Kelly is an instructor of creative writing and literature. In this essay, Kelly questions Rogers's reputation for finding religion in nature, concluding that, in this poem at least, she finds religious experience only by going outside of the natural world.

Pattiann Rogers is a poet with a reputation for using observations of the natural world to tie together science and religion, two fields of inquiry that often are found to be contradictory. Her ability to see the world clearly and capture it in words is clear, as is her skill at raising questions. What is not so clear, however, is the assumption that vividly rendering the physical world and approaching it with a religious attitude can necessarily produce poetry that finds religion in the world. In fact, an examination of one particular poem, "The Greatest Grandeur," makes this connection less than certain. Reading this poem carefully and...