Revelation freshly erupting?

Abstract

Abstract

Can modern poetry be said to have a ‘revelatory’ quality, in theological terms? Arguably the strongest candidate for such an accolade is the work of Nelly Sachs. Here is ‘poetry after Auschwitz’, by a Holocaust escapee, of unique religious intensity. Sachs was awarded the Nobel Prize for her poetry in 1966. And yet her work remains almost completely unknown in the English-speaking world, a state of affairs that surely needs remedying.