{"id":466,"date":"2017-05-22T06:52:01","date_gmt":"2017-05-22T10:52:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=466"},"modified":"2017-05-22T06:52:01","modified_gmt":"2017-05-22T10:52:01","slug":"review-of-communion-of-saints-by-susan-l-miller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=466","title":{"rendered":"Review of Communion of Saints by Susan L. Miller"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Susan L. Miller. Communion of Saints. <\/em>Paraclete Press, 2017. $18.00.<\/p>\n

Communion of Saints, <\/em>Susan L. Miller\u2019s first collection, is arranged into four sections, \u201cFaith,\u201d \u201cHope,\u201d \u201cLove,\u201d and \u201cPax et Bonum,\u201d a phrase which translates as \u201cpeace and all good\u201d and is particularly associated with Francis of Assisi and Franciscans. This last section contains poems inspired by a pilgrimage the author took to Assisi. The other three sections consist primarily of poems connected by a conceit\u2014their titles link an acquaintance of the speaker with a saint, e.g. \u201cPortrait of Sister Carol as St. Cecilia\u201d or \u201cPortrait of Ann as St. Stephen, Martyr.\u201d This device could grow old, functioning more as a gimmick than a driving force. Fortunately, Miller knows what she is doing; the links between the titular figures are neither superficial nor simplistic; the appropriateness of the figurative identities is revealed gradually and emerges from the details of their lives. Miller does provide notes identifying pertinent details regarding the saints, but the poems could, in fact, be read without any prior knowledge, though familiarity with the saints\u2019 lives certainly deepens appreciation of the poems. Some of the saints she mentions\u2014St. Francis, St. John the Baptist\u2014will be familiar to almost any reader; others\u2014St. Agnes, St. Anthony of Padua, St. Bonaventure\u2014will be familiar to most devout Catholics; a few\u2014St. Roch, St. Pascual Baylon\u2014might be entirely unfamiliar to almost all readers. Yet the poems do what literature does best, make the readers want to know more.<\/p>\n

The collection opens with a poem placed as prologue, \u201cManual for the Would-Be Saint.\u201d Miller provides instructions that apply to the dailiness of what it means to be human, those moments when so much harm can be done, as well as to those experiences of transcendence we so often associate with saintliness. Here are the opening lines:<\/p>\n

The first principle: Do no harm.
\nThe second: The air calls us home.
\nThird, we must fill the bowls of others
\nbefore we drain our own wells dry.
\nThe fourth is the dark night; the fifth
\na subtle scent of smoke and pine.
\nThe sixth is awareness of our duties,
\nthe burnt offering of our own pride.
\nSeventh, we learn to pray without ceasing.<\/p>\n

These lines illustrate both Miller\u2019s perception of saintliness and her attention to craft. Some of the lines allude to Biblical language or to writings of saints, \u201cthe dark night,\u201d \u201cburnt offering,\u201d \u201cpray without ceasing.\u201d Even in these lines, though, she suggests that holiness occurs through actions that might be more difficult than we anticipate; the \u201cburnt offering\u201d we are called to offer is not a sacrificial animal but \u201cour own pride.\u201d Other lines suggest that these saintly qualities occur in the context of incarnation; human life is imminent as well as, we hope, transcendent: \u201ca subtle scent of smoke and pine.\u201d<\/p>\n

The content of\u00a0 this poem is thought-provoking and will easily appeal to readers invested in spirituality; the form offers lessons to any poet invested in craft. Of these nine lines, seven are end-stopped; of the entire poem\u2019s twenty-six lines, in fact, nineteen are end-stopped. Yet the rhythm varies significantly from one line to the next, primarily because Miller includes caesuras at different points in the lines. In line one, the caesura occurs between syllables five and six; in the second, it occurs between syllables three and four; and in the third, it occurs after the first syllable. Miller achieves this by relying on modest anaphora, the suggestion of repetition without its full weight\u2014\u201cThe first principle,\u201d \u201cThe second,\u201d \u201cThird.\u201d By the time we reach line five, Miller begins and ends the line with the numeric signals, \u201cThe fourth\u201d and \u201cthe fifth.\u201d Miller\u2019s strategies throughout these lines permits her to exploit syntactic devices without risking monotony.<\/p>\n

Just when Miller has extended this strategy about as far as it can be extended, the poem shifts direction again:<\/p>\n

Eighteenth, we enter the stranger\u2019s city
\nat the mercy of the stranger\u2019s hand.
\nNineteenth, love flees the body,
\nand the spirit leaves its husk. And suddenly
\nthe numbers do not matter: nothing that is matter
\nmatters anymore: all is burned, all is born,
\nall is carried away in the wind.<\/p>\n

This conclusion is satisfying on several levels. It demonstrates that all of these instructions, expected and unexpected, have been leading toward something greater. Miller plays with language, punning on \u201cmatter,\u201d that substance we often mistake for the opposite of spirit. And finally, the imagery suggests that the way to sainthood transcends not only \u201cmatter\u201d but also religious distinctions, for those last two lines could have as easily been spoken by a Hindu or a Buddhist. Sainthood it seems according to this \u201cManual\u201d is not achieved so much as simply experienced.<\/p>\n

Perhaps this is one reason why Miller is able to ally so many of her acquaintances with saints. In \u201cPortrait of Evie as St. Martin de Porres,\u201d she describes her friend and colleague, the poet Evie Shockley, speaking with commitment and grace, revealing that power can reside apart from domination:<\/p>\n

\u2026.And she writes, we too: specific,
\nin every hue, the human family emerges and recedes
\nlike the patterns behind eyelids when I close<\/p>\n

my eyes. San Martin taught this kind of grace:
\nwhen called by royalty to heal the sick, he arrived,
\nknelt, and queried, Why would a prince have need<\/em><\/p>\n

to call on a mulatto, a poor friar like me? <\/em>Then,
\nknowing his powers exceeded anyone\u2019s
\nin that room, he laid his hand on the man\u2019s flesh<\/p>\n

and healed him.<\/p>\n

The line breaks in the last full stanza are particularly effective. We pause after \u201cThen,\u201d lending the syllable additional weight, until the \u201cpoor friar\u201d does what he has come to do.\u00a0 Breaking the next line between \u201canyone\u2019s\u201d and \u201cin that room\u201d permits the prepositional phrase to do double duty\u2014St. Martin has more power than anyone in the room, and it is also \u201cin that room\u201d that \u201che laid his hand on the man\u2019s flesh \/\/ and healed him.\u201d Miller doesn\u2019t often indent lines as she does with the final one here, but the additional pause reinforces the effect of the saint\u2019s action. We are left with the suggestion that St. Martin might have healed the prince more fully than the prince had hoped. He is presumably healed of his physical illness but perhaps he is also healed of the spiritual wounds that encourage him to draw distinctions between himself, the prince, and St. Martin, the mulatto.<\/p>\n

Miller\u2019s poems are ambitious, perhaps even more so collectively than they are individually. They show us what poetry can do, encouraging us to notice grace-filled people in this grace-filled world.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Susan L. Miller. Communion of Saints. Paraclete Press, 2017. $18.00. Communion of Saints, Susan L. Miller\u2019s first collection, is arranged into four sections, \u201cFaith,\u201d \u201cHope,\u201d \u201cLove,\u201d and \u201cPax et Bonum,\u201d a phrase which translates as \u201cpeace and all good\u201d and is particularly associated with Francis of Assisi and Franciscans. This last section contains poems inspired […]<\/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-466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-areviewaweek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466","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=466"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":468,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466\/revisions\/468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}