Book Review: “Songs of Seven Days”
“SONGS OF SEVEN DAYS” A New Poetry Collection by James R. Dennis
Review by Bonnie Lyons
James R. Dennis’ “Songs of Seven Seas” is striking in both text and physical beauty. Dennis, a novelist and a Dominican friar as well as poet, uses the seven days of creation depicted in Genesis, as the spine of the book. The seven sections contain various numbers of poems. For example, The Sixth Day about the creation of animals and humans contains eight poems, while the Third and Fourth Days each have only four poems. The poetry makes clear Dennis’ profound spiritual sense, but the poems are not didactic or solemn. They vary in focus within each section.
The First Day section begins with a poem about the Chartres Cathedral and concludes with a poem in which Dennis talks to the morning light, momentarily resting on his Borges book, asking: “Have you given any thought to Gabriel Marquez?” How can a reader not delight in such a poet.
Dennis’ book of poems suggests enormous literary, historical and scientific knowledge. There are epigraphs and allusions to Aristotle, Dian Fossy, Leonardo da Vinci, T.S. Elliot, Marcel Proust, Daniel Boorstin, Charles Darwin, Seamus Heaney, Wendell Berry and Carl Sagan. But his knowledge of world geography and various cultures is also amazing. He writes about Buddhist stupas, Hagia Sophia, the Maldives, and the Maya Bay of Thailand, as well as the Chartres Cathedral. He does not neglect the local; he tells us he is from West Texas where as a child he adored the “uninterrupted” azure vault of the sky and how a move to Louisiana where trees “obscure the horizon.” Left him feeling as though his pockets had been picked.
Other references to Texas include Enchanted Rock and Lubbock. In “The Ice World,” describing the monstrous storms on Jupiter, Dennis humorously admits: “The weather there is even worse than in Lubbock.”
The poems about animals, especially whales and elephants, are touching in their love of these creatures. Wonderful colloquial language, including words like “lollygag” and “skedaddle. coupled with humor and occasional political rage, make this wide-ranging learned book inviting to every reader.
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“Songs of Seven Days,” by James R. Dennis; Material Media, 2024; no price given.