This book of essays on poetic speech, viewed in a literary-critical, theological and philosophical light, explores the connections and disconnections between vulnerable human words, so often burdened with doubt and pain, and the ultimate kenosis of the divine Word on the Cross. An introductory discussion of language and prayer is followed by reflections linking poetry with religious experience and theology, especially apophatic, and questioning the ability of language to reach out beyond itself. The central section foregrounds the motif of the suffering flesh, while the final section, including essays on seventeenth-century English metaphysical poetry and several of the great poets of the twentieth century, is devoted to the sounds and rhythms which give a poem its own kind of «body».

Professor Małgorzata Grzegorzewska lectures at the Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw, Poland. Professor Jean Ward lectures at the Institute of English and American Studies, Gdańsk University, Poland. Professor Mark S. Burrows lectures at the University of Applied Sciences, Bochum, Germany.