Praying to an Absent God: The Poetic Revealing of Simone Weil

Abstract

Beginning with Wallace Stevens, the influence of Simone Weil’s philosophy of decreation on American poetry has been substantial, if often underestimated. Focusing on recent volumes by Jorie Graham and Anne Carson, I suggest that this use of Weil’s philosophy presents a new way of understanding a dominant trend towards the metaphysical and difficult in modern American poetry. In various and divergent ways, both poets’ work explicitly points towards a decreated world and explores the ways in which poetry replaces prayer when God is absent. Both in form and content, this work expands upon and illuminates ideas put forth by thinkers such as Blanchot and Nancy, but it is primarily through an understanding of Weil and decreation that such work can best be approached. For Carson and Graham, poetry is the best expression of the imminent void; by placing their work in a definite Weilian context, it is possible to reveal their claims about the nature of truth, God and the material world more fully.

Notes

¹ Those poems are: ‘Praying (Attempt of June 8 ‘03)’ (8–11); ‘Praying (Attempt of June 6 ‘03)’ (16–19); ‘Praying (Attempt of May 9 ‘03)’ (24–27); ‘Praying (Attempt of June 14 ‘03)’ (31–33); ‘Praying (Attempt of Feb 6 ‘04)’ (65–68); and ‘Praying (Attempt of April 19 ‘04)’ (80–82).