Josh Kryah's "Glean"...
I'm reading a new book of poems, Glean. And I'm having a hard time pinning down my reactions. I think this is for personal reasons, maybe because I'm a Jew.
The book is lovely. Lovely is the right word. Also careful. Also humble in a way, but not the way I mean humble when I say it. Usually.
This book is involved with questions of faith. Not questions "about" faith but questions that spring forth from the interior (and, if speaker of these poems is ever answered, also exterior) process of attempting faith. They are enacting a process, conversing with faith.
This book is attempting faith. I don't think it gets there. It's too smart. Too unwilling to be fooled. But the process is lovely, and a little painful. A little doomed.
Oh, I don't know if I'm explaining well... these poems seek faith, but in their self-awareness and their hyper-intelligence they will never settle for what faith truly is. They will never answer their own questions. They will never pretend. Which is amazing on the page, but hard for me, as a reader who prays, to believe in. At least beyond the poems...
The first poems in the book all open with questions. Like so:
"What kind of name/ is a name asking..."
"What follows self?"
"What was intended?"
And these questions haunt the book. I can't forget that they've been asked as I read on. I can't miss seeing that they never get answered.
But also, (and this gets back to the Jew thing) I don't care the way I ought to. The way these poems really deserve. Leading me to wonder if it's me, if it's a Jew thing.
Because on some level, though Judaism is a very personal faith (by which I mean the god/person relationship is a one-on-one relationship) and a religion of questions, it is also SO very much a religion of routine, action, command. Jewish questions demand answers. Further questioning too, but beneath them a foundation of belief that we are all moving to the same answer. That there is "an" answer.
Where this book is above all things, personal. Dwelling far beyond an acceptace of call and response.
Jews don't ask questions and then wait or mull or ponder in a corner. They ask questions and then wash up for supper, where they talk over the questions loudly together.
Like:
"What follows self?"
"Eh? It's nearly dark out. Get in here and help the kids wash up for supper!"
"But what follows self?"
"Good question!"
That's Jewish prayer. No time for waiting. We all know the words. You can ask question all afternoon, but then you pray, dammit! No time to sit and think when there's something to be blessed and eaten.
Prayer for me, and faith for me, are so much about the daily routine of the body, the moving forward, the waking up, the living... that this kind of mulling is hard to see as real. It doesn't resonate personally. I find myself thinking that these poems would waste away in a closet somewhere. That they're a little too self-involved.
But...
But...
But... I need to continue rambling , because this is where one might read my little rant here as dismissive of Glean. Which I don't intend.
These poems are so strong, so carefully placed, so well wrought. And this book hangs together so well as a project ... that I can't argue with Glean as I might, on a personal level. It's too good. It opens up a new way of seeing, however dimly. However nervously. The poems aren't in the end, self-involved. They're saved from that by some connection to a tradition of such prayer.
They're hermit poems, but they're looking for a window, not down at the feet.
Like so:
I cannot say with certainty/ that I saw nothing," closes a poem further on, The Fever Chart.
And though I'm forced to think... "I can."
I'm still interested in what will proceed from such uncertainty. And I must recognize that the questions will continue. And that what this poem does NOT say is:
"I cannot say with certainty / that I saw something."
Which is the line between searching... and cynicism.
The book is lovely. Lovely is the right word. Also careful. Also humble in a way, but not the way I mean humble when I say it. Usually.
This book is involved with questions of faith. Not questions "about" faith but questions that spring forth from the interior (and, if speaker of these poems is ever answered, also exterior) process of attempting faith. They are enacting a process, conversing with faith.
This book is attempting faith. I don't think it gets there. It's too smart. Too unwilling to be fooled. But the process is lovely, and a little painful. A little doomed.
Oh, I don't know if I'm explaining well... these poems seek faith, but in their self-awareness and their hyper-intelligence they will never settle for what faith truly is. They will never answer their own questions. They will never pretend. Which is amazing on the page, but hard for me, as a reader who prays, to believe in. At least beyond the poems...
The first poems in the book all open with questions. Like so:
"What kind of name/ is a name asking..."
"What follows self?"
"What was intended?"
And these questions haunt the book. I can't forget that they've been asked as I read on. I can't miss seeing that they never get answered.
But also, (and this gets back to the Jew thing) I don't care the way I ought to. The way these poems really deserve. Leading me to wonder if it's me, if it's a Jew thing.
Because on some level, though Judaism is a very personal faith (by which I mean the god/person relationship is a one-on-one relationship) and a religion of questions, it is also SO very much a religion of routine, action, command. Jewish questions demand answers. Further questioning too, but beneath them a foundation of belief that we are all moving to the same answer. That there is "an" answer.
Where this book is above all things, personal. Dwelling far beyond an acceptace of call and response.
Jews don't ask questions and then wait or mull or ponder in a corner. They ask questions and then wash up for supper, where they talk over the questions loudly together.
Like:
"What follows self?"
"Eh? It's nearly dark out. Get in here and help the kids wash up for supper!"
"But what follows self?"
"Good question!"
That's Jewish prayer. No time for waiting. We all know the words. You can ask question all afternoon, but then you pray, dammit! No time to sit and think when there's something to be blessed and eaten.
Prayer for me, and faith for me, are so much about the daily routine of the body, the moving forward, the waking up, the living... that this kind of mulling is hard to see as real. It doesn't resonate personally. I find myself thinking that these poems would waste away in a closet somewhere. That they're a little too self-involved.
But...
But...
But... I need to continue rambling , because this is where one might read my little rant here as dismissive of Glean. Which I don't intend.
These poems are so strong, so carefully placed, so well wrought. And this book hangs together so well as a project ... that I can't argue with Glean as I might, on a personal level. It's too good. It opens up a new way of seeing, however dimly. However nervously. The poems aren't in the end, self-involved. They're saved from that by some connection to a tradition of such prayer.
They're hermit poems, but they're looking for a window, not down at the feet.
Like so:
I cannot say with certainty/ that I saw nothing," closes a poem further on, The Fever Chart.
And though I'm forced to think... "I can."
I'm still interested in what will proceed from such uncertainty. And I must recognize that the questions will continue. And that what this poem does NOT say is:
"I cannot say with certainty / that I saw something."
Which is the line between searching... and cynicism.
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