In Maker of Heaven & (Belle Point Press 2023), Jason Myers invites readers into a rich accounting of our brutal world. He draws out moments of distilled wonder, seeking to savor what can be made sacred while also delving into the wreckage of our humanity. The poems in this collection are suffused with awe, mundanity, and the stark truths of destruction that accompany it all, creating an almost mythic dialectic that allows holy to live alongside horror, sacred to mingle with strange. At its core, Maker of Heaven & is deeply rooted in the sensual world; the collection asks readers to take in the music, tastes, and textures of the poems in a new form of prayer, weaving a fine fabric of hope, joy, and frank sorrow throughout.
What is most striking in the collection’s opening is Myers’ ability to braid the mundane with a far more expansive reality of our world. The first poem of the collection, “How To Make a Sound,” describes the experience of waiting for a child to be born in such a blunt way that it becomes almost humorous. Myers writes, “one day, after months of frozen dinners & cheap wine / binged series after binged series / a child arrived” (3). In this way, the poem contracts into a mundane moment, before expanding out into something full of awe:
“So, when I held, for the first time,
our son,
what slipped from my mouth was
part cry, part spill of almost verb, a word
like love, insufficient, immeasurable, & perfect.” (Myers, 4)
Myers’ poems breathe, ebbing and flowing between small, insular moments of savor, sorrow, and even boredom, to then expand out into something bordering on miraculous in how it captures distilled emotion. Particularly sound (and inversely silence) returns as Myers touches on music, language, and where they fail us in accounting for what is beautiful, ugly, and in between in this world. Meyers manages to weave it all together through sound and scene in “Maker of Heaven”:
“on a Thursday evening as you press your tired head to the glass of the bus
moving glacierly down Lexington Avenue past M signs
buskers offering their shattered delight to the harmonica’s incessant need,
a memory of the first time your tongue tasted the sugarsalt of inner thigh
astonishes you with gleeful nostalgia” (43)
The mundane becomes something close to miracle in Maker of Heaven &, drawing the reader into intimate moments of sensual memory that both smart and sing with how bittersweet they are.
Memory is also touched through music, drawing on both shared and personal history to bring together a rich and sorrowful accounting of the past. In the poem “On Learning Langston Hughes Wanted His Funeral To End With ‘Do Nothin’ Til You Hear From Me,’” Myers writes that “we all know a sound that knows us, that calls / & claims each moment of our lives / even in death we want a groove” (30). Myers weaves twentieth century soul and jazz music throughout Maker of Heaven &, bearing witness to the violence of racism that continues to rage in America, while at the same time holding the sweet miracle of song, from Robert Johnson and Johnny Hartman to Billie Holiday and Etta James. Music of the past becomes a way to understand the present and the future, in turn transforming the past into a religious text of its own, as Myers poignantly describes in “The Concord of the Strings”:
“But I am burdened
by stories not my own
that tell me what my own stories mean
& a music sticks, & grows, & rages
like trees carrying, through winter’s paucity,
the violence of spring.” (28)
These lines can’t help but evoke Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit,” speaking of a violence and oppression that persists today. At the same time, Myers connects this music to his own memories, of records passed down by grandparents and rhythms that have followed him through his life. Myers holds the darkness of history and the intimate pleasure of memory at the same time in this collection, allowing both to exist alongside each other, rather than in spite of each other.
Amidst the music and movement of this collection, moments of silence, stillness, and observation reveal pure awe in the most minute aspects of life, offering readers hope that there are still sacred things to find in the mundane. In “Eucharist,” Myers writes:
“I want the world in my mouth.
Walnut, avocado, nasturtium.
Icewine, edelweiss, dictionary.
Can you swallow sunset
I’ll try.” (67)
Like a dare or a call to action, Myers implores readers to take in as much of this world as they can, and to hold on tight. Finding the wonder, the horror—finding all of it, holding all of it, and in turn, holding hope.
Maker of Heaven & is available at Belle Point Press.
Addie Dodge is a student at Colorado College pursuing a B.A. in psychology with a minor in English. She is a writer currently working as an editor for her college’s literary magazine, Cipher, and is also a clinical intern at a domestic violence shelter in Colorado. She fills her freetime with hiking in the mountains and lots of reading.