NEWS

UNC professor, former student team up to produce anthology of Christian poetry

By DAVID WILLIAMSON
UNC News Services

CHAPEL HILL -- A distinguished University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill English professor and one of his students from the early 1970s have teamed up to compile and edit a new anthology of Christian poetry.

Baker Academic, a division of Baker Book House Co. of Grand Rapids, Mich., just published the annotated volume, "The Poetry of Piety." Among the 28 poets represented are Sir Walter Raleigh, John Donne, Andrew Marvell, William Blake, Thomas Hardy, Gerard Manley Hopkins, T.S. Eliot, C.S. Lewis and John Updike.

"When Ben Witherington was a student at North Carolina he took my course on 17^th century literature, which naturally contains a large number of religious poets and poems," said Dr. Christopher Mead Armitage. "He has since become professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary and author of more than 20 books.

"When he had me come and read at the seminary a few years ago, Ben suggested that we work together on compiling an anthology of Christian poems. I was to provide the literary commentary, and he would provide the theological commentary. That’s what we did."

Armitage selected the poems and wrote brief biographical sketches of the poets and explained the works as literature. Witherington described them briefly from the perspective of a theologian and provided questions for discussion by Church groups and others interested in issues the poets raised.

"We have included poems not just by people one would expect like Donne and Eliot, but also poems by African-American, Canadian and Australian writers," the UNC professor said. "All relate to Christianity in one way or another, with the earlier ones expressing religious devotion and some of the later ones expressing skepticism in various ways about religious issues."

The pair’s goal was not to be comprehensive by simply reprinting hundreds of poems, but rather to stimulate reflection and discussion, he said. A few of the works question Christianity’s impact and place in the modern world.

Other poets represented include Robert Herrick, George Herbert, John Henry Newman, Langston Hughes, Richard Wilbur, Elizabeth Jennings and Ted Hughes.

"It was a great pleasure to work in an interdisciplinary way with someone from a different discipline who has been a friend of mine for about 30 years," Armitage said.

The painting on the book’s cover is "El Espolio" by El Greco, a painter who has fascinated Armitage since his own student days hitchhiking around Europe and seeing the work in the cathedral at Toledo, Spain. A poem by Canadian Earle Birney included in the new anthology comments on the painting, which depicts Christ shortly before his crucifixion.

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Note: Armitage can be reached at (919) 962-4047.

Contact: David Williamson, (919) 962-8596