On Serious Earth

Celebrated poet Daniel Tobin takes on the largest questions of the meaning and durability of language turned to art in On Serious Earth: Poetry & Transcendence. In the aftermath of Postmodernism, is there any lasting reason to believe that the timeless might inform our art? And if so, are we able to make value judgments about what among the productions of time most deserves to endure? Tobin finds guiding lights in a wide range of thinkers and poets, including Simone Weil, David Bentley Hart, Marilynne Robinson, Agha Shahid Ali, R. S. Thomas, Gwendolyn Brooks, B. H. Fairchild, and Natasha Trethewey. Navigating deftly between relativism and authority, nihilism and positivism, Tobin strikes a wise, informed balance.