Questions of the Infinite: Faith and Limitation in Contemporary Poetry

Abstract

This essay explores how contemporary poets make meaningful the human encounter with the divine. It weaves close readings of poems by Jorie Graham, Carl Phillips, and Kaveh Akbar with the author’s personal experience to convey how prayer can still be a viable poetic tool despite our age of scientific skepticism. The essay argues that poets create a space in which we can imagine transcendence as a possibility, where grace may someday come.