The Altar-Gray Gaze of a Showman on the Brink

Soul-searing quest and daring poetic experiment mix fearlessly in the first full-length published work by American poet Timothy Lavenz. Tracking through aftershocks of grief, epiphanies of freedom, excoriations of world and faith-filled vows to future beauty, and all the inner tangles and glimmers of masterpiece in between, this book takes nothing for granted. Not meaning, life, universe or God-nothing is known until the poem invents the sonic landscape where its discoveries will be revealed in a surprise dawn. Authorial voice ceaselessly morphs its engagement, style digs deeper into the unspeakable nerve, tone intensifies its passion and gives way to exultation as it molts-here is a mesmerizing necklace of intimate ciphers, an ever-fresh "ritual of amazements unborn." This poetry calls out from the shell of assumed position into an encounter of gazes colliding in the tumble of truth. It catches its bearings only to tumble further, as the author and showman, that "joyous pawn," lists heavenward with his magic-calm giggle, porting over a healing signal with a whole host of human hopes. Here the Mystery is not solved or reasoned out: it is unfolded in its vividness so that another heart can sing along. Here is a soul's progress through the gauntlet of pain and love, conducted by an audacious investigation of the limits of language, which stretch here to mirror that soul's vision, so it may share it with a fellow pained pilgrim who loves.