Michael D. O'kelly

Altarpieces: Structures of Poetry and Spiritual Thinking Michael D. O'kelly

Fireflies at dawn . . . Winged essences, charred bodies still on fire. This evocative poetry-essay collection issues a call for a renewed embracement of the reader's own expressive self. We've each a persona to hear - a voice to resonate through silences of night and the noises of everyday. Life is a mystery hard to crack. We bang it like a door and strum it like a lyre until it opens some new "portal" through which the voice can authentically sound-out the "truths" of being human. That's the happening of this book. - Altarpieces have always been artistic creations to conceive life's "sacred" space. This book follows that tradition, if rather untraditionally. These pieces speak to "hear" life on one's own terms; from one's own altar and cathedral. This "gathering" created a poet-self identity - called 'Apo'kstrophes' The essays join with the poems to conceive poetry and the spiritual quest with a renewed existential-eco-romantic perspective; sounding that quest with both feet grounded on "worldly other" Planet Earth. The challenge to grasp life at the core is a wrenching-wrestling match with the Other, that ever-present dimension of "poetry" on life's path. - Joining philosophical play with the authenticity of word-pieces as true orients, O'Kelly's book, with many poets helping along the way, has taken up that challenge with unflinching creativity. Want a spiritual adventure? Fly! Take the ride! Oh, the ride! Fins spurred in shivers of hide. Life's dearness reined in the roll of the tide.