No Reason
- Arts & Literature
- Publisher: Cascade Books (Wipf and Stock)
- Published: 2020
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Publisher's Description
Jack Stewart's No Reason explores the relationship between faith, art, and the everyday, identifying the holy in both the imagined and the common. The poems about paintings as diverse as El Greco's Holy Family and Mary Magdalene, Sisley's Snow at Veneux, and Turner's Burning of the House of Lords meditate upon the lives outside of the canvases. For Stewart, narratives do not end at the frame's edge. Other poems reimagine biblical narratives, as Stewart sees Adam, Eve, Lot's wife, and Job still among us. In No Reason, Jesus is most fully divine when he is fully human. Interspersed with these poems are ones from Stewart's own life, his unwillingness to believe that this world is all there is (his angels not only pity Adam and Eve, but get tangled in the branches of elm trees or are embarrassed when caught humming just after the air conditioner quits) and his conviction that, at its most accessible, grace grows out of doubt: "You lift your face / When you can't go on."
Endorsements (2)
“Thanks to Jack Stewart and Cascade Books, here is a whole volume of finely crafted, fully realized poems steeped in the saving grace of the imagination. Throughout No Reason, Stewart breaks through the numbing, stultifying voice of our mass culture to uncover a deeper circuitry that links, as he writes, ‘one heart to another.’ In doing so, he reminds us again that poetry creates a sacred language, one whose intent is to change life not through embellishment but through consecration. No question, these are marvelous poems, an absolute joy to read.”
“Even the images chosen in Jack Stewart’s No Reason reflect the great range and depth of the poet’s journey as he joins the very large in our existence to the very small: in ‘The Annunciation,’ the poet speaks of Mary’s hair with ‘a fish scale / Hanging in a dark strand like a star’ or imagines Catherine de Medici gazing at the city of Florence where ‘the dark stiffened like brocade.’ Whether it is a biblical story, a great work of art, or watching his wife at a sewing machine, the reader feels lucky to be along for the ride in this wonderful debut collection. Jack Stewart’s No Reason gives us a true sense of hope at a time when we need it most.”
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