These Bright Shadows: The Poetry of Kathleen Raine

In her prolific work as a scholar and essayist—laying the “laborious foundations,” as she called it—Kathleen Raine spent little effort elucidating her meaning as a poet; but it becomes evident to any attentive reader that these labors give a resonant indication of the premises and values that inform her craft—on which, as a poet, she proceeded and wished finally to be judged. If there is to be a worthy—if belated—critical assessment of Kathleen Raine’s poetry, it must of necessity proceed on the basis of an appropriate understanding: especially in this case seeing that this is a poetry that rests upon premises far removed from the sort of values that, for the most part, are likely to preoccupy both the writer and reader of contemporary poetry. For this reason the reader will find in this book very little attempt to “judge” and every effort to elucidate. This collection of studies by the eminent perennialist author Brian Keeble, a long-time friend, colleague, and editor of the poet, is a series of regards, each having a focal point that differs from its neighbors, but which nonetheless is directed towards the same subject—the poet’s singular imaginative vision. Considered together, the reader will find in this book a reliably authentic foundation on which to build an appreciation of Kathleen Raine’s poetic accomplishment.

“Kathleen Raine’s vocation pretty clearly was to become a poet of religious vision—or, more precisely, a poet of Imagination in the high sense in which Blake used that term: the ‘Divine Humanity,’ the ‘Poetic Genius,’ the ‘Spirit of Prophecy,’ the power of inspiration, the vision of eternal things, our means of conversing with Paradise. Her fidelity to her own experience and way of perceiving is one of the major qualities of her poetry. As a poet of experience, she is without recourse either to the purity of the mystics or to the abstract coherences of the philosopher. One is impressed by the extent to which the literary quality of her work is affected by concerns that far surpass the present interests of the ‘literary world.’”—WENDELL BERRY, author of Jayber Crow, The Unsettling of America, and What Are People For?, among many other books

“The essays and the interview in this book—the first of its kind about Kathleen Raine—will be an excellent introduction to her work for those who don’t know it, and an aid for reflecting on it for those who do. As her long-time colleague, friend, and editor, and as a fine poet, noted author, and apologist for a perennialist approach to art, Brian Keeble has an understanding of Raine’s views on poetry that she herself would recognize. For both of them, poetry is a source of the transformative energies of vision that contribute to the wholeness of life. These Bright Shadows, in short, offers the reader multiple entryways into the ‘house of the soul’ that Raine never tired of saying is poetry’s true reason for being.”—ANDREW FRISARDI, Fellow of the Temenos Academy; author of Love’s Scribe: Reading Dante in the Book of Creation