{"product_id":"gods-scrivener-9780226828688","title":"Gods Scrivener","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA biography of a long-forgotten but vital American Transcendentalist poet.     In September of 1838, a few months after Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered his controversial Divinity School address, a twenty-five-year-old tutor and divinity student at Harvard named Jones Very stood before his beginning Greek class and proclaimed himself the second coming. Over the next twenty months, despite a brief confinement in a mental hospital, he would write more than three hundred sonnets, many of them in the voice of a prophet such as John the Baptist or even of Christ himselfall, he was quick to claim, dictated to him by the Holy Spirit.     Befriended by the major figures of the Transcendentalist movement, Very strove to convert, among others, Elizabeth and Sophia Peabody, Bronson Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and most significantly, Emerson himself. Though shocking to some, his message was simple: by renouncing the individual will, anyone can become a son of God and thereby usher in a millennialist\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“In \u003ci\u003eGod’s Scrivener: The Madness and Meaning of Jones Very\u003c\/i\u003e, Clark Davis doesn’t spend much time on his subject’s spectacular breakdown. Instead, relying on new research, he painstakingly reconstructs everything that came before and after. . . . Mr. Davis wonders, at the end of his fine biography, if the world really needs ‘the strange purity’ of Very’s voice. But if you like your poems plain and unfussy, written as if every word mattered and were meant for you and no one else, give Very’s poetry a try. You will even get the occasional piece of useful life advice. Feeling too wrapped up in your own concerns? ‘Open thy window, gaze abroad \/ Go forth and walk an hour.’”\u003cbr\u003e   * Wall Street Journal *\u003cbr\u003e“Davis . . . enthusiastically argues for a ‘reevaluation of the existing biographical evidence’ in his sympathetic \u003ci\u003eGod’s Scrivener\u003c\/i\u003e. . . . To Davis, Very in the end is a kind of hero devoted to his vision and voice, a maverick committed to something like the beatitudes. He emerges as a kind of protomodern figure, resolute and true, who casts ‘a strong light on the compromises and half-truths of others.’” * New York Review of Books *\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eGod’s Scrivener\u003c\/i\u003e is a thoughtful, moving, and deeply researched portrait of the otherworldly mystic and poet Jones Very. Clark Davis reveals that, far from being the punchline of an old joke, the unjustly forgotten Very was nothing less than the stillness at the heart of Transcendentalism, joining Thoreau and Whitman as one of the era’s great poet-prophets who articulated a powerful and innovative response to the pressures of modernity. Davis’s biography radically deepens our understanding of the movement’s potential and its limits, a message with surprising resonance today. This is essential reading for anyone who cares about Transcendentalism, the poetry of faith and doubt, or the place of Christian mysticism at the heart of America’s longing for a better world.” * Laura Dassow Walls, author of \"Henry David Thoreau: A Life\" *\u003cbr\u003e“Massively well researched and well argued, \u003ci\u003eGod’s Scrivener\u003c\/i\u003e benefits from Clark Davis’s informed attention to a trove of documents not available fifty-six years ago when the last biography of Jones Very was published. By showing how the life, times, and works illuminate each other, Davis restores to us an author once considered one of the best sonnet writers in the language. Even as he establishes Very’s historical importance, Davis clearly explores both the strengths and dangers of his example.” * Robert Daly, author of \"God’s Altar: The World and the Flesh in Puritan Poetry\" *\u003cbr\u003e“Jones Very has been the lost Transcendentalist for decades, but Clark Davis has recovered him as a superb poet and penetrating spiritual mind in his remarkable \u003ci\u003eGod’s Scrivener\u003c\/i\u003e. This is the story of a moving and enlightening life, artfully told.” * David M. Robinson, author of \"Natural Life: Thoreau’s Worldly Transcendentalism\" *\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eGod’s Scrivener\u003c\/i\u003e, the first biography of the enigmatic and fascinating Transcendentalist poet Jones Very in more than half a century, is a masterful revaluation of both Very’s life and work. Davis’s careful analysis of Very’s sometimes ecstatic poetry and surviving accounts of his unconventional behavior help to make sense of Very’s state of mind during the period when he came to public attention in the intellectual, religious, and literary circles of Salem and the greater Boston area. Mining the poet’s neglected ‘commonplace books’ to great effect, Davis builds the most complete picture yet of the poet’s intellectual and spiritual development in his formative years.” * Helen R. Deese, editor, \"Jones Very: The Complete Poems\" *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eList of Figures\u003cbr\u003e Introduction\u003cbr\u003e Prologue: 1823\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I. “There is something very strange in it all”\u003cbr\u003e 1. Cousins\u003cbr\u003e 2. Federal Street\u003cbr\u003e 3. Eldest Son\u003cbr\u003e 4. Biography (I)\u003cbr\u003e 5. Cornelia Africana\u003cbr\u003e 6. Biography (II)\u003cbr\u003e 7. A Student’s Notes, 1833–34\u003cbr\u003e 8. A Poet’s Notes, 1834\u003cbr\u003e 9. Early Poems, 1833–35\u003cbr\u003e 10. The Uses of Faith, 1835\u003cbr\u003e 11. “Change of heart”\u003cbr\u003e 12. Scrapbook, 1835–36\u003cbr\u003e 13. Lamartine\u003cbr\u003e 14. Poems, 1835–36\u003cbr\u003e 15. “The Torn Flower”\u003cbr\u003e 16. Spiritual Freedom\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e II. “Flee to the mountains!”\u003cbr\u003e 17. “Part or particle of God,” 1836\u003cbr\u003e 18. The Messianic Moment\u003cbr\u003e 19. Mr. Tutor Very\u003cbr\u003e 20. Temptation and Peace\u003cbr\u003e 21. “My heart in life’s winter”\u003cbr\u003e 22. The White Mountains, 1837\u003cbr\u003e 23. Arrival\u003cbr\u003e 24. “Beauty”\u003cbr\u003e 25. Concord\u003cbr\u003e 26. Miracles\u003cbr\u003e 27. “Newborn bard of the Holy Ghost”\u003cbr\u003e 28. “The end of all things”\u003cbr\u003e 29. Madness\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e III. God’s Scrivener\u003cbr\u003e 30. Prince Hamlet\u003cbr\u003e 31. Asylum\u003cbr\u003e 32. “In obedience to the Spirit”\u003cbr\u003e 33. “Pierced through with many spears”\u003cbr\u003e 34. “Insane with God”\u003cbr\u003e 35. “Epistles to the Unborn”\u003cbr\u003e 36. “Between Very \u0026amp; the Americans”\u003cbr\u003e 37. \u003ci\u003eEssays and Poems\u003c\/i\u003e by Jones Very\u003cbr\u003e 38. Madness and Meaning\u003cbr\u003e 39. “True relations . . . in a false age”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e IV. Man of Peace\u003cbr\u003e 40. Nonresistance\u003cbr\u003e 41. “Heaven is a state and not a place”\u003cbr\u003e 42. War, Slavery, and Intemperance\u003cbr\u003e 43. “I war not, nor wrestle with the earthly man”\u003cbr\u003e 44. “But still the poet midst the tumult sings”\u003cbr\u003e 45. Knowledge and Truth\u003cbr\u003e 46. “The presence of things invisible”\u003cbr\u003e 47. “The Book of Life”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Acknowledgments\u003cbr\u003e List of Abbreviations\u003cbr\u003e Notes\u003cbr\u003e A Note on Sources\u003cbr\u003e Bibliography\u003cbr\u003e Index","brand":"The University of Chicago Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49400136106327,"sku":"9780226828688","price":28.5,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780226828688.jpg?v=1730469845","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/gods-scrivener-9780226828688","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}