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Article: Letters.(Letter to the Editor)
- Article from:
- The American Poetry Review
- Article date:
- November 1, 2005
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 World Poetry, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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DEAR EDITORS,
I approached Ira Sadoff's column, subtitled "The Spiritualization of American Poetry," with great interest, and was immediately puzzled and annoyed to find that he seems to make zero distinction between the words "spiritual" and "religious." The words are huge, of course, and bleed into one another like "soul" and "spirit" do, or like "stone" and "rock" for that matter. But I believe--both in his essay and in the world at large--"religious" usually refers to a more political and social set of traditions to be contrasted with "secular," whereas "spiritual" usually refers to a more personal, private collection of attitudes perhaps contrasted with ...