Glean, a reference to the gathering of grain after harvest, explores the appalling trust implicit in any act of faith that prayer may not elicit a response. Spare and evocative, the collection struggles with a language at odds with itself. How do we write about an absence that can never be fully possessed or known, an absence that may be all we ever glimpse of the divine? When does spirituality become more real than its pursuit? Moving between doubt and vulnerability, the body and its unresolved spiritual fate, these poems dedicate themselves to the pursuit of redemption.
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"After we've reaped the whirlwind, what remains to glean? This debut approaches the question and its quiet apocalypse not desperately but, against all precedent, lovingly. And such approach is amply rewarded. In the hollow places of our day, Kryah finds not emptiness, but an echoing sound of wings. In the waste spaces, he finds a spark just now coming alight for warmth, not burning. Crazy as it may sound, in Glean we have the love poetry of a terrible aftermath we need not, thanks to Kryah, fear after all." --Donald Revell
"In these tight and resonant lyrics, logic, precision, and affection coalesce. Opening with the self as a winged fruit, Kryah goes on to find more and more facets of being that negotiate body, name, and world in a way that brings out both their reverence and their rigor. Like prayer that needs nothing to pray to, these poems continually open, enlarging our view." --Cole Swensen
"In these tight and resonant lyrics, logic, precision, and affection coalesce. Opening with the self as a winged fruit, Kryah goes on to find more and more facets of being that negotiate body, name, and world in a way that brings out both their reverence and their rigor. Like prayer that needs nothing to pray to, these poems continually open, enlarging our view." --Cole Swensen
Review
"After we've reaped the whirlwind, what remains to glean? This debut approaches the question and its quiet apocalypse not desperately but,against all precedent, lovingly. And such approach is amply rewarded. In the hollow places of our day,Kryah finds not emptiness, but an echoing sound of wings. In the waste spaces, he finds a spark just now coming alight-for warmth, not burning. Crazy as it may sound, in Glean we have the love poetry of a terrible aftermath we need not, thanks to Kryah, fear after all." (Donald Revell )
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a stunning, intense debut,
By
This review is from: Glean (Paperback)
It's common to write that a poet's debut book is one of the best first books one has ever read. This volume, though, is simply one of the best books of poetry, first, second, or third, that I have ever read.
I am a great admirer of Paul Celan, and this is the only work in English I have read that I find at all comparable, in its fractured, fractious, hopeless devotions and its addresses to an impossible and inaccessible "you" who is both lover and god. It's a powerful, moving, and beautifully written book. With its intensity and whole-hearted commitment, verbal and emotional, and its dedication to a beauty no less genuine for its difficulty, this book particularly stands out in a contemporary American poetic landscape dominated by blank irony and pastiche. I highly recommend it.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A thoughtfully contemplative examination of the great mysteries of life and faith,
By Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Glean (Paperback)
Winner of the 2005 Nightboat Poetry Prize, Glean (the title refers to the gathering of grain after harvest) is an anthology of free verse (sometimes so free-verse that the words are chaotically arranged) poems by Missouri native and journal-published poet Joshua Kryah. The sparse verses explore the question: how can faith persist, when prayer can fail to elicit a response? When an absence is all we may ever glimpse of the divine, what is the true meaning of spirituality, and when does it become more real than that which it pursues? A thoughtfully contemplative examination of the great mysteries of life and faith, Glean is highly recommended for slow and careful deliberation. "Liminal (your voice so terribly human, its distance): Charged, the despotic fire banks. // (It was told to.) // Ash arches even further, its single shadow / listless, pre-determined. // Summoned by the great cloud, its remains scattered / in every direction, I stand neither here nor there. // The interminable space, the unbeliever. // Tell me to breathe.
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