“Furey has written an important book…the use of a wide range of writers who are seldom discussed together helps to strengthen Furey's argument that the trend in early modern England and in the American colonies was not to use poetry merely as a means of introspection; rather the poems reflect attempts to build relationships and community with the audience, be that audience lover, patron, or God. Furey's historicized close readings of the poems are illuminating and compelling. This wonderful book deserves to be read and discussed, and it should prove influential in the years to come...Essential.”

Choice

"Constance M. Furey’s Poetic Relations: Intimacy and Faith in the English Reformation brings the author’s expertise as a religious studies scholar and wide-ranging familiarity with literary scholarship in early modern religious poetry. . .guided by the astute perception that ‘form is the medium of relationality,’ [it] may attract interest for its conceptual rigor."

Recent Studies in the English Renaissance

“Poetic Relations benefits from Furey’s wide learning in the fields of literary and religious studies. Using a variety of human relationships—from friendship to love to marriage—as models, Furey investigates the nature of the ties between the speaking I of the lyric poem and the reader. She argues that poems should be understood as essentially relational encounters rather than private utterances. This ‘relational poetics’ encourages an important ethical reimagining of poetry and of selfhood, proposing that we understand both lyric texts and people as fundamentally dependent on connection.”

Kimberly Johnson, author of Made Flesh: Sacrament and Poetics in Post-Reformation England

“In this compelling and deftly argued book, Furey dismantles binary assumptions about selfhood that remain prevalent in gender studies and religious studies. Contending that early modern Puritan poets should not be dismissed as grimly solitary or solipsistic individuals, she ​​demonstrates how these poets stand as crucial resources for grasping the relational and poetic constitution of selfhood.”

M. Gail Hamner, author of American Pragmatism: A Religious Genealogy

“This beautifully written and incisive study insists that no single model of relationality is definitive of the era; on the contrary, it is the richness of the ways in which relationality is enacted within the poetry of Donne, Lanyer, Herbert, and others that propels Furey’s timely book and makes it so exciting to read.”

Amy Hollywood, author of Sensible Ecstasy: Mysticism, Sexual Difference, and the Demands of History

"Furey is a sensitive reader of poetry and a graceful, accessible writer; she is both confident and generous in situating her readings amid other critics'."

Journal of Religion