Issue link: https://newsleader.uberflip.com/i/102968
Sarasota News Leader January 11, 2013 Page 80 interviews and writing his introduction, however, Leuzzi said he noticed many of the poets had done part of the work for him by frequently referring on their own volition to 18th century American poet Walt Whitman. This fortuitous realization, Leuzzi added, helped lead him to the title of the book, which is the pluralized form of a quote from Whitman's poem, Song of Myself. During the interview, he said to Cairns, "You have a poem called Bad Theology. What would you call a bad theology?" After Leuzzi finished reading excerpts from Passwords Primeval, answering questions about its development and signing copies, he took a moment to discuss with the News Leader his thoughts on a passage he had read aloud –– part of the transcription of his interview with Christian poet Scott Cairns. Asked by the News Leader if he feels the notion of "bad theology" can be applied to secular or nonreligious poetry, Leuzzi responded in the affirmative. "Anything, any poet or avenue of inquiry that tries to, in some ways, reduce the mystery to a certainty, if it cannot be certain, is problematic," he said. Cairns responded, "I guess any theology that presumes to have God in its pocket." Cairns qualified that as "any theology that replaces the enormous, immeasurable real with very measurable and very calculated replacements," adding that it "articulates as definitive INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR and conclusive that which is unknowable and without end." AND POET After the evening's events concluded, Tony Leuzzi commented to The Sarasota News Leader on the atmosphere he felt during the discussion in Bookstore 1: 'I liked seeing that many of those people in the audience knew each other already.'