have referenced and thinkers who throughout their work have been concerned with the relationship of language to religious and spiritual traditions and to the questions of uncertainty and poetic truth value that surround those traditions
In a sense, the work investigates the poetics of what Gershom Scholem was indicating when he referred to Whitman's poetry as "secular holiness," a provocative yet fruitful juxtaposition of terms that suggests possibilities for new meanings, shadings and textures in the works and poets examined. This collection while not precisely a monograph has monograph-like qualities. Its implicit unity derives from the resonances among its themes and repeated reference to individual figures and works (threaded through its contents, for example, are over 300 mentions of Benjamin, 250 of Oppen, 100 of Scholem, and 90 of Heidegger). There are numerous references to Bialik, Duncan, Stevens and H.D. Among other writers woven into the texts are Celan, Merleau-Ponty, Stanley Cavell, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and Herbert V. Guenther.
The writings are organized into three related sections. The first comprises essays, presentations and conversations that range over topics such as the "sacred" dimension in poetry, Walter Benjamin's "now-time" poetics, the relation of Diasporic Judaism to poetics, Buddhist practice and poetry and the "sacred" as inscribed in language.
The second section contains essays and reviews on specific poets, the themes and questions their work provokes. The poets discussed include Oppen, Reznikoff and Rakosi, H.D., Robert Duncan and Allen Grossman, poets whose handling of language, history and questions of culture and myth are related to themes addressed in the first section.
The third section, or 'Coda, ' while maintaining thematic links with the preceding sections, is something of a departure, shifting the focus to very present matters. It consists of three works: 'Letter from the Mourning Field', a personal memoir about events surrounding the World Trade Center attacks of 9/11, a short essay/response entitled "In What Sense..." which takes up the question of poetry's efficacy with respect to our current cultural and political situation and last, a recent wide-ranging interview that covers many phases of my writing and thinking about poetry.
Michael Heller's most recent books of poetry are Telescope: Selected Poems, Dianoia, and Dans le signe, translations of his poetry in French. His libretto/poem for Constellations of Waking, a work based on the life of Walter Benjamin, was published in 2019. Among his many awards and honors are the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Prize, a New York Foundation on the Arts Fellowship, the National Endowment for the Humanities Poet/Scholar Award and the Fund for Poetry. A collection of essays on his work, The Poetry and Poetics of Michael Heller: Nomad Memory, was published in 2015.
