The wound as memory of ineffable touch: four poets offer a way through.(Compass of Affection. Poems New and Selected)(Common Life)(Weeknights at the Cathedral)(Deaths and Transfigurations: Poems)(Book review)

Compass of Affection. Poems New and Selected. By Scott Cairns. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2006. ISBN 1-55725-503-2. Pp. x + 172. $25.00.

Common Life. By Robert Cording. Fort Lee, NJ: CavanKerry Press, 2006. ISBN 0-9723045-7-6. Pp. xv + 111. $16.00.

Weeknights at the Cathedral. By Marjorie Maddox. Cincinnati, OH: WordTech Editions, 2006. ISBN 1-933456-14-0. Pp. 104. $17.00.

Deaths & Transfigurations: Poems. By Paul Mariani. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2005. ISBN 1-55725-452-4. Pp. 94. $24.00.

In a series of lectures titled "A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life" Richard Rohr, O.F.M., suggests that Christianity could properly be called "The Way of the Wound" suffering being not only intrinsic to its story but also imbued with infinite value. Wound, more specifically the wound of loss, is at the heart of the four poetry collections examined in this review. Differing in their scope, yet rubbing spiritual elbows, these poets converge at the yielding point, where loss becomes the essential protocol in their pursuit of light.

Transience--the sine qua non of loss--and transcendence--the signature of light--are dual presences at work in these collections, the tension between them evident from the early pages of each book.

"The thing to remember is how / tentative all of this really is ..." (Cairns 3).

"Father of death / help us to live with our dying ..." (Cording 3).

"... you left 'straightaway" / leaving the front door open, your saltwater footprints on the porch" (Maddox 21).

"... Clamant voices, out / of sorts with this submersion always into Memory and Doubt" (Mariani 16).

In each collection, the poet assumes mortality in all its fullness yet always manages to outgauge it, for a way-through is what the tangible reveals. And that salvation is inherent, even exclusive, to the wound, for the wound is memory of unity, flesh-souvenir of the immortal touch. As Christopher Bakken wrote in his essay, "The Poet, After Greece;' "What the psychologist, the biologist, the anthropologist and the historian forget, the theologian and the poet might remember" (Gloss). From a soil drenched in dying, these poets recall how resolute Life is.

Compass of Affection

The most extensive of these books, Compass of Affection features the best of Scott Cairns's work to date. The selections from four previous books (The Theology of Doubt 1985; The Translation of Babel 1990; Figures for the Ghost 1994; Philokalia 2002) and the notable number of recent poems confirm Cairns's long engagement with language, not only of spiritual longing but as spiritual longing. While cognizant of the distinction between poetry and prayer--"Who would flame a poem / when he had better find / his knees, in silence, having put his art away?" (158)--Cairns also writes: "...the apparent, local matter of a word will always promise / in its telling textures to be more / the sort of gum whose sugars will / not quit, nor even quite hold still" (112). The word that manifests the poet's longing also must impregnate it.

Cairns's first "Imperative" is toward renunciation, that life might be seen the way it is: gratis et amore, unearned. "The morning might be / full of all the love and kindness / you need. Just don't go thinking / you deserve any of it" (3). From a platform of unworthiness, the barest daylight is gift. "I wake up slow as I can," he tells us, "listening first / to one thing, then another ..." (17) Each creature is so vulnerable a present that "some mornings it hurts to see" (19). And the world is full of these elusive offerings: the kind woman with the lame child, the girl in the print dress "pretending to shop for extravagance" (18), the dying father at the window: "We met as well as we could" (20). Cairns, who never shies from naming or appointing, permeates his work not only with endearing presences but also with remembrances of how we are to watch, engage, commune.

In "After the …