After So Many Fires

by Jeremiah Webster

After So Many Fires explores the tension of myth and modernity, faith and doubt, and the strange (often violent) interplay between humanity and the natural world. The poems seek moments of cohesion, of harmony, even in an age of moral and environmental catastrophe. The severed arm of Grendel twitches on a classroom floor. A father builds his monument. Achilles is lost in a sea of smartphones. A child gazes into the "other space" of an aquarium. In each of these instances, the sentimental is met with suspicion and the project of self-actualization is abandoned. After So Many Fires champions what G.K. Chesterton calls, “the democracy of the dead." It invites readers to position their sorrows and delights within the larger context of human history, myth, and abiding faith.

Genres: Poetry

66 pages, Paperback

Published March 15, 2017

Reviews

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

When reviewing a book of poetry, it's tempting to try to be equally poetic in describing it--but I couldn't if I tried!

In reading and rereading these poems by the talented Jeremiah Webster, my overall feeling was that though he walked me through the shadow of death with truly frightening images of the world, the future, and most scary, my own miserable self, I came away feeling safe, and even hopeful. Underneath are the everlasting arms.

Particularly haunting were the lines from "Ritual": "To wait without hope/is not the same as despair." The poet calls to us to awaken from the stupor of self (waving "on my way past the suicides") and empty ritual to embrace the expectation of hope in Christ and living worship coram Deo.

So many good ones here. Loved this one:

Hero
With Skywalker, the hand,
Potter, the scar,

Gawain nicks his neck
on the Green Man's blade,

and between Gollum's teeth
is Frodo's severed finger.

Each returns home
with a wound, a blight

now coupled to a routine
unworthy of cinema or song.

Divorced from all gilding,
the true quest begins.

Such myths are why I cannot listen
to ministers who offer life

without pain, why I lie down
beneath inaccessible stars

as lungs breathe in and out
an unsung portion of possibility.

It is why, in this constellation,
there must be one beyond

the world's kleos:
a wounded hero,

the source of each
echo.

[Allison · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poignant and unflinching, these poems lean heavily on the Classics and other things forgotten, but are largely still accessible.

[Jeremy Standifird · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jeremiah Webster does something here that only truly great poets have done. He has unforgivingly tapped into that realm of despair and truth, beauty and hope, not simply as an observer, but as a voice crying out to recognize where we are as humans and to contemplate the elusive answer to the age old question: What now? His poetry forces the reader to consider by what means we accept the inevitable, and offers us a glimpse into what it takes to fight back and deny ourselves any notion that we should sit back and let fate have its way. These poems permeate the readers' souls, and, if readers allows them free rein, they bridge the gap between what we say, and what we dare to only think. Inasmuch as poetry's purpose is to connect us to something greater and truer than ourselves, Jeremiah serves his namesake well. A true messenger who weeps for something lost, and celebrates the found. A truly amazing accomplishment.

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful collection. Using language that is both precise and poignant, these poems are a meditation on life in the modern world: technology and its subtle erosions, our ability (or perhaps our inability) to encounter the sacred in a culture of disenchantment, and how we seek hope despite great suffering. The meditative quality of this collection—its underlying music—is almost reminiscent of a liturgical chorus, or a prayer. In "Scop Wanted," Webster writes, "Suppose the genius / of language / is reverberation," and I think that's the genius of this collection as a whole: even the poems that wrestle with the brutality of the world carry reverberations of something greater than that brutality. There are echoes of grace and wonder here.

For instance, there is the refrain of "Credo": "I build my home / as the world falls apart... I study my books / as the world falls apart... I sing second life / as the world falls apart." And in the final poem, "Ilium," after revealing a deep weariness of the world ("I am tired of the modern dispensation: / syphilis and vodka, / self-esteem and caffeine, / of amphetamines that rattle my neighbor's soul"), we are left with this reverberation of magnificent hope:

"And though each generation
carries the promise of apocalypse

let us sing hymns
saints cannot teach,

stoke fire from fallen branches
a little while longer."

[Rebekah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Webster's debut collection of poetry: superb. These poems dwell between despair in the temporal and hope in the eternal, and they draw on the myths of old to wrestle with the problems of the present. This dramatically deep and poignant collection allows the reader to lament, wrestle, and hope in a world that has no true "easy" answers. Read it!

[Jeff Lochhead · Rating 5 out of 5]

There were a number of poems that spoke to me in this beautiful collection of contemporary reflections on the current state of man... Scop Wanted, Surveillance, Hero, Paradise... I am in awe of such a gift as to paint vividness and depth into the landscape of our lives.