There is a deep and abiding sense of mystery at the heart of Jake Berry's poems in
Substance, Oblivion & Infinite Communion, a sustained feeling of awe as "abyss / cries out to abyss / and the pulsing chambers / compose a liturgy // without words, / the river birds leaping / into the wind." What most moves me about Berry's work here is the way he finds in the "substance" of the material world-the world of nature, and the world of his Alabama home-the "infinite communion" that makes for a mystical poetry that is also homely and lovingly quotidian. Here, cicadas might be a "rare breed of angels," and we behold "stars in the mouths / of a flock of blackbirds." This book is a quiet miracle.
Norman Finkelstein
I come to the poetry of Jake Berry with open arms, holding out my hands in the spirit of trust as I listen to his experience of the infinite. Berry has always been our 20th and 21st Century visionary poet who joins with such luminaries as Julian of Norwich and Thomas Merton in approaching the ineffable. With integrity and a deftness that resists attention to the poet himself, Jake Berry narrates a purely natural beauty, observing "the man across / the street / tending / his tea roses." The poet brings us an encompassing sacrament with signature deftness in such graceful passages as "the inscrutable calligraphy / of a ballerina." Always attuned to the inherent holiness in experience, Jake Berry reconciles substance with oblivion in a brave declaration of communion as the most fundamental reality.
Sheila E. Murphy
For some years Jake Berry has been steadily perfecting the workings of a language meant to encompass the vastness of answers beyond the temporal, while maintaining the affability of a trusted friend who is calmly moved to share the possibilities with you. With
Substance, Oblivion & Infinite Communion, he arrives in the realm of perfect wonderment and easy transmission. Eternal underpinnings are recognized in the company of personal memory, and all is voiced with the same trust and loving intention. Throughout the book, both the irrelevance of Materialism and removal from tuggings of dogma are clear enough, with the radiance of patiently gleaned knowledge guiding the journey. In the end, we can take undeniable heart in the crystalline magic of the poet's language itself, which attains both a measured richness and sheer rarefication unsurpassed by any metaphysical poetry within my memory.
David Thomas Roberts
