A review by aesopsdaddy
Tongues of Fire by Seán Hewitt

4.0

Haven’t read much poetry in a while so, after recently finishing Hewitt’s stunning ‘All Down Darkness Wide’, I decided to pick this up. I’m glad I read that memoir first because I was able to apprehend biographical resonances which made these poems all the more poignant. Theophanic and elegiac, in much of this tree-hugging debut, Hewitt dwells upon the ‘inscapes’ of Nature à la Hopkins—the unique inner, well, natures of natural things, be they lake or leaf. He mediates upon the destructive plasticity of decay, reaching the revelation that “nothing [is] lost, only translated”. I particularly related to this pantheistic theology and Hewitt’s queering of this; that God can be found on one’s knees, among the trees, either cruising or church-going.