McAllister's Mates Thirty One
Hi all
Two beautiful poems this month - one based on a philosophy of isolation and traditional spiritual practice, another embraces more passionate and paganistic influences - both beautiful, both fascinating and both great sources of wonder - let me introduce Adrião Pereira da Cunha and Adrian.
These reviews are part of Reviewstack run by the great writer and pillar of the Substack Community : Thaddeus Thomas
McAllister’s Mates - An ongoing series of reviews of some of the wonderful articles, poems, and stories I’ve discovered on Substack (and other places) and more importantly the beautiful souls behind the works.
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Please take a few moments to read the works of these authors, artists, and creators and if you find their work as life-affirming and life changing as I do, then please let them know. We need to support and cherish these voices.
You can meet some of my other friends in the previous instalments: 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
If you want to keep me in caffeine (and keep the ghostly voices whispering for the poetry side of things) - consider clicking below. For any who do so, you have my deepest gratitude.
Adrião Pereira da Cunha
A poem dripping with atmosphere and a slow, quiet power. The tone and even the typographic shaping of the poem call to mind the severe sharp faces of rocky outcrops and sheer cliffs looking down uncaringly at mere mortals.
However, just as the wind whistles soulfully between those foreboding rocks, this poem’s opening lines hint at wonders to come, but just like John the traveller we must first submit to the uncomfortable feelings of isolation and smallness the words bring forth. Poems are sometimes pilgrimages taking us to places our busy, frantic minds would flee in terror from. Like John you must persevere through the rich melancholy of contemplations on aging and solitude. As the words lead you to the “fuller silence”, the change comes.
The poem moves from silence to spectacle as both the narrative and the imagery explode into vibrancy after solemn contemplation. A manifestation of Jesus appears before John but the poem takes a definite left turn away from traditional religious imagery. The figure of Jesus isn’t presented as a serene reassuring presence, but as an almost terrifying psychedelic vision wrapped in flames with a “voice of many waters”. This poem shows a wise, mature, and a very human understanding of what a supernatural encounter might actually feel like. Confronting your own insignificance in a cosmos where worlds are born, die, and feed their broken mass to a new generation in unimaginable bursts of cosmic energy.
In media imagery and the vast majority of religious art, the focus is often held on Jesus’ mortal life and its heartbreaking conclusion with the resurrection treated as something of a footnote after. At most a Pentecostal scene may be included as a “see he was special” bullet point, but rarely is the strangeness of some of the elements of the New Testament celebrated as it is here.
The line “a memory of eternity.” is an elegant summation of the poem’s core - the longing for the unknowable, the ironically alien state of living in a world of predictable, reliable mechanisms with little room for the mysterious or wondrous.
This is a poem exploring the space between the known self and the invasion or revelation of shocking states of consciousness. No matter your personal spiritual traditions or opinions, there is likely something for you to ponder. This is the voice of the constant within, yet forever unknowable. As we reach into the stranger aspects of art, faith, and our own imaginations, we realise the more we know, the less we understand.
Adrian
Three clicks from this page you will find a poetic musing on the moon - I’ve had a crack at it myself on more than one occasion. This poem, however, offers a very fresh and unique perspective. The opening tone is almost scathing and aligns more closely with postmodern criticisms of spirituality than with the age of classical romanticism. The moon is dismissed as a “counterfeit sun”, its eerie mirroring of its brother sun a coincidence of geometry. However, the same withering gaze then turns on us; it accuses humanity of abandoning our instinctual (and perhaps sacred) ties to the thirteen lunar seasons. We are condemned for our cowardice in allowing our lunar year to be supplanted by a twelve-month cycle of labour. The missing month, buried like Edgar Allan Poe’s tell tale heart, is a standout metaphor that underlines a deep sense of loss touching our collective soul. The poem’s scathing wit melts into a tender scene of two lovers in a place “where guilt ended and grace began”. As the poem’s narrative comes down from its gleaming acerbic tower into the warm earth, it moves into a final journey through the melancholy landscape of the soul, where the need for mystery is embraced again.
The poem approaches a moment of conscious transcendence as its opposing philosophies and perspectives embrace. A knowing critique of scientific reductionism and anthropomorphising celestial objects, while also a celebration of the pursuit of objective knowledge and a validation of the deeper reality buried in imaginative speculation. This approach of celebration and criticism creates an artfully crafted piece where two contradictory ideas fully meet without semantic gaps or broken logic. In the movements of this poem, the moon is both the watchful Luna and an interesting physical coincidence of a mundane collision of two planets. This understanding creates not only a deeper appreciation of the moon itself, but also a heightened state of awareness of the experienced environment. Just like the poem’s tender love scene, the earthly and ethereal meet, creating a power beyond both. In our travels through this poem, both the moon and (perhaps more importantly) the reader become something else entirely - if even for a moment.
I hope you enjoy these beautiful works as much as I enjoyed reading and writing about it.
You can meet some of my other friends in the previous instalments: 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Substack has proven to be a treasure trove and I already have a few more gifted writers lined up for my next review newsletter.
P.S Subscribe for your chance to get your work reviewed here! You can also claim your FREE book of Poetry and art Hypnos Hermes - an epic poem presented as a medieval manuscript. A fantastical story written in verse enriched by many colourful and vibrant artworks.
If you want to keep me in caffeine (and keep the ghostly voices whispering for the poetry side of things) - consider clicking below. For any who do so, you have my deepest gratitude.