The
vividness of Rodgers' work was projected partly as an assault
on religious narrowness and cultural restriction. His most characteristic
poems explore Christian themes, or express an open-faced and big-hearted
randiness, or both. At moments of great intensity religious and
sexual experiences seem for this poet to have been one and the
same. The reader is struck by the tumble of words and images,
the puns, the risky deployment of colloquialism and cliché,
the rich, idiosyncratic vocabulary.
Rodgers is a latterday metaphysical who apprehends the divine through
the senses, The Word through words. Indeed, in his finest work
we find 'The Word made flesh, melted into motion'.
— from the introduction by Michael Longley