woostify domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /home/latestwordpress/lonestar.a1professionals.net_public_html/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6131New spiritual poetry collection from James R. Dennis<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Songs of Seven Days<\/em> is comfort food for the soul. The volume itself reprises the gift books popular in the Late Victorian Era when, as John Updike noted in modern time, part of the significance was the artifact itself: the cover is heavy matte dark stock, the classic cover design with a splash of glittery gilded embossed gold, raised to the fingertips. There are elegant prints throughout the volume. The fonts are classical, the paper hefty. It has a splendid, venerable hand-feel. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The collection is patterned metaphorically, as the title suggests, on the seven days of creation, each section, or day, behind a fine black and white etching of imaginative regard for the ordinary, in beauty, value, and naturalness. But more striking is Dennis\u2019s attainment of Baudelaire\u2019s supra natural<\/em> aesthetic: the most intense sensation from the songs is the contemplation of how much and how far beyond what meets the eye stirs the soul. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n There is light in these songs, and the refraction is marvelous: the interiority of life in the exteriority of creation\u2014and the reverse\u2014steadily parades before the reader\u2019s eyes and ears. Dennis handles the tactile like a slick, cool river rock, and derives the signification of the qualitative from the quantitative. For example, in \u201cThe Uses of Stone,\u201d the poet leads a winding odyssey of substance and purpose in the being and application of stone in historical and contemporary context. But there\u2019s so much more. What is rock, and rocky within us? And the weight we place on that, in hindsight and foresight? What part of us is stone, stony? Seven Days<\/em> provokes self-reflection against the poetic scrolling imagery ranging from Pharoah\u2019s tomb to David\u2019s small rock that felled gigantic Goliath to the rolled-back stone at the tomb in Jerusalem to Michaelangelo freeing the angel from the marble block with a chisel. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The casual reader might find Dennis most accessible in more structured verse, like the coquettishly playful quatrains of \u201cLa Luna del Deseo.\u201d This is an archetypal sample of the poet\u2019s ability to consistently mine the meaningful from the mundane: <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201c\u2026 But this evening the moon looks like she wants to bum a cigarette, although she\u2019s trying to quit, <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n And doesn\u2019t want to go home <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n And have to explain the smell of smoke to anyone.\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n The melancholy late-night surrender to solitude rings veritable as Hemingway\u2019s \u201cA Clean, Well-Lighted Place,\u201d but with a coy smile of faithful acceptance at the sunset of the verse. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Another traditionally structured gem is \u201cThe Elephants in Tennessee,\u201d a compact third line rhyming tercet: the immense scale of pachyderms, the forlorn inner shyness, reluctance, and withdrawal; the harshness of captivity and soulless spectacle of life fostering a reluctance, a wariness, to trust the world. But yet there is sweet redemption. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n This collection is a modern gift book in both its plangent poetry and plush production values\u2014the interior prints alone are worthy accessions\u2014and the thoughtful, gentle, rueful, playful, joyful and solemn poetics are a balm for anyone wrestling life\u2019s inexorable vicissitudes. Gift Songs of Seven Days<\/em> as a balm to someone close who\u2019s weathering stormy seas. Buy two, and keep one for yourself: you deserve it, and you\u2019re going to need it. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n
\n
\n