xterminal's review
4.0
Morri Creech, Paper Cathedrals (Kent State University, 2001)
Morri Creech's Paper Cathedrals is a deeply spiritual book of poems, but Orthodox Christians need not apply; this is the language of doubt, of turning away.
“Though I still grip the pew at the closing hymn
and know the short walk down the aisle
to the everlasting, I have yet to feel
the swell and stir of mercy, the urgent touch,
the laying on of hands. And at night
I kneel over the difficult words,
Our father who art in Heaven,
rehearsed since childhood.”
(“Prayer for My Living Father”)
Doubt indeed, but it is impossible to deny the beauty of Creech's almost obsessively thematic poems (most every poem for or about Creech's father, for example, tarries over engines and tools with which to work on them, while the religious poems spend a great deal of time considering the plight of Judas). This is excellent writing, laden with image and feeling so intertwined with one another that it is often impossible to tell where one begins and the other ends. This one will almost certainly be on my list of the 25 best books I read in 2009. Pick it up at your earliest convenience and revel in the language. ****
Morri Creech's Paper Cathedrals is a deeply spiritual book of poems, but Orthodox Christians need not apply; this is the language of doubt, of turning away.
“Though I still grip the pew at the closing hymn
and know the short walk down the aisle
to the everlasting, I have yet to feel
the swell and stir of mercy, the urgent touch,
the laying on of hands. And at night
I kneel over the difficult words,
Our father who art in Heaven,
rehearsed since childhood.”
(“Prayer for My Living Father”)
Doubt indeed, but it is impossible to deny the beauty of Creech's almost obsessively thematic poems (most every poem for or about Creech's father, for example, tarries over engines and tools with which to work on them, while the religious poems spend a great deal of time considering the plight of Judas). This is excellent writing, laden with image and feeling so intertwined with one another that it is often impossible to tell where one begins and the other ends. This one will almost certainly be on my list of the 25 best books I read in 2009. Pick it up at your earliest convenience and revel in the language. ****
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