Can we name some talented religious poets?

Question

I'll start---

Gerard Manley Hopkins.


(Are you paying attention, love Jesus?)

Answer 1

Most of them, actually. Particularly anyone from before the 1940s. Most of the black Harlem Renaissance poets were Christian. Nearly all of Wordsworth's contemporaries were religious. The central theme of most poetry is love, and that love is always inspired by religious or spiritual undertones.

In fact, the only poets that immediately come to mind that aren't religious are possibly Emily Dickinson (who always wrote about religion, but often derided it) and Stephen Crane.

The Beat Generation comes to mind in terms of non-religious poets, but only slightly as they experimented with everything.

Answer 2

T.S. Eliot

[Hildegard of Bingen (1098 - 1179)
Francis of Assisi (1181 - 1226)
Clare of Assisi (1193 - 1253)
Catherine of Siena (1347 - 1380)
Teresa of Avila (1515 - 1582)
John of the Cross (1542 - 1591)
John Donne (1572 – 1631)
George Herbert (1593 - 1633)
John Milton (1608 - 1674)
Anne Bradstreet (1612 - 1672)
Henry Vaughan (1621 - 1695)
Angelus Silesius (1624 - 1677)
Thomas Traherne (1636? - 1674)
William Blake (1757 - 1827)
Ann Griffiths (1776 - 1805)
Emily Brontë (1818 - 1848)
Christina Rossetti (1830 - 1894)
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 - 1889)
Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931)
Gabriela Mistral (1889 - 1957)
Ella H. Scharring-Hausen (1894 - 1985)
Czesław Miłosz (1911 - 2004)
Thomas Merton (1915 - 1968)
Geoffrey Hill (b. 1932)
Carolyn Joyce Carty (b.1957)

Answer 3

Sister of Ellen Sturgis Hooper
Julia Ward Howe
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Saadi
Ferdowsi
Hafiz
Mowlavi
Khayyam
Rudaki
Shams Tabrizi
Gregory of Narek
Henri Troyat

Answer 4

I'd certainly have said Hopkins. Also Christina Rossetti, Emily Dickinson, T.S. Eliot, William Cowper, William Blake, The "Gawain" poet...


lins, Shakespeare wrote nothing we'd call religious poetry and there's not a strong sense of Christianity in his poems. He was probably a believer, but the strongest sense you might get from his poems was a powerful attraction to beautiful young men.

Answer 5

Francis Thompson

Answer 6

Oscar Wilde, William Blake, Rumi, T.S. Eliot.

Answer 7

Well the poets in Saudi Arabia during the time of Muhammad (pbuh) who were the best in the world at that time, could NOT match that of the Qur'an. Muhammad, a mere man, could not produce a message such as that and as beautiful as it is, without Allah.

Answer 8

Dante Aligheri (his Divine Comedy was written in verse)
John Milton (Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained)
Homer (The Illiad and The Odyssey)
Ovid (Metamorphoses)
Virgil (The Aeneid)

Answer 9

They are not strictly poets, but from my tradition (Tibetan Buddhism), there are Milarepa & Long Chen Pa. Most of their writings were prose, but there was also some pretty inspiring poetry within their writings, as well.

Answer 10

Blake