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| Christopher Reilley |
Breathing for Clouds
Poems,
Prose & Fiction
By
Christopher Reilley
Big
Table Publishing
Boston,
MA
ISBN:
978-0-9904872-6-5
137
Pages
Review
by Dennis Daly
Poems
of deeply felt sentiment and crafted solace always find ardent
readers. And so will Breathing for Clouds, Christopher Reilley’s
new grab bag of emotive poetry and atmospheric prose. Reilley’s
poetic pieces radiate sincerity and formal authority with a twist of
versatility and a flexing of heart. Not all the poems work on the
same level, and that seems okay, especially when the collection
derives its power from plain spoken honesty and genuineness.
Early
on, in a poem entitled A Digital Voice, Reilley captures the deluge
of his own emotions on a computer screen. As his voices stream in
from the cosmos, a torrent of feelings, he molds the music into a
perfectly contained, efficacious image. The poet concludes,
The
lunar tide of my mind
floods
the screen
with
my voice.
Sweeping
grandeur
and
probing acuity
are
captured in words and phrases,
displayed
for all,
a
jeweled butterfly
in
a digital web.
In
his piece An Aubade of Spring Reilley questions the power of verse in
treating the arthritic soul of a world-weary artist. He uses the
traditional “aubade” or morning song to meditate on the potential
for rebirth and the green prospects of new love. Here, at winter’s
end, is the heart of the poem,
The
sonorous drone of winter’s groan—
will
it spring into exalted tune
when
it warms?
Will
it expand into the hum
of
a trillion lives beginning?
Would
my sodden heart
begin
an aria to new beginnings?
Would
my curious hands
Weave
words of magical cures?
Some
of Reilley’s best poems use his constitutional exuberance in
interesting ways. He tempers unduly explosive emotions without
removing the edginess, and funnels them into hard core imagery. My
favorite poem in this collection, Travel Through Desert, is like
that. After the matter-of-fact travel instructions (don’t forget
water), Reilley transports his readers into a headier zone. He puts
it this way,
Something
within you just slows—slows.
You
make what time you can before the east ignites.
Rolling
or stumbling, it is up to you.
And
when you learn what life is like
on
a match head
you
know with certainty
if
you want to stay.
You
make the decision, every time.
Cannot
cross without doing it.
You
choose to see the other side,
or
you choose not to.
Another
of Reilley’s well-modulated pieces entitled Dreams of Travel
meditates on the wonder of artistic imagination. The poet captures
both the durable and ethereal natures of creation. The artist becomes
an intrepid traveler marveling into the lush innards of humanity.
Reilley’s image of a shuttered lantern perfectly conveys his
persona’s hidden awe. The piece begins impressively with props and
process,
I
take the bundle of maps and roll them tight,
stack
them neatly in the shelf where they will rest,
marveling
at my trick of sliding the whole world
into
a cardboard tube, wondering if oceans spill,
if
mountains will tumble like laundry being dried,
continents
trickling away as hourglass dust.
I
know that when I sleep, they come to me,
unfurl
themselves in order to lay against my skin,
whispering
the names of exotic places
with
the hot breath of sirocco in my ear,
moonbeams
glittering possibilities
across
their paper wings.
Cacophony
sometimes cancels out the world wonderfully. Reilley considers the
casino’s ambiance, an underground of quiet commotion and secret
obsessions, in his poem Guilty Gambler. He calculates the poet’s
edge in life’s probability game and affirms existence over
self-destruction. Rising from dormancy, the poet recommends a future
of potential,
Hide
the secretive soul away, dammit.
Do
you recall the taste of old bruises,
know
the name of every slight?
Can
you feel the weight of years and acceptance
can
you know the strength you have yet to know?
Lie
low, lie low, breath as shallow as you might
But
you must draw breath once more to live,
And
tomorrow’s a decent bet, with better odds
Than
finding surcease at the tables.
Scraps
of Black, a poem Reilley uses to pin his creative processes together
on an observational wall, sets up a proposition of questions and
declarations before a rather clever and rewarding conclusion. The
poet cobbles together a medley of images,
Why
are there so many places
that
are interchangeable, and why
do
days merge?
I
have to talk about rivers
that
defeat themselves
by
keeping alive.
I
only know about objects
That
birds lose, but
I
can talk about mundane tools with bitterness.
What
we have today
Are
not memories—
They
are faces with tears
Aside from the
poetry, three of Reilley’s gritty prose pieces, all subtitled
“Another true tale from the Grand Café,” I found especially
entertaining. They were well constructed, and, in turn, both funny
and seriously pointed. They fit quite well into this satisfying and
surrounding medley of heartfelt and principled verses.
