Saints of Little Faith

by Megan Pinto

The energies animating Saints of Little Faith, Megan Pinto’s electrifying debut in poetry, are a forceful quiet, a loud stillness, the caesura between a lightning strike and the sound of thunder. Everywhere, the speaker sees the numinous power of language, the incipience of things to come, even a kind of catastrophic grace in desolation and destruction — as if within the terrain of her own obsession, she recognizes the familiar, ever-changing seasons. Fierce and intimate, this poet’s meditative transformations engage with South Asian experiences of addiction, domestic violence, and mental illness, refusing to ignore narratives treated as unspeakable and overlooked by the English canon. Mapping the collision of abuse, psychosis, and rage, Pinto sees beyond them, buoyed by an inscrutable but abiding faith in the holiness of life itself, in a cold God nevertheless capable of gentleness. Once, “desire was an arrow, but now desire / is the field.” Pinto presides over this expanse, deciding, “I have three to drift through life / anesthetized, to soften. . .” In that unspoken “or,” the merciful lacuna of that ellipsis, reside the lyrical mystery and medicine that feed this astonishing collection and strengthen resolve, both ours and the speaker’ “The lake looks frozen, but it is not.” 

Genres: Poetry

109 pages, Paperback

Published September 15, 2024

About the author

Megan Pinto is the author of Saints of Little Faith (Four Way Books, 2024). Her poems can be found in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Ploughshares, Lit Hub and elsewhere. Megan has received support from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference, Storyknife, and the Peace Studio. Megan received the 2023 Anne Halley Poetry Prize from the Massachusetts Review, and was selected for Poets & Writers' 2024 Get the Word Out Poetry Cohort. Megan lives in Brooklyn and holds an MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson.

Reviews

[Mya Matteo]

“God made the world with his mouth. / He spoke, and heavens appeared.”

“Obsession is a godless place. I go there everyday.”

“Psychosis is cyclical, it crests like a wave.”

[Hannah Bonner · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most stunning debuts I've ever read.

[Leigh Lucas · Rating 5 out of 5]

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️!


It Was the Winter of My Life


Afternoons, I watched light fade
from brownstones. I took
long, aimless walks by the water. Each day
more leaves fell. The starkness
of trees, their sheer nakedness. . .

My friend called to tell me about a neighbor
who cornered her in the stairwell
and kissed her. She described
standing perfectly still.

The shape of the lake nearing dusk,
its symmetrical, man-made enclosures.

Rumi speaks of sorrow as a clearing
of leaves, making space for joy. But what
to do with rage? And in such a desolate
landscape?

Walking to my car from the library, a stack of books piled high in front of me, I was stopped by a parked SUV, filled with laughing men. They had parked in front of my—how did they know?—car. They looked at me and laughed uproariously, and continued to laugh as the man in the driver’s seat got out. I don’t remember what I said, but I used the word please.

Consider the accrual of knowledge. There are facts, like the mechanics of throwing a punch, how abdominals contract, twisting the torso, powering the shoulder, arm extending, knuckles

bursting skin, such force(!), a fire from within.

My friend says, you go through life thinking
you’re a person, then learning
people see you as an object.
A thing that placates
or slakes.

I quiet my mind with the sight of the lake.

Trauma is not the event itself, but the body’s learned response. When identifying domestic violence, professionals look for signs like a fist through a wall, a chair with three legs instead of four, the message being:

next time
this could be you
the you
being me, when I circled 37 out of 50 Red Flags
on the STOP DOMESTIC VIOLENCE pamphlet
when I dialed the 1-800 number.

In therapy, I study my enclosures, the small, dark spaces of my mind.
I practice telling myself, you are not your thoughts,
but the watcher of your thoughts.
The watcher, watching over you.


And then, there is the relationship
to one’s own authority.
You have to decide you’ll win, says a man
at the boxing ring, wrapping his hands.

Each time I spar, I choke.

[William Bookman III]

A good quick read for a lover of words that convey images, emotions, and private thoughts from a neighbor or stranger you were always curious about.

[Tasnuva Majid · Rating 4 out of 5]

hits the girls with daddy issues a little too hard bc damn

[A Pfister · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book of poetry that has the audacity to tell a story. Mastercraft

[Connie · Rating 5 out of 5]

from "Across an Open Field": "Each time we return to a memory, we change it."