Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

John Frederick Nims’ "Beautiful Atheist" is a sharp, playful, and deeply nuanced poem that stages an intellectual and sensual debate between a believer and a skeptic within the intimate space of a love affair. Structured as a lively canzonetta—a song-like form with lightness and lyrical interplay—the poem fuses wit, theological critique, and romantic passion into an intricate dance of faith and doubt.

The poem opens mid-conversation, mid-action, "In bed, as the feathers flew, push came to shove:" immediately immersing the reader in a physical and intellectual confrontation. The phrase "push came to shove" suggests not only a lover’s quarrel but also a metaphorical struggle—perhaps between belief and disbelief, certainty and skepticism. The imagery of "feathers flew" implies both a literal bed and a symbolic space where divine or angelic imagery is being dismantled.

The female speaker teases the male with irreverence: "'The Beard!' she teased. 'His Regalia’d Babe! Their Dove / Yoohooing in tongues! Your three-ring show above!'" Here, Nims condenses Christian iconography—the Father ("The Beard"), the Son ("Regalia’d Babe"), and the Holy Spirit ("Their Dove")—into a carnival spectacle, dismissing the Trinity as a "three-ring show." The phrase "Yoohooing in tongues" mockingly evokes Pentecostal enthusiasm, reducing spiritual revelation to mere noise. This tone of playful blasphemy marks the speaker as a confident atheist, unafraid to poke at sacred symbols.

The male lover, likely a believer or at least more reverent, counters with a softer plea: "Your klutzy puppetry, love. I've notions of / A something other—" His words suggest a faith that is neither dogmatic nor rigid but open to "a something other," an ineffable presence beyond human comprehension. However, the woman interrupts him with sharp certainty: "'You've notions! Fact’s the glove / I’d fling in their face, your notions!'" She dismisses faith as an evasion, a retreat into comforting illusions rather than tangible reality.

The phrase "Fact’s the glove / I’d fling in their face" alludes to the medieval tradition of throwing down a gauntlet as a challenge. The atheist woman positions herself as a challenger to religious belief, armed with empiricism. She refuses to let faith sweep reality "under some mythy rug," rejecting metaphor and mysticism.

Yet, as the poem shifts from debate to a more personal and sensual register, the woman’s certainty wavers. The line "Then the Dove / Descending in flame—?" momentarily reintroduces sacred imagery, possibly suggesting that the lover’s passion evokes the presence of something divine. The woman then proclaims, "I'm flame. In my eyes look, love—" positioning herself as the true source of transcendence. Love and desire, not theology, become her source of meaning.

At this point, the poem’s rhetoric softens, shifting from argument to awe. The speaker describes her "Dark pools, so aflow with light!"—a paradoxical image where her eyes, symbols of skeptical intelligence, still hold illumination. In that light, "Beard, Babe, Bird lost in its glow?"—perhaps meaning that love itself makes theological disputes irrelevant. The phrase "where hand in glove / Joy leads us, Lord of the Dance, through fullness of / The effulgence spectral in our nights of love." suggests that passion and devotion—whether to God or to one another—become indistinguishable. The "Lord of the Dance" allusion (likely referencing both religious hymns and Dionysian ecstasy) presents love as a sacred, kinetic experience that transcends intellectual disputes.

Structurally, the poem’s canzonetta form mirrors its content: the playful back-and-forth of belief and doubt, faith and passion. The light rhyme and shifting tones (from mocking to serious, from rational to romantic) capture the energy of a lovers’ quarrel that is also a philosophical exploration. The couple’s physical closeness contrasts with their ideological divide, and yet, by the end, love itself appears to resolve—or at least suspend—the debate.

"Beautiful Atheist" does not conclude with a victory for either argument. Instead, it suggests that belief and skepticism, like love itself, are fluid, constantly shifting forces. The atheist woman, so confident in her rejection of religion, still becomes "aflow with light," while the man, who seeks "a something other," finds his faith displaced by love. Nims leaves the reader in an unresolved space, where both divine and earthly passions shimmer and dissolve into one another, inviting the question: is love itself the ultimate faith?

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