Posted By Emily W on October 27, 2009

A Writer's Salon at a Bowling Alley

Next week, Chicago-poet Peter O’Leary and I will be talking about poetry and religion at The Works, a writer’s salon at a combination bowling alley and theater in Minneapolis.  We’ll be talking about listmaking and naming in our work and respective religious traditions.   In my talk, I’ll be relating naming to two different concepts of nothingness.  Here’s a snippet from my work in progress:

“There are two kinds of nothingness: the one that God broods over before language exists (the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water), and the nothing of the present, an abyss that is more endless than God because words do not delineate it. The nothingness of God is on the verge of thinking and saying. The nothingness of the present is a wordless, thoughtless suchness.

 Both forms of nothingness (if one can say that nothing has form) exist beyond ideas, that is to say, as pure ideas that cannot be realized or embodied in any fixed form. Name them, and they scurry into burrows. God’s nothingness evades naming by continually coming into being and looking to imperfect translators for its new name. The nothingness of the present evades naming by having no need of being named while containing all things expressing their names. In one, the human and divine interact; in the other, the sentient and insentient.”

Categories: Judaism, Poetry, Poetry and Judaism, Poetry and Religion
Tags: nothingness, Poetry, Poetry and Judaism