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Article: Poet of the hidden God.(poet R.S. Thomas)(Obituary)
- Article from:
- The Christian Century
- Article date:
- January 17, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 The Christian Century Foundation. 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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R. S. THOMAS: 1913-2000
THE FINEST Christian poet alive today is the Welsh poet R. S. Thomas. Our century has produced some magnificent Christian poetry, but R. S. Thomas has written the most convincing." So commented poet Mark Jarman in a 1998 interview from the Writer's Chronicle. We can no longer claim Thomas as a major living poet: he died on September 25 at the age of 87. But we can pay tribute to the extraordinary Christian poetry that he left us.
It is not a cozy, pious poetry. Thomas is often called the "poet of the hidden God." Poem after poem finds him kneeling in a dark empty church, waiting for a God who refuses to appear or speak. "To one ...