The Reading Life

Review of Scott Cairns' Poetry

Scott Cairns, by my lights, is one of the greatest living American poets whose work digs beneath the surface of the profane to lift up the sacred. I first discovered Cairns’ poems in 2004 at the Calvin Festival of Faith & Writing; I bought his Idiot Psalms and received a vocabulary to approach the mystery of an awe-some God.

Most of Cairns poetry sounds like prayer, like psalms. But, as a former Protestant and now Greek Orthodox, Cairns carries readers from the fallacies of our unintentional reformations into an experience where words not merely matter but are the matter. We too often fall prey to the heresy of dividing word from spirit, body from soul, but Cairns’ poems reify us.

His poetry requires re-reading, hearing, and even tasting, if it can be phrased that way. In Endless Life—which is an adaptation of mystical writings from the Christian tradition into poetic form—Cairns begins with a prologue from the 14th c. “The Cloud of Unknowing” that admonishes readers for how to read spiritually: “read slowly, and thoroughly, tasting each word’s trouble….” If not, one may read a passage that should be harrowing and instead assume its affirmation.