{"id":429,"date":"2016-10-08T17:42:04","date_gmt":"2016-10-08T21:42:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=429"},"modified":"2016-10-08T17:42:04","modified_gmt":"2016-10-08T21:42:04","slug":"review-of-saint-paul-lives-here-in-minnesota-by-zach-czaia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=429","title":{"rendered":"Review of Saint Paul Lives Here (in Minnesota) by Zach Czaia"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"czaia-cover\"<\/a>Zach Czaia. Saint Paul Lives Here (in Minnesota). <\/em>Resource Publications (Wipf and Stock), 2015. 54 pgs. $9.00.<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Lynn Domina<\/p>\n

Zach Czaia\u2019s Saint Paul Lives Here (in Minnesota) <\/em>is an examination of betrayal by individuals and institutions, of innocence and guilt, and of forgiveness\u2014which doesn\u2019t come easily and sometimes doesn\u2019t come at all. The poems in this collection accomplish a difficult task\u2014succeeding as poems, attentive to their craft, despite the temptation their content provides to rant or sermonize. Many of the poems address the sexual abuse scandal that erupted within the Roman Catholic Church several years ago, not only the harm caused by individual priests to individual children, but more appallingly through the complicity of bishops and other powerful men who serve one of the most powerful organizations on the planet. Despite this content, the poems aren\u2019t confessional so much as inquisitive, and their emotional pitch ranges from outrage to dismay to, occasionally, relief. Significantly, the collection also includes poems whose central commitment is love\u2014of spouses, parents and children, siblings, friends, and of the speaker for God.<\/p>\n

One of the poems that thematically anchors the collection is \u201cMemories of Father X,\u201d composed as a four-part sequence reminiscent of sonnets. The speaker served as a lector during his school days, and the poem addresses his physical proximity to both Father X and the altar during mass. Section ii explores the complexity and paradox of sacrament:<\/p>\n

Death poured out his mouth along with the gospel,
\nteeming with its interest for life. The blood
\nof Christ in the cup, raised, and my friends
\non the altar ringing their bells at the priest\u2019s raising
\nof the cup and all of us staring.<\/p>\n

Communion, the golden tray<\/p>\n

beneath our chins to catch the crumbs of Christ, our tongues
\nextended to the host like waves, licking God
\nthen lapping back to rejoin the sea, our seats
\non the altar\u2026<\/p>\n

Thematically, this poem is complex, linking as it does the gospel, which translates literally as \u201cgood news,\u201d with death. Literally, the eucharist is linked to the death and resurrection of Christ, but participation in the eucharist is understood to bring life to the people. Here, Father X breathes death as he consecrates the wine, breathing out death upon the people even as they are in life.<\/p>\n

Poetry, though, needs to be more than theology even if its impulse is to express theology. Here, Czaia exploits the capacities of English so that his language is at least as memorable as his ideas. The excerpt I\u2019ve quoted relies on alliteration (raised\/ringing\/raising, catch\/crumbs, like\/licking\/lapping) and assonance (blood\/cup, crumbs\/tongues). \u00a0The simile of \u201ctongues extended to the host like waves\u201d extended to illustrate the communicants \u201clapping back to rejoin the sea\u201d is an apt description of the forward movement of parishioners as dozens or hundreds of individuals approach the altar and then return to their pews.<\/p>\n

This passage also illustrates Czaia\u2019s facility with the line. The opening line of this section introduces the paradox of the gospel affiliated with death, but then in the second line, Czaia uses the caesura not only for rhythmic effect but also to enrich the meaning of the line, augmenting the meaning of the sentence: \u201cteeming with its interest for life. The blood.\u201d According to the sentence, it is the gospel that is \u201cteeming with its interest for life,\u201d but according to the line, it is the blood that teems. Linked together, the line and the sentence attest that both interpretations are true. Such attention to the relationships between form and content is what I most appreciate in poetry, the potential of craft to magnify meaning.<\/p>\n

The most memorable poem in the collection, though, is \u201cBenque, 2005,\u201d a five-page prose poem that therefore relinquishes the opportunities line breaks create. Although this poem circulates around a narrative, the speaker\u2019s experience as a young man teaching in a Central American village, its tone is contemplative. Despite its length and the implicit narrative, \u201cBenque, 2005\u201d is not a narrative poem so much as a reflection on meaning. The poem refers to young love, adolescent misbehavior, religious emotionalism, and the rape of a boy by his uncle. But it is not about <\/em>any of these things; it is about a man\u2019s coming to terms with the fact that his world contains all of these things\u2014play and tragedy, love and evil. The final paragraph accepts these facts, but it also asserts that life consists of more than these facts:<\/p>\n

Some day I will be dead, as dead as any martyr or heretic, as dead as any willful human bereft of will, memory and desire. And then Benque will only be dust in my mouth, dust with other dust, mixing and mingling beneath my skull. And I will wait as others wait in the valley, to be remade, to dance in my fitful way with the other resurrected bodies. I will wait to be clothed again with flesh.<\/p>\n

Saint Paul Lives Here (in Minnesota) <\/em>is a memorable collection written by a poet with something to say. I look forward to reading more of Zach Czaia\u2019s work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Zach Czaia. Saint Paul Lives Here (in Minnesota). Resource Publications (Wipf and Stock), 2015. 54 pgs. $9.00. Reviewed by Lynn Domina Zach Czaia\u2019s Saint Paul Lives Here (in Minnesota) is an examination of betrayal by individuals and institutions, of innocence and guilt, and of forgiveness\u2014which doesn\u2019t come easily and sometimes doesn\u2019t come at all. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-areviewaweek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=429"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":432,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429\/revisions\/432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}