Join my poetry club!
Online Class: Singing Out of Silence
Why, when everything else was ripped away from them, would two men devote their lives to poetry?
This course explores this question and proposes lessons that the broader Christian community can learn about the importance of poetry in times of exile and how we might integrate poetry into our thinking and worship.
Together, we'll delve into the work of Osip Mandelstam, an early 20th century poet who was exiled and ultimately murdered by Stalin. Christian Wiman, Mandelstam's translator and a poet himself, will help us develop our understanding of Mandelstam's world and faith. Wiman, a contemporary poet, has struggled through his own situation of exile. A year into his marriage and shortly after beginning to rediscover his own relationship with faith, Wiman was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer.
Two theologians—Hans urs von Balthasar and Karl Barth—situated in time and place between Mandelstam and Wiman, will be our conversation partners.
Through weekly explanations of their theology along with two to four poems of Mandelstam's (translated by Wiman), we'll weave together an understanding of how poetry helps us to thrive through six paradoxes of exile. Feel free to click "preview" to see an outline of the course.
This course will take place over 8 weeks and will include all necessary readings.