The Necessary Poetics of Atheism: Essays and Poems

The Necessary Poetics of Atheism collects poems and essays by three award-winning contemporary poets who demonstrate how atheism informs their poetics: as a vehicle of political protest in the work of Martin Espada, as a form of activism and secular goodness in Lauren Marie Schmidt’s poems, and as an aesthetic confrontation of a theistic worldview in J. D. Schraffenberger’s writing. An enlightening foreword by the atheist philosopher Andrew Sneddon and a compelling introduction by poet Heid E. Erdrich invite us to read these uneasy, contentious, complex, powerful, triumphant voices that allow goodness to shine without God. Espada asks, Where, then, does an atheist poet put his or her faith? Where do we find our salvation? Some poets would say: Poetry. Put your faith in The Necessary Poetics of Atheism and find salvation in these provocative pages.