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A review by gorecki
Tongues of Fire by Seán Hewitt
4.0
This is a book of poems. Of invocations and summoning. Of prayers to and within nature. Of raising trees from words, many trees, and then kneeling under them ready to pray or beg or praise.
“Later still, the baby would not latch,
and I came back to this holly, unhardened
by the sun, unable to turn the light
into strength. May it keep its whiteness,
may it never learn the use of spikes;
or, in time, when a crown is made of it,
may the people approach one by one
to witness how a fragile thing is raised.”
“But then, in each of us, a wound must be made
or given - there is always the soul waiting
at the door of the body, asking to be let out.”
And there really is a lot of soul-letting here, in the invoked images and in the space left between the lines for rapid gulps of air. With his poems, Seán Hewitt creates a forest and then lets it speak its own verses about everything it witnesses: pain inflicted on oneself and others, love, both physical and in the heart, and spells to bind them all together.
“Later still, the baby would not latch,
and I came back to this holly, unhardened
by the sun, unable to turn the light
into strength. May it keep its whiteness,
may it never learn the use of spikes;
or, in time, when a crown is made of it,
may the people approach one by one
to witness how a fragile thing is raised.”
“But then, in each of us, a wound must be made
or given - there is always the soul waiting
at the door of the body, asking to be let out.”
And there really is a lot of soul-letting here, in the invoked images and in the space left between the lines for rapid gulps of air. With his poems, Seán Hewitt creates a forest and then lets it speak its own verses about everything it witnesses: pain inflicted on oneself and others, love, both physical and in the heart, and spells to bind them all together.