Every Changing Shape: How poetry and mysticism illuminate one another across centuries

by Elizabeth Jennings

Discover how poetry and mysticism illuminate each other. This thoughtful study explores how Western poets and mystics shape their visions through language, offering a clear path to understanding the art and practice of mystical experience in verse. This book analyzes how poets turn inner experiences into accessible language, and how mystics describe their encounters with the divine. It examines the similarities and differences between poetic craft and spiritual seeking, showing how imagination, imagery, and interpretation work across centuries and languages. See how imagination and imagery unlock the secrets of mystical experience. Learn how poets and mystics approach words, truth, and transcendence. Explore the tension between inward experience and the outward art that expresses it. Understand how translations and textual choices shape our sense of mysticism in poetry. Ideal for readers of poetry, literary criticism, and those curious about how art and spirituality intersect in Western thought.

247 pages, Paperback

Published August 24, 2018

About the author

...also writing under the pseudonym
Lisa Marie Rice