[Andrew Frisardi]

Mark,
I don't think in terms of doctrine either. Philosophy is less about knowing anyway than it is about a search for what you seek to know. Doctrines aren't knowledge but they can direct or orient you to knowledge. The quote about Jeffers, that his "God is impersonal and transtheological," would fit any truly mystical view of God. So I'm with him on that. The bit about God being identified totally with the creation is another story. I'm more with Blake: "Nature is Imagination itself." Blake criticized Wordsworth "copying" nature too much: "Wordsworth must know that what he Writes Valuable is Not to be found in Nature." And I wonder if the same point could be made about Jeffers. I don't know, since it's been a while since I read him. But Blake's point about mimesis and naturalism in art is a pretty major philosophical stance, not simply "poetic" in the sense of being "relative."