Jones Very

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Very, Jones (1813–80), born in Salem, Mass., graduated from Harvard (1836) and was a tutor of Greek while studying at the Divinity School. During this period he turned from his previous mild Unitarianism under the influence of a spiritual exaltation in which he had poetic visions of the Holy Ghost. He claimed that his religious sonnets were communicated to him in these visions. Although Emerson appreciated his poetry and prose and arranged for him to speak at Concord, the Harvard faculty questioned his sanity, and he allowed himself to be committed to an asylum for the insane. He continued to write, however, and some of his verse was published in The Western Messenger, through the influence of J.F. Clarke, who in answer to critics declared that, instead of monomania, Very had “monosania.” Emerson, who also thought him “profoundly sane,” helped in the selection of his Essays and Poems (1839), Very's only book published during his lifetime. He was a friend of the Transcendentalists, but his poems show that he was a mystic, whose belief in the absolute surrender of the will to God made his theological and spiritual affiliations closer to those of the early Puritans and Quakers. His poems of religious experience rightly caused him to be compared with George Herbert and other 17th‐century metaphysical poets. His essays in literary criticism, such as Epic Poetry, Hamlet, and Shakespeare, also reveal his mystic approach. After a brief time (1838) in the asylum, Very, without a degree in divinity, held temporary pastorates in Maine and Massachusetts, but, being too shy to preach well, retired to live as a recluse under the care of his sister Lydia. He wrote little during his remaining 40 years. Two posthumous editions of his works were published, Poems (1883) and Poems and Essays (1886), “a complete” edition containing some 600 poems, edited by J.F. Clarke.

Jones Very 1813–80, American poet, b. Salem, Mass., studied at Harvard Divinity School. His mystical poems express his belief in total surrender to the will of God and his reverence for nature as a symbol of the Divine. Emerson edited Very's Essays and Poems (1839). Posthumous volumes of Very's works were Poems (1883) and Poems and Essays (ed. by J. F. Clarke, 1886).