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| Paul Quenon |
Amounting to
Nothing
Poems
by Paul Quenon, OCSO
Paraclete
Press
Brewster,
MA
ISBN:
978-1-64060-201-4
93
Pages
$18.00
Review
by Dennis Daly
Like
Tibetan prayer flags hung outdoors, pervading the natural world with
wisdom and blessings before fading into invisibility, Paul Quenon’s
newest poems, included in his collection Amounting to Nothing, are
wind-blown mantras of belief and renewal.
Quenon,
a Cistercian (Trappist) monk living at Gethsemani Abbey in rural
Kentucky, atomizes himself into his wondrous community of creatures
and phenomena. His self-deprecation informs both his wit and wisdom.
Inconveniently, however, the poet's brand of humility questions even
his own judgment and thus his attempts to measure out a life. A flaw
perhaps, but also an artistic irritation and poetic spur.
Abnegation
of being or a merging with the divine holds the key for any good monk
seeking holiness. In Quenon's opening poem, Mad Monk's Life Ambition,
his persona tries to figure things out. Double negatives aside,
clever word play animates the piece. Here the monk considers his
mission,
Did
someone lay on a jinx and say:
You'll
never amount to nothing?
How
sad, since I took nothing
as
my monastic goal.
I
still don't amount to nothing,
still
think I'm something.
I
hardly amount to a hill of beans but
this
already is too much of something.
What
ever might you mount
to
amount to nothing?
Where
is that magical mountain?
Hide
and Seek may be a popular children's game, but Quenon discovers that
it suits his monkhood perfectly. In practice the poet finds hiding as
an opportunity to observe and understand the nature of creation.
Other poets would agree. Quenon goes one step further in his poem
entitled Alone with the Alone and declaims the divineness in
distraction,
Some
poet said galaxies
are
a good place to hide-- in a thicket of stars.
But
any Kentucky thicket would be good enough for me;
there
I could secretly watch small creatures
who
want to go hide. And then I'll know
the
thousand and one ways to be
and
to be unknown.
It
might seem like playing God on a small scale.
But
God doesn't mind. God likes to pretend
at
being God on a small scale.
Mankind
unpleasantly ages in parcels that bump into the future and fall back
into an inescapable past. But there is a whole, a smooth sphere with
no outer rims, an eternity of centers. Quenon mulls over timelessness
in the context of his friend and mentor, Thomas Merton. His poem
entitled Merton’s Anniversary explains, for lack of a better term,
monk’s time. It opens this way,
“passed”
50 years ago, they say.
Well,
that number counts for nothing.
Better
to say, “subsists
in
the ever untimed.”
Years
count not, no measure there is
for
boundless embrace of All-time.
Was-is-will
be
co-exist
there
simultaneously.
Outside
this, nothing is.
Time
inside this revolves;
history
is a closed circle
ever
completed, ever changing.
My
favorite poem in this collection Quenon calls Critical Change for
Whom? It begins with a troubling exchange between Quenon and Fr.
Matthew. The perturbed Matthew questions the reality of things at
hand as illusion. He further posits that reality is something other.
Quenon, concerned with his friend’s state of mind, asserts that
simplification makes more sense. What you see, a table, a bed, really
exists or at least is anchored in the real. Then the poet delivers
the rest of the story,
I
step from Matthew’s room,
leave
him to his dark concerns—
suddenly
I wake, startled to find myself
elsewhere,
alone, on a mattress prone,
under
Orion, stars and night—
no
table, no room, no Matthew,
already
three years passed,
all
except for this—the dream he knew
was
a dream.
Quenon
excels in externalizing his thoughts and emotions. In his poem Winter
Conversation of Trees he imposes expressionistic attributes on a
variety of Trees with an ear to attention and expository internal
need. The resulting tableau quantifies his human concerns and
suggests much higher levels of discussion. The poet dispenses his
fervors thusly,
Complex
cherry branches look cross.
Tearless
weeping willow
faints
earthward
from
summer’s heavy losses.
Cottonwood
widely embraces year’s completion.
Gingko
finely probes every minute detail of space.
Cedar
of Lebanon—straightforward
In
all he speaks or tells.
All
herewith written
is
foreign language unto
their
lofty discourse.
The
phenomenon of illumination and understanding Quenon chronicles in his
poem Fireflies. Here he contemplates in the humble firefly’s
existence and obsessive activity, specifically the unresting
continuity of the fly’s off-on body switch. Individually, the fly
seems to be trying a little too hard to highlight bits of earthly
knowledge. In contrast the community of such creatures creates the
context for their own magnificent artwork. The poet explains,
… night
crowds in.
Dark
flees lamps lifted,
cautiously
hides from
that
fly-filled field spread with
lonely,
drifting stars
that
never collide—
earthly
constellations swarming
the
dark, grassy range
ever
without owning it.
Belief
trumps death as Quenon , in his piece Walking Meditation, strolls
through the monk’s graveyard at Gethsemani. He connects with
tradition and individual remembrances delineated by simple crosses.
Comfort turns to monastic anticipation,
I
sense a kind acquaintance
at
each step pressed in grass
soles
to souls
assembled
below
outside
of space.
The
wash of dew is cleansing,
is
peace, and pleasure.
This
brief moment awaits
that
blink of eternity’s
eye
Monastic
traditions have always offered little insights and large
illuminations. Paul Quenon, steeped in that heritage of great
silences, offers a bit more—first rate poetry.
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