A.D. Hope has long been Australia's most internationally renowned poet, yet Kevin Hart's new critical study of the 85 year old poet is the only one devoted to his work. Hart seeks to read Hope's poetry and criticism in terms of several overlapping contexts: critical debate about Australian poetry; twentieth-century poetry as a whole (including French, German, and Russian poets who have influenced the poet); Hope's intellectual and cultural commitments (such as his aesthetic theory, as drawn from Aquinas and others, his interest in science and mathematics, his cultural politics in the university); and contemporary critical theory. Superbly argued, and written by one of Australia's finest young poets and critics, A.D. Hope is a worthy guide to the career of one of our most notable writers.

A.D. Hope (Australian Writers)

Literature & Fiction

Hart, Kevin

History & Criticism

Oxford University Press

The Dark Gaze: Maurice Blanchot and the Sacred (Religion and Postmodernism)

Maurice Blanchot is among the most important twentieth-century French thinkers. Figures such as Bataille, Deleuze, Derrida, and Levinas all draw deeply on his novels and writings on literature and philosophy. In The Dark Gaze, Kevin Hart argues that Blanchot has given us the most persuasive account of what we must give up—whether it be continuity, selfhood, absolute truth, totality, or unity—if God is, indeed, dead. Looking at Blanchot’s oeuvre as a whole, Hart shows that this erstwhile atheist paradoxically had an abiding fascination with mystical experiences and the notion of the sacred.The result is not a mere introduction to Blanchot but rather a profound reconsideration of how his work figures theologically in some of the major currents of twentieth-century thought. Hart reveals Blanchot to be a thinker devoted to the possibilities of a spiritual life; an atheist who knew both the Old and New Testaments, especially the Hebrew Bible; and a philosopher keenly interested in the relation between art and religion, the nature of mystical experience, the link between writing and the sacred, and the possibilities of leading an ethical life in the absence of God.

University of Chicago Press

Maurice Blanchot is among the most important twentieth-century French thinkers. Figures such as Bataille, Deleuze, Derrida, and Levinas all draw deeply on his novels and writings on literature and philosophy. In The Dark Gaze, Kevin Hart argues that Blanchot has given us the most persuasive account of what we must give up—whether it be continuity, selfhood, absolute truth, totality, or unity—if God is, indeed, dead. Looking at Blanchot’s oeuvre as a whole, Hart shows that this erstwhile atheist paradoxically had an abiding fascination with mystical experiences and the notion of the sacred. The result is not a mere introduction to Blanchot but rather a profound reconsideration of how his work figures theologically in some of the major currents of twentieth-century thought. Hart reveals Blanchot to be a thinker devoted to the possibilities of a spiritual life; an atheist who knew both the Old and New Testaments, especially the Hebrew Bible; and a philosopher keenly interested in the relation between art and religion, the nature of mystical experience, the link between writing and the sacred, and the possibilities of leading an ethical life in the absence of God.

Lands of Likeness: For a Poetics of Contemplation

Religion & Spirituality

Christian Books & Bibles

Contemplation: The Movements of the Soul (No Limits)

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

Columbia University Press

What did Jesus mean by the expression, the Kingdom of God? As an answer, Kevin Hart sketches a "phenomenology of the Christ" that explores the unique way Jesus performs phenomenology. According to Hart, philosophers and theologians continually reinterpret Jesus’s teaching of the Kingdom so that there are effectively many Kingdoms of God. Working in, while also displacing, a tradition inaugurated by Husserl and continued by philosophers such as Heidegger, Marion, and Lacoste, Hart puts forward a new phenomenology of religion that claims that ethics and religion are not always unified or continuous.

Kingdoms of God (Philosophy of Religion)

Indiana University Press

The poems of Kevin Hart have nurtured international poetry audiences for nearly four decades. Translations of Hart’s work have appeared in Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, and Vietnamese, among other languages, and bear witness to the growing interest in Hart’s poetry both in the United States and abroad. This volume performs a valuable service by bringing together the best of Hart’s work from seven published collections, some of them now out of print, and from his forthcoming book, Barefoot. Wild Track reveals a poet capable of articulating genuine feeling and considerable philosophical depth. This volume confirms Hart’s standing as one of the most sophisticated poets writing today.

Wild Track: New and Selected Poems

University of Notre Dame Press

With Young Rain Kevin Hart continues his 'ransmemberment of song' into a realm all his own. . . ." -Harold Bloom"Kevin Hart is one of the finest poets writing in English today. I admire his erudition and his imagination, the way history, art, myth, literature and many things come together in his poetry. This book will be a feast for those who want poetry to be both metaphysics and song. An absolutely original and indispensable poet." -Charles Simic  "Kevin Hart is one of the most sophisticated poets writing today, though the poems in Young Rain are disarmingly straightforward. They have an ease and lucidity that makes them seem almost casual, so that it is with a feeling of surprise that you realize that you have been drawn into a conversation of the utmost gravity concerning the private reaches of the self, darkness, and death, as in the powerful sequences 'Night Music' and 'Dark Retreat.' There is nothing oppressive about them, though, and the limpid rigor of the intellect they embody is leavened by the tenderness and sensuality of the poems in another sequence, 'Amo te Solo,' which possesses a lustiness that would seem at home in the Bible but has almost disappeared from contemporary poetry." -John Koethe  In a 1985 interview with fellow poet John Kinsella, Kevin Hart reflected on the nature of poetry: "People sometimes think that the spiritual world is distinct from, even distant from, this world. . . . But the spiritual world is within this one: not as a secret, but as a radiance. . . . We find it through God's grace and our attention. Poetry is one form of attention, and poetry does not lead us to another world: it shows us this world, this relationship, this chair, this ivy on the outside wall." In Young Rain, Hart continues his exploration of the mysterious radiance within this world. ". . . Kevin Hart is the best Australian poet of the past 25 years." -Mark Strand

Young Rain

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hart, Kevin. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Hart, Kevin

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hart, Kevin. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

A.D. Hope (Australian Writers)

The Dark Gaze: Maurice Blanchot and the Sacred (Religion and Postmodernism)

The Dark Gaze: Maurice Blanchot and the Sacred (Religion and Postmodernism)

Lands of Likeness: For a Poetics of Contemplation

Lands of Likeness: For a Poetics of Contemplation

Contemplation: The Movements of the Soul (No Limits)

Contemplation: The Movements of the Soul (No Limits)

Kingdoms of God (Philosophy of Religion)

Wild Track: New and Selected Poems

Young Rain