Earthen Lavers

Abstract

A few years ago, William Logan wrote, “Poetry has long been a major art with a minor audience.” We could more accurately call it a major art with many minor audiences grouped, like the poets, around region, identity, ideology, and artistic affiliations—a fragmentation that makes generalizations difficult. It is not easy to place in a larger context the three books I am reviewing here—Tyler Chadwick’s Litany with Wings, Scott Hales’s Hemingway in Paradise and Other Poems, and Elizabeth Pinborough’s The Brain’s Lectionary. The collection most explicitly tied to Mormon culture is Hemingway in Paradise. But suppose “Afterlives” were called “The Modern Purgatorio”? Or “Primary Activity” became “Vacation Bible School”? They would work about as well. Litany with Wings and The Brain’s Lectionary have affiliations with feminism’s goddess poetry, and both borrow heavily from the liturgical language of Catholicism, though probably in ways that suggest their non-Catholic origin. Poetry by neurodivergent poets has recently received increased attention; The Brain’s Lectionary is a brilliant example and deserves to find an audience beyond LDS circles.