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Mysteries in a World That Thinks There Are None
Poetry. "Sometimes transcendent joy is sitting quietly and plainly in front of us. Or it arrives when we aren't looking for it. We may look at it or ponder it and simply blink—the stunned heart, the stunned mind. An epiphany is one thing, but being present for the beauty and kindness to be found in the ordinary world is something else. And to feel such beauty and kindness may be seeking us, inviting our regard, is indeed a mystery. Poetry, or art of some form, is one of the few responses one can make. Prayer is another, followed by silence. The poems in this fine book eloquently reveal the everyday mysteries all around us, and make it plain that any response deepens the heart—and that becomes a further mystery."—Maurice Manning
- GenresPoetry
104 pages, Paperback
Published April 20, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 10, 2022
This collection was written by one of my college poetry professors. This is my first experience reading an entire collection of his work. He did a spectacular job. Here are some of my favorite poems from this book.
Mysteries in a World that Thinks There Are None
December (1)
December (2)
On Civility
Holy, from To Cut
This Summer with Fischl
Repent
Autumn Takes Inventory
I love this collection because it really practices what Dr. McDowell preaches in class. He uses the line and overall form to command the reader's experience of making meaning from the pieces. He plucks unexpected nouns from the air and makes me care about them. He uses verbs that I didn't even know could create movement in my mind, like "a local river dreams through our yard," come on!
I could go on and on. So impressed by this collection. Bravo Dr. M!
Mysteries in a World that Thinks There Are None
December (1)
December (2)
On Civility
Holy, from To Cut
This Summer with Fischl
Repent
Autumn Takes Inventory
I love this collection because it really practices what Dr. McDowell preaches in class. He uses the line and overall form to command the reader's experience of making meaning from the pieces. He plucks unexpected nouns from the air and makes me care about them. He uses verbs that I didn't even know could create movement in my mind, like "a local river dreams through our yard," come on!
I could go on and on. So impressed by this collection. Bravo Dr. M!
September 25, 2022
“Love is what happens when a pronouncement of faith is answered”
“It’s a wonder any of us sleep at night knowing what we know.”
“If I come back all human and hopeful.”
“What a concept: to create via omission, to fly unwinged, to work for stasis.”
“To fail at crying is not the same as missing the train”
“Pretending to be unaffected does not mean you’re unaffected.”
“That baby was rocked to sleep like any other baby, left home eighteen years later to learn the world, and came back blooming in sighs.”
“You’re careful not to think anything that you don’t already understand.”
“But I’m only jealous lately. Of unfurled doors, of dark-housed eyes. Of devices spined of my own making.”
“The first time you see color—riding on your dusk-gliding skin is the stretch of patience it takes to outgrow comfort.”
“Obsession begins and ends with questions”
Favorite Poems: On Civility, Echolocation, Love Letter To Vacation, My Mother The Philosopher Considers Non Sequiturs, The Beginning Of The End
“It’s a wonder any of us sleep at night knowing what we know.”
“If I come back all human and hopeful.”
“What a concept: to create via omission, to fly unwinged, to work for stasis.”
“To fail at crying is not the same as missing the train”
“Pretending to be unaffected does not mean you’re unaffected.”
“That baby was rocked to sleep like any other baby, left home eighteen years later to learn the world, and came back blooming in sighs.”
“You’re careful not to think anything that you don’t already understand.”
“But I’m only jealous lately. Of unfurled doors, of dark-housed eyes. Of devices spined of my own making.”
“The first time you see color—riding on your dusk-gliding skin is the stretch of patience it takes to outgrow comfort.”
“Obsession begins and ends with questions”
Favorite Poems: On Civility, Echolocation, Love Letter To Vacation, My Mother The Philosopher Considers Non Sequiturs, The Beginning Of The End
March 26, 2023
Rich in odd similes, strange juxtapositions, abrupt incongruities, the very real with the surreal, these poems by Gary McDowell often surprise us into joy. Sometimes the stream-of-consciousness juxtapositions just feel odd. His coining of adages can elucidate or interrupt. Sometimes the simile is strained. But by taking chances, McDowell sees and helps us see the new in the ordinary we often fail to see.
What follows is not a criticism of the poetry but of the physical book. The font is so tiny that it was nearly painful to read, reducing the pleasure of spending time with the work.
What follows is not a criticism of the poetry but of the physical book. The font is so tiny that it was nearly painful to read, reducing the pleasure of spending time with the work.
January 10, 2017
In the interest of full disclosure, Gary McDowell has made me barbecue.
He had a party at his apartment when he was a graduate student at my former institution, Bowling Green State University, and he cooked out, and damn—the guy knows his way around the grill.
He was also a Mid-American Review poetry editor, and one who also knows his way around a poem. I’ve watched him vet submissions, and many times I’ve seen him passionately articulate why a poem is both beautiful and necessary. We always took those poems. Who would dare not to?
And now, as a reader and of his work, I can attest that he knows his way around page and pen. He proves this yet again in Mysteries in a World That Thinks There Are None (Burnside Review Press, 2016), winner of the 2014 Burnside Review Press Book Award.
The defining characteristic of the poems in this collection is, in a word, trust. McDowell leans into his images and never once doubts that they’ll hold the weight of his reflection. The logic of his images may not be familiar, but it is durable, and it makes for muscular verse.
And there is certainly tenderness, too, as in the end of the title poem:
Once I saw
a video of a leopard killing a monkey, eating her, then finding
the monkey’s infant in a nearby patch of overgrown grass.
The leopard coddled it, licked its head, tipped it over
like a doll, fell asleep by its side, ears alert. It’s a wonder
any of us sleep at night knowing what we know.
It will be some time before that orphaned monkey and remorseful leopard leave me—and please don’t say “anthropomorphism.” I know what I saw, even though I saw it in a poem.
I also like McDowell’s very unusual means of observation. He writes, “Young me wanted to be / an architect, a builder of skulls / and ceilings, a maker of homesickness.” The idea of an architect as a builder of skulls is very dependent on the context of a poem, where a strange skull, neither clearly bird nor mammal, is encountered, but that idea that an architect specializes in making homesickness—that stands alone and makes you think of ways you might steal it for your own yet-to-be-determined purposes.
McDowell trusts, too, his rhetoric. There are certain arguments that can be made convincingly only by poets or the concussed. Either tries to convince through stridency; both layer fish scales and sequins into some larger quarrel about light and who owns it, then offers the flourish of an arm and says, “See?”
And you do see—like in this snippet from the poem “December”:
Have you ever put your ear to a tree
on a cold day
and clapped the trunk?
It echoes like stitches being removed
from a head wound.
There’s no way it echoes like that, logically—and there’s no way it doesn’t, once you’ve encountered the logic of this remarkable poet in this remarkable collection.
I remember talking poetry with Gary in the world’s messiest office (mine—I recall Gary as a pretty tidy guy). Shakespeare and Emerson and Louise Glück loomed over our heads, and we would sort through the argument, the logic, the voice and tone and diction of a poem. We’d talk about what we liked and what we worried might not come through. We started to make some headway.
It’s fun to look at the work of a mature poet and remember that poet “when.” But Gary, a very good poet as a student, is nearly unrecognizable in his mature work. He’s in a whole different category. He eavesdrops on angels. A consummate fisherman, he casts into a silver lake and somehow knows exactly where, deep within, the wise old one is moving. He keeps wiggling his lure, ready to take this ancient one on.
He had a party at his apartment when he was a graduate student at my former institution, Bowling Green State University, and he cooked out, and damn—the guy knows his way around the grill.
He was also a Mid-American Review poetry editor, and one who also knows his way around a poem. I’ve watched him vet submissions, and many times I’ve seen him passionately articulate why a poem is both beautiful and necessary. We always took those poems. Who would dare not to?
And now, as a reader and of his work, I can attest that he knows his way around page and pen. He proves this yet again in Mysteries in a World That Thinks There Are None (Burnside Review Press, 2016), winner of the 2014 Burnside Review Press Book Award.
The defining characteristic of the poems in this collection is, in a word, trust. McDowell leans into his images and never once doubts that they’ll hold the weight of his reflection. The logic of his images may not be familiar, but it is durable, and it makes for muscular verse.
And there is certainly tenderness, too, as in the end of the title poem:
Once I saw
a video of a leopard killing a monkey, eating her, then finding
the monkey’s infant in a nearby patch of overgrown grass.
The leopard coddled it, licked its head, tipped it over
like a doll, fell asleep by its side, ears alert. It’s a wonder
any of us sleep at night knowing what we know.
It will be some time before that orphaned monkey and remorseful leopard leave me—and please don’t say “anthropomorphism.” I know what I saw, even though I saw it in a poem.
I also like McDowell’s very unusual means of observation. He writes, “Young me wanted to be / an architect, a builder of skulls / and ceilings, a maker of homesickness.” The idea of an architect as a builder of skulls is very dependent on the context of a poem, where a strange skull, neither clearly bird nor mammal, is encountered, but that idea that an architect specializes in making homesickness—that stands alone and makes you think of ways you might steal it for your own yet-to-be-determined purposes.
McDowell trusts, too, his rhetoric. There are certain arguments that can be made convincingly only by poets or the concussed. Either tries to convince through stridency; both layer fish scales and sequins into some larger quarrel about light and who owns it, then offers the flourish of an arm and says, “See?”
And you do see—like in this snippet from the poem “December”:
Have you ever put your ear to a tree
on a cold day
and clapped the trunk?
It echoes like stitches being removed
from a head wound.
There’s no way it echoes like that, logically—and there’s no way it doesn’t, once you’ve encountered the logic of this remarkable poet in this remarkable collection.
I remember talking poetry with Gary in the world’s messiest office (mine—I recall Gary as a pretty tidy guy). Shakespeare and Emerson and Louise Glück loomed over our heads, and we would sort through the argument, the logic, the voice and tone and diction of a poem. We’d talk about what we liked and what we worried might not come through. We started to make some headway.
It’s fun to look at the work of a mature poet and remember that poet “when.” But Gary, a very good poet as a student, is nearly unrecognizable in his mature work. He’s in a whole different category. He eavesdrops on angels. A consummate fisherman, he casts into a silver lake and somehow knows exactly where, deep within, the wise old one is moving. He keeps wiggling his lure, ready to take this ancient one on.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews