Peter O'Leary

Luminous Epinoia Peter O'Leary

Poetry. Luminous epinoia, a Gnostic notion, stands for the primordial imagination from which the whole of creation came into being. Likewise, Peter O'Leary's poetry moves from a mythic unconscious to its manifestation in mutual dreaming: family, friends, literary forbearers, and political demons take their place in a Dantescan vision of order and strife. Yet the prevailing mode of this book is less narrative than devotional: O'Leary's rich diction, full of archaisms and neologisms, tessellates dreadcomb, lutrescence, fogroom, and beatitude, the whole of it forming a complex, cathedralic figure for desire.