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The Oracle House
Jake Berry writes poems that ask to be lived in, lived with. Each one bodies forth a quiet beauty, swerving and turning with the breath. These are spirit trajectories, threaded through the memory and the familial, or familiar, are alchemised in sudden and unexpected ways. The world shimmers with intimation.‘All of it rising now out of memory so intimately’. I cannot recommend this book too highly.
Cal Wenby In a recent publication, Jake Berry writes, “Great white falcons rise / out of the sand and weave / figures in the air, / figures that might someday be called letters.” This short passage, taken in isolation, is only a portion of a longer work, but it conjures up the connection between letters and natural phenomena, imagines a transformation of figures in the air into script, suggests the “wingéd” feeling that has been associated with poetry since at least Homer (“winged words), and even glances at Yeats’ famous falcon “turning and turning in the widening gyre.” Berry has a reputation among some as talented but “unsophisticated,” but this passage and just about anything contained in The Oracle House shows him to be an erudite, spontaneous, and supremely imaginative No sooner did we leave the forest than we began to fear it, its shadows and the play of light on every nestled creature. As we move through the wood, it moves all around us, watching from an invisible advantage, unknown and smelling our fear. Those of us who have followed Berry’s complex motions from the marvelous Brambu Drezi , Book I, published in 1993, are not surprised at the range and depth of this work. Read it and see for yourself. Jack Foley
Jake Berry’s The Oracle House , fuses the allegorical language of the ancient Judaic-Christian tradition, with a nineteenth century American rustic sensibility. It is like reading the Old Testament’s ‘Poetic Books’ and Henry David Thoreau’s Walden at the same time. A better combination would be hard to find. Jeffrey Side We attend to life’s necessities, with the Big Questions always in play, the mundane sphere bound to, and by, our mythic legacies. Jake Berry’s The Oracle House , his latest collection of poems, offer us Blakean metaphors which duly display passages of our turning, waiting, doubting, holding moments, through the obscure gates of our earthly sojourn. Passages transited across thresholds in a ragged world upheld by vast galactic alluvia, against the days of smoke and return where heaven and earth are betrothed. This is a book of prayer and the holding of faith, life questioning itself through the temporal seasons, through the sacred and profane moments as we dredge through the sediment of memories. From Sophia, the Call still beckons – we gather the light, each dawn brings the voice of wisdom and renewal as we traverse eternity’s portico. The Oracle House lights our way through the darkly oracular mists. Matt Hill is a sculptor, poet and author of Parataxis, The Beige Book, and Integral Process.
Cal Wenby In a recent publication, Jake Berry writes, “Great white falcons rise / out of the sand and weave / figures in the air, / figures that might someday be called letters.” This short passage, taken in isolation, is only a portion of a longer work, but it conjures up the connection between letters and natural phenomena, imagines a transformation of figures in the air into script, suggests the “wingéd” feeling that has been associated with poetry since at least Homer (“winged words), and even glances at Yeats’ famous falcon “turning and turning in the widening gyre.” Berry has a reputation among some as talented but “unsophisticated,” but this passage and just about anything contained in The Oracle House shows him to be an erudite, spontaneous, and supremely imaginative No sooner did we leave the forest than we began to fear it, its shadows and the play of light on every nestled creature. As we move through the wood, it moves all around us, watching from an invisible advantage, unknown and smelling our fear. Those of us who have followed Berry’s complex motions from the marvelous Brambu Drezi , Book I, published in 1993, are not surprised at the range and depth of this work. Read it and see for yourself. Jack Foley
Jake Berry’s The Oracle House , fuses the allegorical language of the ancient Judaic-Christian tradition, with a nineteenth century American rustic sensibility. It is like reading the Old Testament’s ‘Poetic Books’ and Henry David Thoreau’s Walden at the same time. A better combination would be hard to find. Jeffrey Side We attend to life’s necessities, with the Big Questions always in play, the mundane sphere bound to, and by, our mythic legacies. Jake Berry’s The Oracle House , his latest collection of poems, offer us Blakean metaphors which duly display passages of our turning, waiting, doubting, holding moments, through the obscure gates of our earthly sojourn. Passages transited across thresholds in a ragged world upheld by vast galactic alluvia, against the days of smoke and return where heaven and earth are betrothed. This is a book of prayer and the holding of faith, life questioning itself through the temporal seasons, through the sacred and profane moments as we dredge through the sediment of memories. From Sophia, the Call still beckons – we gather the light, each dawn brings the voice of wisdom and renewal as we traverse eternity’s portico. The Oracle House lights our way through the darkly oracular mists. Matt Hill is a sculptor, poet and author of Parataxis, The Beige Book, and Integral Process.
92 pages, Hardcover
Published October 22, 2022
About the author
Jake Berry
37 books24 followersJake Berry is a poet, musician and visual artist. The author of Brambu Drezi, Species of Abandoned Light, Drafts of the Sorcery, and numerous other books. He has been an active member of the global arts and literary community for more than 25 years. His poems, fiction, essays, reviews and other writings have been published widely in both print and electonic mediums. In April 2010 Lavender Ink released a collaborative book, Cyclones In High Northern Latitudes, with poet Jeffrey Side and drawings by Rich Curtis.
Berry's solo musical albums include, Liminal Blue, Strange Parlors, Naked as rain and the animal beneath, Shadow Resolve and many others. With Bare Kunckles he has recorded four albums, Trouble In Your House, Alabama Dust, Doppelganger Blues and Root Bound. With the ambinet experimental group Ascension Brothers he has recorded numerous albums including All Souls Banquet, The Wedding Ball and Pillar of Fire (which served as soundtrack for a series of plays by Ray Bradbury) and most recently Transfigurations Blues.
Ongoing projects include book four of Brambu Drezi (which will include a video for each section - the opening sections are available now at YouTube), a collection of short poems, and an online and print biography of the poet and critic Jack Foley.
Berry's solo musical albums include, Liminal Blue, Strange Parlors, Naked as rain and the animal beneath, Shadow Resolve and many others. With Bare Kunckles he has recorded four albums, Trouble In Your House, Alabama Dust, Doppelganger Blues and Root Bound. With the ambinet experimental group Ascension Brothers he has recorded numerous albums including All Souls Banquet, The Wedding Ball and Pillar of Fire (which served as soundtrack for a series of plays by Ray Bradbury) and most recently Transfigurations Blues.
Ongoing projects include book four of Brambu Drezi (which will include a video for each section - the opening sections are available now at YouTube), a collection of short poems, and an online and print biography of the poet and critic Jack Foley.
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