{"id":8281,"date":"2023-06-28T14:41:37","date_gmt":"2023-06-28T14:41:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=8281"},"modified":"2023-06-28T14:41:39","modified_gmt":"2023-06-28T14:41:39","slug":"prayershreds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2023\/06\/28\/prayershreds\/","title":{"rendered":"Prayershreds"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Our Winnowed Words<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Bruce Beasley\u2019s Prayershreds <\/em>wrestles with language in hope of addressing divinity.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Review by Aarik Danielsen<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Is prayer a dead language? The question buzzes around my inner ear, loud enough to overthrow my equilibrium, loud enough to drown out even the chance of meditation.\u00a0<\/p>

Tripping over God\u2019s attributes, I feel my failure before attempting my address. Holiness knots my tongue; immanence drives me wild with doubt. If God sits close enough to read my thoughts, why must I say anything? What pious performance is this? And what I believe in with 98 percent confidence\u2014grace, mercy, divine creativity\u2014I understand at one one-thousandth of a percent, unable to articulate the gospel\u2019s means or metaphysics. Surely prayer mystifies everyone; starting from this honestly hazy conviction sends me reeling.<\/p>

At best, my prayers arrive in the \u201cpoor lisping, stammering tongue\u201d of William Cowper\u2019s hymnsong. More often, I catch myself muttering verses from The National at stoplights or in sanitized doctors\u2019 offices, calling it sacred enough. I can\u2019t get the balance right \/ With all my marbles in the fight.<\/em><\/p>

In the opening lines of Prayershreds, <\/em>poet Bruce Beasley rephrases the question as a statement\u2014as a \u201cSelf-Portrait\u201d\u2014before asking the question to dance, before challenging the question to a duel: \u201cI am words in a language I don\u2019t speak \/ a dead one.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>

The poem goes on, Beasley puzzling over the particulars of this language with its sounds \u201cfricative like the spill \/ of candle wax over ice.\u201d Maybe this dialect goes unspoken; maybe it\u2019s as intelligible as translating an owl\u2019s \u201ctalonprint\u201d into \u201cEnglish even now.\u201d By poem\u2019s end, Beasley wonders how we might say anything at all. This is the way of Prayershreds<\/em>: alternating bemusement and wonder, handling absurdity and beauty, diagramming prayer and breaking down its parts of speech in hope of discovering its secrets.<\/p>

For all its humor\u2014Prayershreds <\/em>houses genuinely riotous moments\u2014and shrugging shoulders, Beasley inches toward prayer with reverence. Sometimes he\u2019s crawling on his belly. (\u201cApproach It with appropriate fits of trembling,\u201d the poem \u201cRite\u201d counsels.) Sometimes he is sounding dissipating warnings, as in \u201cLoathsome Repetition\u201d: \u201cLet us not battologize but alter the wounded text with corrections.\u201d Yet the call to avoid wearied, wearying<\/em> repetition gives way to the coal-scorched lips of Isaiah, the panting tongue of David, as Beasley rehearses his coda: \u201cMy soul is like earth without water for Thee.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Sometimes prayer is pure appeal.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Laboring to correct the wounded text, to spell out the cry of the bruised soul, Beasley stares out at the vast, fertile country of his mother tongue. There are so many names for God, so many words for each reality, a poem like \u201cOutside the Realm of Unconcealment\u201d reminds us. Our words contain fragments of each other, approach common meaning, and send Beasley through image and implication until he directs prayers from \u201cLord Emmanuel\u201d down to a sacred \u201cwoodchip-clogged 3\/16\u201d drill-hole.\u201d<\/p>

Sometimes prayer is pure appeal. (\u201cO Lord I need you with a winnowed \/ word,\u201d he confesses in \u201cAria.\u201d) Sometimes it comes through formal tearing, cleaving letters and syllables to divulge the words within words, the revelation of unlikely elisions. Such gestures, seen in \u201cEasterwards\u201d and \u201cDisconnected Limbs Wandered Seeking Everywhere for Union,\u201d resemble no poetry or prayer we\u2019d ever memorize; yet they perfectly recreate our imperfect grasping for God.\u00a0<\/p>

Beasley sprains his tongue and strains his eyes to form just the right words at just the right time. Ultimately, he shows, this scrutiny is for the one praying. With the poet, we wager that a God who answers to many names will accept all manner of supplication. But our prayers say something about us, do<\/em> something in us, Beasley believes.<\/p>

The poet\u2019s searching travels in reverse, backing past God\u2019s name and nature to his own. \u201cNot Easily Pulled Asunder\u201d considers the shape his prayers might take were he not Bruce Beasley, a poet from Macon, Georgia, but Bruce Beasley, the now 84-year-old California sculptor. Do two artists by the same name send complementary prayers heavenward? Or do they split one image before God?\u00a0<\/p>

\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 Your vocabulary, you say, is shape and emptiness.\u00a0
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 So\u2019s mine: a scribble and a stroke \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 and left-white, then little\u00a0
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 vowel-quaver, silence-quiver,\u00a0
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 the said, the unsaid, and flitting
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 among them the meant, and what\u00a0
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 it never meant\u00a0
\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 to mean, to turn\u00a0
\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 away from,\u00a0
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 or into.<\/p>

We may not control the ends of our prayers or fully manipulate the means. Our work lies in coming forward with all we have, the poet proposes with mixed despair and wonder. Echoing the prophets, \u201cLast Supper with Maledictions\u201d weighs both our words and the tools which bear them. Does holy writ preserved with seaweed ink and fish-skin paper mean any less if we devote the same elements to filling our stomachs? Are we only ever expressing one hunger? Even our concluding \u201camens\u201d flex and falter, granting contour to our prayers but \u201cripping \/ the cut-out space of what we say to God \/ from the scrapped \/ silver silk of all we\u2019d never say,\u201d Beasley writes in \u201cVerily. \u201dSome prayers stall; some end in sleep. \u201cVerily\u201d sits beside a child, swallowed by Sabbath slumber on this side of his pastor\u2019s amen. \u201cCalled to Lapse\u201d sets Beasley\u2019s speaker in the disciples\u2019 company, stretching their bodies across Gethsemane\u2019s beds. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Each prayer is as unholy and holy as the next.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The poet\u2019s best hope\u2014and ours\u2014lies in divine reciprocation. The God who sifts our shreds changes us by perfecting our tattered language, fulfilling our innate sentences. Chasing Luther, \u201cAnd Though This World Should Threaten to Undo\u201d defines language as \u201ca torn hymnal, ripped sheet \/ music and severed\u201d Latin phrases blowing round the room and out the window. Beasley scratches actual notes and staves into the poem, beseeching God to hum us until we enter his divine life: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Work us\u00a0
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 (backslid and thrice-relapsed)
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 but work us weal, Your Mighty Highness, sight-sing\u00a0
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 me bar by bar, sharp and flat, tempo maestoso,
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 slower and slow and sola fide\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>

Beasley\u2019s work is odd in every way, and thus oddly hopeful. He encourages us to keep at the language of prayer, maddening as it is, till even our beloved details dissolve and we relax into eternal conversation. \u201cLittle Faiths,\u201d his closing poem, blesses us as we continue on our prayer journeys:<\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Whoever found your way here, go
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 on, go on, this is no place to dwell\u00a0
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 among syllables and obfuscatory
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 wants that lurch and halt and fight
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 all unambiguous naming. Like a creek\u00a0
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 self-purifying over stones
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 whose smoothness it creates
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 and then commends.<\/p>

Prayer will never die as long as we ourselves live, Beasley suggests. The representative words\u2014the very impulses themselves\u2014are enough for the God of the infinite lexicon, who contains in Godself all words and worlds. Pray without ceasing, <\/em>the apostle instructs. And we obey, even as we feel we\u2019re doing anything but. Prayer arises as expletives and plosives, in quiet resignation and murmured dad-rock, as none or all of the above. Prayer collects itself from our cut-up construction paper syllables, wicks away from the soul, flickers with the frequency of a firefly\u2019s existential questions.\u00a0<\/p>

Beasley\u2019s poems model this reality: from the distant decimal place of our understanding, each prayer is as unnatural as translating bird prints into English, as natural as breathing. Each prayer is as unholy and holy as the next.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Aarik Danielsen<\/strong> is the arts and culture editor at the <\/em>Columbia Daily Tribune in Columbia, Missouri. He writes The (Dis)content, a regular column for <\/em>Fathom Magazine, and his work has appeared in <\/em>Image Journal, <\/em>Plough, <\/em>Split Lip, <\/em>Rain Taxi and <\/em>Tinderbox Poetry Journal.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Prayershreds<\/strong> was published by Orision Books on May 2, 2023. You can purchase a copy for yourself from the publisher here<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bruce Beasley\u2019s Prayershreds wrestles with language in hope of addressing divinity. Review by Aarik 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