POETREE

>>I've been blogging at Velveteen Rabbi since 2003. <<

I just love your blog title.

>>Perhaps because Judaism is the stuff of my professional life these days -- I work halftime as a rabbi<<

May I ask ... do you include an orange on your seder plate? I've read that some women rabbis do that.

>>So does all of this make me a "religious poet"?<<

Would you feel better about "spiritual poet" or "poet of the numinous" or some other version?

In my observation, there are several overlapping aspects:

1) Poetry that explicitly tackles motifs of divinity and the soul is spiritual poetry. Poets who regularly write about those topics are spiritual poets. A smaller subset may deal with specific religions, for religious poetry, etc.

2) For someone serious about their spirituality, who is more than a "Sunday Christian" (or equivalent of whatever faith), their beliefs and experiences of the numinous tend to permeate their worldview. So even when not writing about spirituality per se, it is likely to color their verse in subtler ways.

3) Poetry is exceptionally good at saying slant what is difficult or impossible to say straight. This makes it better for handling spirituality than other types of writing.

I think of myself as a spiritual poet. I'm eclectic Pagan, and poetry about various Pagan traditions is one of my main categories. But I've also written poetry that touches on other faiths. I have some fans who are Jewish, so there are several Jewish-themed poems (about wildly unrelated topics) posted to my website ...

"These Jews, Like Sand"
"The Mullah Goes to Chelm"
"The Wrong House"
"The Tales of the Righteous"