New
and Selected Poems
By
Paul Quenon
Paraclete
Press
ISBN
978-1-61261-560-8
171
Pages
Review
by Dennis Daly
Out
of great silence and temporal restraint comes an exquisite rush of words and,
in turn, transcendental passion. Paul Quenon, in his latest book, Unquiet
Vigil, belies the conventional understanding of repetitive monastic rituals,
mystic self-abnegation, and meandering walls that delimit (at least
metaphorically) wandering monks from worldly desires and ambitions. Quenon’s
words soar with freedom’s exhilarating ardor, sustained by the fearlessness of
his faith and the innate disposition of his environment, an unusual combination.
Or, perhaps not. His poetry does not filter; it simply records quiet rhythms
and perceives the essential forms of nature in compelling ways.
Born
in West Virginia coal country, Quenon entered Our Lady of Gethsemani Trappist
monastery, near Bardstown Kentucky, in 1958 at the age of seventeen. His novice
master, spiritual advisor, and poetry mentor was the renowned Thomas Merton. For
the last twenty or so years the monastery has supported Quenon’s artistic
endeavors (he has published five previous books of poetry and produced some
extraordinary photography).
Opening
with coy flirtation, the collection draws the reader in with a potent dynamic,
a mini morality play entitled Gone Missing. Poetry solicits the poet. At the
same time the poet seeks his poems-to-be through the forest of life, using his
senses, following tell-tale signs. Does the quest enable the art? Consider
these personified lines,
…
I am a poem without a poet.
He
has gone missing for weeks
and
my house is empty. Suffer me awhile,
or
go, and if you meet him—
he
with the distant look and shambling gait—
tell
him the hearth is cooling down.
I
won’t know a thing for days,
He
takes to a walk-about
And
never pays me notice.
What
kind of life is that?
Yet
I’ve never expected different—
I’m
glad he just comes back at all.
Quenon
at his best conjures up natural images after internalizing them into a
spiritual duality of connection and timelessness. The meditations that result
are breathtaking descriptions of the human heart, a calming existentialism of
sorts. Here’s a selection from Quenon’s piece entitled Transpiration in which
the poet melds “white ranges of cumulus” with the “leafy hoards crowding below”
into a single awe-inducing process, both metaphysical and natural,
Two
solemn masses, two summer throngs
Breathing
one sunlit worship.
Two
transfigurations:
Vapor
heaving updrafts to evanesce into light;
Groundwater
exhaling into wind through roiling foliage.
Transubstantiation—that’s
all
Of
you and me. We vanish into light—
Erwin
Schrodinger’s famous thought experiment, Schrodinger’s Cat, testing quantum
physics takes center stage in Quenon’s poem The Un-Named Cat Merton. The source
of the piece is an unpublished photograph showing a dead Thomas Merton being
prepared for burial. The poet observes the scene through a sub-atomic
indeterminacy perspective. Here the quantum world becomes the spiritual world
metaphorically (or not metaphorically). Observation determines reality. The
subject of the camera is both dead and alive. Of course Merton still does live
through his books, his faith, and as part of a brotherhood. In his case, faith
and brotherhood are inseparable. Quenon,
in the heart of the poem, introduces the concept’s universality by alluding to
ancient Sri Lankan Buddhist sculptures,
Two
stone Buddhas at
Polonnaruwa,
the
one awake, standing,
the
other lies asleep.
Both,
when you are jerked clear
Out
of the habitual,
Half-tied
vision of things
Are
one Buddha
Asleep
and awake.
In
his poem Restless Silence, Quenon discovers anew many of the questions that
emanate from observational and audacious simplicity. Both poet and object
engage in a kind of silent dialogue, a dialogue on nature, humanity’s
mutability, and alienation. The poet elegantly concludes this way,
A
pigeon leaves a tree for another tree.
I
can hear the sun
grazing
the dusty grass,
until
a breeze interrupts briefly
then
settles for … a something…
Was
it here already and gone?
Or
was it only here
so
I would come and wait?
Why
this sadness when,
yielding
to restlessness,
I
rise and abandon what
never
knows abandonment?
Just
for its title alone, Confessions of a Dead-Beat Monk, would be my favorite poem
in the collection. However, the piece offers quite a bit more. As the poet
describes the routine and sameness of a monk’s life, excitement sneaks in. Words
such as prodigious, bitter, sweet, gold, treasure, secret, and enigma appear.
Even humdrum chores are punctuated by exclamation points. Quenon, sly and
skillful poet that he is, turns the piece into a celebration of monkhood and a
lingering celebration at that. The piece begins thusly,
Of
course, I’ve sat the same bench
brushing
off flies and thoughts,
how
many years? What winters of
silence
and summer variations,
what
prodigious mockingbirds
I’ve
heard! And that kitchen job!
Broccoli
and spuds on Mondays,
rice
twice a week, and Oh,
toasted
cheese sandwiches,
Fridays!
This diet of psalms,
fifty
and hundred, runs ever
on
from bitter to sweet …
Quenon’s
delicately phrased poem, Mountain Climb, goes way beyond the obvious metaphor
into a meditational understanding of self and its concomitant contentment. He notes, perceptively, the constant change
inherent in sameness. As his dream-time
vision fades, he commits to memory what he can, and that is enough. The poet
reminisces,
I
have been here before,
explored
alone the route
that
only I know. It is familiar
though
changed—
always
familiar, though
never
twice the same.
I
have the energy
to
take the long irregular climb.
I
arrive at the summit
totally
alone. Something absolute
grips
my senses. I all but breathe it in.
Breathing
in Brother Paul Quenon’s poems rewards with revelation after revelation. This
soul-shaking writer turns solitude into wonderment. Quenon, unlike most
poets, is not much of a self-promoter. Too bad. He deserves a much wider
audience. Think world-wide. Get his book. Spread the word.
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