The Blasphemies of A.M. Klein

Type of resource
Author/collaborator
Title
The Blasphemies of A.M. Klein
Abstract
The author examines the debate over whether Montreal modernist poet A.M. Klein (1909-1972) was a "religious poet" or a secular poet whose work merely reflects his pride in his cultural inheritance. The author argues that Klien's poetry provides evidence of the three stages of religious growth: poems that remember an untroubled childhood faith, others that grapple with God's silence, and finally those that accept the darkness of incomprehensibility that is an inescapable part of believing. He concludes that "we must say against those who call him a religious poet because they find him a pious optimist, and against those who deny him this status because they find him a faith-denying writer of minor blasphemies, that A. M. Klein is a religious poet, not because he writes devotional piety, but precisely because his work reflects without veneer the bitter tensions of a soul that takes God seriously."
Publication
Canadian Literature : A Quarterly of Criticism and Review
Volume
No. 72
Pages
59-66
Date
Spring 1977
Language
en
URL
Citation
Russell, Kenneth C. “The Blasphemies of A.M. Klein.” Canadian Literature : A Quarterly of Criticism and Review No. 72 (Spring 1977): 59–66. https://canlit.ca/full-issue/?issue=72.
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