Customer Reviews

Mysteries

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

JACKET BLURBS FOR MYSTERIES:


FROM W. S. MERWIN:

"These remarkable poems with their classic clarity and depth tell stories from many times at once in a way that some poems have long been remembered for doing. They ring true."


FROM DANA GIOIA:

"If one of the aims of poetry is to explore the mysteries of our abundant but fragile existence, then Karen Subach's MYSTERIES proceeds most deeply. The book is a sustained meditation on essential things we cannot grasp quite consciously but approach only through prayer, ritual, and painful memory."

When first reading Karen Subach's Mysteries, I thought of another favorite chapbook, Frank Bidart's Music Like Dirt, not because of similar themes but because each is a sequence of poems that feeds into the mind like a ball of yarn feeds into someone's hands and becomes a constructed whole piece. Whereas Bidart's work is a made thing about makers and the making of things, Subach's sets a mysterious tone as she mediates on spiritual mysteries, those things we feel but can never quite understand. The mysteries range from a person's involvement with something greater than himself or herself, an involvement that is mysterious to figures such as John the Baptist, Veronica, or Paul, to a powerful sequence juxtaposing the poet's words with the chanted mantra of the rosary and moving from the annunciation to the death of Mary, "the girl with her hands full of flowers full of thorns" and finally the disciples moving out into the world, uncertain but following their own paths. The final poem links our time with the actions of Cain as Subach reflects on a visit to the Warsaw Ghetto and imagines the regrets of Adam who wants to tell God to "just start over" with a "more simple vessel or a pipe." This is a quiet but powerful book, good for many re-readings.

Karen Subach's Mysteries is a penetrating meditation on matters spiritual, principally using key stories within the Judeo-Christian tradition as points for diverse and moving reflections on their possible "readings" and explorations of the intersection between human and divine. This is a deeply personal and inward journey revealed through fresh and new eyes and these are stories and meditations that require the reader to explore their own spiritual path challenging them to see anew at each turn. In her opening poem, Message, Subach writes: "I regret that the word repentance/has so frequented your translations/because he lived in joy./If you had seen him finding honey/you would understand." Having read it days ago, it has opened a path for me to continue to explore. It does not so much guide as probe and encourage the reader to do the same. It is a gentle invitation. Ultimately, Mysteries is more mystical and revelatory of an inner human spirit -seeking the spiritual realities behind the stories it calls us to - than religious. I deeply appreciate this work and the opening it has called me to.

These poems come from such a deep place that as I read I felt they came from inside me, that place of mystery, myth, and archetype. They are the Christian mysteries but the weight of religion does not hold them down. They rise with light, words made flesh. Veronica giving Jesus her veil to wipe his bloody face and her mother "owning it" thereafter...and "folded it with sprigs of mint and oregano/and put it into a box of cedar." In "Saul Changed," that "You might say this occurred to me for the first time/not during the light,/but during the light recalled --" and the fruit seller fearing him, ..."perhaps he sensed my mission." Or the reflection on the Mystery of the Ascension of Jesus into heaven, ..."it was Peter who wept/because he could understand it -- and because we are responsible for what we understand--" You can open MYSTERIES at random and meditate or contemplate. The reader does indeed "pull the tome from that dark shelf,/memory,..." The author's spirit gift to us all. Namaste.