Sonnets for Christ the King

by Joseph Charles MacKenzie

The seventy-seven Sonnets for Christ the King form a lyrical sequence around the traditional themes of love, death, and the passage of time, but within the context of a divinely ordered cosmos. Referred to by top New York poetry editor and critic Dr. Joseph Salemi as ''a liturgically mediated conversation with God,'' the sequence is both extremely varied and perfectly contained. In addition to love poems, Salemi observes that there are also ''prayers, meditations, devout recollections of individual saints, scriptural and liturgical reminiscences, and even doctrinal argument...Indeed, the last fourteen sonnets in the sequence are meditative disquisitions on the Stations of the Cross.'' Rejecting the tired conventions of academic modernism characterizing today's ''establishment poetry,'' Joseph Charles MacKenzie prefers to compose ''in the grand manner'' using timeless principles of composition gleaned from the sonnet form's 800 years of history. For his mastery of the English sonnet, MacKenzie became the only American to win the Scottish International Open Poetry Competition, as noted in a recent article in the Times Literary Supplement (London). But for all their beauty and refinement, the Sonnets for Christ the King are also deeply personal, a reflection of the poet's traditional Catholic faith handed down by his mother who was born and raised in Spanish New Mexico where MacKenzie has roots going back to the seventeenth century. The Sonnets for Christ the King are therefore an example, increasingly rare these days, of ''regional'' or ''national'' poetry, placing MacKenzie in the same arena as Ireland's Seamus Heaney and Chile's Pablo Neruda.

77 pages, Hardcover

Published May 29, 2018

About the author

Joseph Charles MacKenzie is the only American to have won the Scottish International Open Poetry Competition, as noted in The Times Literary Supplement (January, 27, 2017) and was nominated in the United States for the Pushcart Prize.

MacKenzie taught English in a traditional French lycée while living in Paris where he was Poet in Residence at the Club des Poètes and a paid literary consultant for director Vicky Messica's production, "Rimbaud et Verlaine," at the Théâtre des Déchargeurs.

A traditional Catholic and Thomist, MacKenzie studied theology and philosophy in France, Switzerland, Rome, and United States. After his final ordination in the traditional Minor Orders (Porter, Lector, Acolyte, Exorcist), he left the religious life in order to marry the beautiful and charming Lady of the Sonnets who contiues to inspire his amatory verses.

MacKenzie obtained his B.A. in literae humaniores, on completing the famous Great Books Program at St. John's College, an M.A. in French Studies with a Minor in Italian at the University of New Mexico, and an M.L.S. (Master of Library Science) from TWU's School of Library and Information Studies.

At present, MacKenzie is working on his second major sonnet sequence after the "Sonnets for Christ the King," namely, the "Sonnets for Heaven's Queen," also in Shakespearean form.
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