Questions About God: poems

By Stephen Perry

An Original multimedia collection of lauded humanist poetry. These boundary shattering poems will take the reader on a thought provoking journey through not only man’s mythologies and regions but through questions rooted in philosophy, science, history, etymology, archeology, psychology, poetry, sexuality, music, etc., in fact anything of human interest!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Humanist Press
• Release date: Sep 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9780931779343

Book preview

Ladder

Praise for Questions About God

"In Questions About God, Stephen Perry manifests a poetry of collision and surfeit, an inclusive portrait (including his photographs) of a poet’s mind working furiously in our raw and ambivalent post-post-modern dawns and gloamings. Be prepared for a maelstrom ride through art, religion, philosophy, sexuality—in fact all things human, where categories break down and images meld into new relationships with one another. One thinks of Rabelais wrestling with Descartes somewhere backstage, behind the curtain—or of Borges’ library, where the only true portrait of the world can be the world itself in its entirety. In the marvelous prose poem ‘Monologue,’ Perry’s narrator says, ‘… I have finally done it, explained myself to myself.’ Perhaps he means the poet, but in doing so, both visually and verbally, he brings the reader along on a profound journey into the inner worlds that reside deeply within the inner worlds."

— Frank X. Gaspar, author of five collections of poetry and two novels. The Holyoke won the Morse Poetry Prize, Mass for the Grace of a Happy Death won the Anhinga Prize for Poetry, A Field Guide to the Heavens won the Brittingham Prize in Poetry, and his novel, Leaving Pico, won the Barnes & Noble Discover Award. His poetry has been twice anthologized in Best American Poetry. He has also won a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and three Pushcart Prizes.

Praise for Stephen Perry’s Poetry

Stephen Perry—amateur physicist, botanist, lepidopterist—has a scientific fix on the details of the earth, and he expresses what he apprehends with a quirky passion and a lively sense of linguistic play.

— Billy Collins, Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003, New York State Poet Laureate from 2004 to 2006, author of thirteen poetry collections and several anthologies. The journal Poetry selected him as Poet of the Year in 1994, and in 2005, he was the first annual recipient of its Mark Twain Prize for Humor in Poetry.

~

"Stephen Perry has a novelist’s racing momentum and the lyric poet’s sad, sweet music. [His] poems keen, croon, careen. His imagination is always sympathetic, always surprising. If Hieronymus Bosch had painted Los Angeles—didn’t he?—this is what it would look like."

— J. D. McClatchy, author of seven collections of poems and several works of criticism, long-time editor of the Yale Review, Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1996 until 2003, and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his book, Hazmat. He has written texts for musical settings, including ten opera libretti. His most recent book is Seven Mozart Librettos: A Verse Translation.

~

The motions [in his poems], extreme as they must be in the extremity of their occasions, never blur. The imagery is wild by nature, not by force. And the sound! The sound is the music of our common Terror becoming, somehow but certainly, Joy. Perry is a man who has come through. His poems are brilliant evidence and a perfect map.

— Donald Revell, author of twelve books of poetry, translator of Apollinaire and Rimbaud. He has won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, is a two-time winner of the PEN Center USA Award for Poetry, and he has received the Gertrude Stein Award, two Shestack Prizes, two Pushcart Prizes and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Ingram Merrill and Guggenheim Foundations.

For Susan

It may be that universal history is the history

of a handful of metaphors.

Jorge Luis Borges

Granddad

I

Questions About God

Does God have a penis and did Mary see it, tiny

seraphim swimming upstream to spawn, and was it

the flesh of fish and what kind of fish,

clownfish, swordfish, blowfish, or lionfish

with the spines of the sun, and did He impregnate

the moon through her ear, her big white stone

stomach ever pregnant with that which we can’t

conceive? Can He make a stone which He Himself

can’t lift, like the ovum of Eve busy with

civilization? Can He lift the word feather,

bring Abelard back to life? Is He really two?

Can He turn on the dark? Can He make ghost crabs

climb into mangrove trees? Is He really

a male, or perhaps only a tiger’s brood

and symmetry in the body of Blake, a poem?

If He’s dead, can He bring Himself back to life?

Did Mary deliver a stillbirth and hush it up with myth,

with Him washing her feet? Were His turds

divine? And did they have the faces of demons

or His Father or simply the bark of the baobab tree?

What did He say to the dinosaurs—ooops?

Are there really flecks of gold in the floor

of His study, heaven, as Shakespeare said,

or were they just souls of expired stars?

Does He know about Stephen Hawking’s work?

Why did He make grapes, or Bacchus, or sex?

Why did He turn the martyrs’ cunts to dust?

Why are women the bone of men? Can God

fuck Himself? Can God die and would He smell

like roses or one hundred high heavens

or sea

Reviews for Questions About God

[michaelg16 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

The only thing I enjoyed about this book of poetry was the cover.

[realbigcat · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"Questions About God" by Stephen Perry hits you like a knife, not a sharp knife but rather a rusty old blade. It's painful to the point that you won't forget. Perry is thought provoking not knowing what to expect next. He moves with a rhythm that's unexpected but some how works. He goes deep into the soul to pull out thought provoking ideas which are most often not very pretty. If you are looking for Billy Collins then Perry is not the poet for you. If you are looking for something shokingly fresh that will hit you fast and hard then give this work a read. After your done read it again because this work demands it.

[buffalopoet · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Stephen Perry is a risk-taker, poetically speaking. In fact, by the time I was on the fifth or sixth poem in Questions About God, I was pretty sure he was a danger freak, addicted to climbing aesthetic or poetic cliffs without a rope. My quick take (if you're looking for a thumbs-up thumbs-down approach)? While he definitely trips at times (and remember, he's climbing without a rope, so it's a long fall), he also summits again and again – and it's well worth joining him on every peak. Questions About God may not be an even, consistent collection, but it is filled with a sense of play – of language, of image, of thought – and seriousness – and yes, with a strong sense of poetry. Perry's parting gift, an extraordinary three-page stream-of-consciousness catalog titled “These Things Are Important” held me rapt for its nearly 150 lines of loose 5-beat, 6-beat, 7-beat syncopation packed with: demijohns, alcohol, preschool, brain cells like bees' chambers, chamber music, bass clefs, fish gills, clarinets, Debussy under my fingers,Believe me, the list includes everything. In his 'Notes' at the end of the book, Perry says that he wrote it “in almost one long breath on a day I was severely depressed and posed the question to myself: 'What's there to live for?'” As personal as the list is, the underlying celebration is universal (and anyway, a whole bunch of them certainly make my list and will probably make yours). We should all be graced to find as much to plumb on our darkest days. So much for the 'short take.' For those who are interested interested in more details about some of the high points, here we go. Perry's risky behavior jumps right out in the first lines of the first poem, and it's the risk of toying with a trap that catches artists and writers regularly. The book's title poem, “Questions About God”, opens: Does God have a penis and did Mary see it, tiny seraphim swimming upstream to spawn,Uh oh. Pop music, contemporary visual art, and writing are all littered with ostensible shock value mistaken for inspiration. Call God a schlub and you get a reaction. So we're just two lines into the book, I'm concerned, and then: and was it the flesh of fish and what kind of fish, clownfish, swordfish, blowfish, or lionfish,and we're off and running. This is no amateur we're reading. Perry's best poems regularly throw beautifully musical lines and images intertwined in front of you, supported by what sometimes seems an open channel to archetype and symbol and literature and history – and momentum. Even a 'long' poem like this (3 pages) requires a certain recklessness for momentum, and Perry has all the recklessness required to take the brakes off. The engine may skip here and there, the rhythm might stumble on occasion, but the momentum carries you through to the end.As free wheeling as Perry's energy of language and images and ideas are, he is often disciplined and precise as well, and with wonderful results. His sestina, Rye and Dry, was a revelation when I read it – there's a long list of sestinas by famous poets on undergraduate reading lists, but few are this successful. It's about a poet (again, a risk – there's as many bad poems about poets as there are bad sestinas) – and even riskier, about Robert Lowell the poet, and the archetype he represents of a certain poet-character in, say, a novel or movie. Among the many successes of this poem: you don't need to know anything about Robert Lowell to love it – what held me was the language mixed with the character mixed with the images, again, intertwined and inseparable. In other words, it's a damn good poem, and tells a good story, too. Better, it's referential in the way the best poems are: making references not to impress us, but to point us along the same path the poet followed to get there – the reference as an invitation. On the night I read this, the reference to Lowell's “The Drunken Fisherman” led me to first to Lowell's take on Rimbaud's “The Drunken Boat” from Imitations, the only book of Lowell's floating around in my library. It was obviously not the poem Perry referred to, but I read it anyway, followed by a side trip to Lowell's translation/take on Pasternak's 'For Anna Akhmatova,' since I'd just read my first Akhmatova a few days before. Then I finally tracked down the correct poem and understood how it could stay with somebody long enough to, well, cause a sestina – not something that happens often. So, reference, some random chance, some convergence with recent unrelated reading – this is the journey I was sent on after reading “Rye and Dry.” Stephen, thanks for the trip!Other highlights for me: “Blueberry Cordial,” another example of Perry pointing a poem down a steep hill and removing the brakes (and in this case, the breaks as well – it moves from 4- and 5-beat lines to long breathless runaway phrases as he draws the poem's story to a close). “Don Giovanni,” where Perry manages to make well-crafted 2-beat lines and three, two, and one-line stanzas tell a story as expansive as his runaway train pieces. “Philomel,” the shortest poem in the book and a lovely eight-line lyric. “Tenements of Rose and Ice,” one of the more mannered, measured poems in the collection, and one I'll revisit. And of course, the final poem, “These Things are Important,” which is what I opened this review with, and so will finish here. Yes, a lot of words for a LibraryThing review, but it felt like an appropriate response to a book filled with so much hard work, so much of it successful.

[yarb_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Mostly kaleidoscopic, pell-mell verse, poetic grapeshot that is more hit than miss. Never dull or detached, "Questions About God" is nonetheless at its best when it pauses for breath, as in the haunting "Philomel", or when the madcap exuberance is kept yoked as in the brilliant title poem. There's a rich dark humor in the (lack of) self-awareness of Perry's cast of crackpots and a gossamer deftness in some of the portraiture, e.g. the grandfather in "Blue Spruce", remembered "in snow, a deep lather / of laughter, the picture / where he took me from my mother // and raised me high, a baby, into the bell / of his sousaphone, as if I were a note / he'd play into light-."Some of these poems have a tendency to run away with themselves, the lines lengthening like a drunken diatribe; sometimes, as in the closing poem "These Things Are Important"- a list-poem which isn't really anything more than a list - they're less than the sum of their parts. But there are enough truly kick-ass pieces here to recommend "Questions About God" to anyone with a bent for writing that grabs you by the gonads and rasps its hot breath right into your ear.

[mykl8s · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Stephen Perry’s poetry in “Question About God” is full of images. Even his narratives get lost in his images, but his images are so often beautiful or scary or full of strength that I stop worrying about context or content or form and just follow along with the tour perry has set out for me to follow. It is a tour of a very engaging mind at work.

[kurvanas · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Fascinating, provocative, intelligent collection of poetry that pulls no punches in its investigation of man, God, and all thoughts in between.

[yogamom67 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed this book. I was a bit apprehensive at first due to the writing style. All of the poems appear to be stream of consciousness and some are quite dense. And, as other reviewers have noted, some of the topics are controversial and would be viewed as offensive by plenty. The first poem I looked at - "Napi" - appears to be about an individual's experience of watching his girlfriend have an abortion. I couldn't finish it - I tried twice - but it was just too difficult to read (subject, not style). However, in spite of my discomfort - it's a valid subject for a poem, although I question the purpose of making this particular poem public. Although good poetry is often very personal and speaks to us because we connect with it in some elemental way, not everything written needs to or should be shared. That said, it was several weeks before I picked up this book again, and when I did, I was happy I'd given it a second chance (which, I should note, was somewhat mandatory as I received this book from Library Thing's Early Reviewers Program and a review - good or bad - although not required, is recommended if you want to continue to receive ARCs). Despite their dense appearance, the poems were surprisingly good - accessible, relatable, and often funny. My favorite by far is "Blueberry Cordial." It reads more like a short short story, is deliciously tongue-in-cheek, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it in The Stroud or some other literary mystery magazine sometime in the near future. As with most books of poetry, I didn't read all the poems in chronological order. I have to be in the right mood and more importantly, the right space to read a poem. I like to read a poem through at least twice and if possible, I also read it out loud a few times. That said, I've read several, but not all, of the poems in this book. What I have read, with the exception of "Napi," I've enjoyed very much. Many time I've started to read a poem expecting not to like it (Descartes' Baby's Asshole), been slowly drawn in and finished the poem thinking "this is pretty good!"The title poem, "Questions About God," reminded me of Pablo Naruda's "Book of Questions" and no doubt, was inspired by it. Reading it, I found myself nodding my head, thinking that I'd wanted to asked similar questions. "Questions About God," all in all, is a well done collection of thoughtful, sometimes provocative, and definitely memorable poetry that was worth diving into.

[medievaliz-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book via the Early Reviewers program on LibraryThing. This collection of post-modern humanist poetry is not afraid to ask questions of God, and the world, and the role humanity does and should play. "Questions About God," the poem which lends its title to the text itself, is by far the best. Its desperate, driving pace and the questions it poses--though sometimes they seem grotesque or even crude--are ingenuous, the kind of questions we first pose as children but are taught not to express. The rest of the poetry is similar in theme, but pales in comparison to the book's opening.

[shawnmarie_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I have to say I was hoping for something different in this book of poetry. It always puts me on my guard when the only reviews for a book are from other poets, that makes me - a reader - wonder if anyone but a poet should read it. I'm thinking probably not. The most moving piece for me in the book was "Napi." A delicate subject handled much more gently than the rest of the poems which are stark and offensive - probably as intended, but not something I personally want to read. I don't like to be abused by my poetry and that is how this book left me. Of course, since I was changed by the poet's words, well, I suppose his objective was obtained. I just have no real desire to ever open this book again.