Heresies by Orlando Ricardo Menes

Abstract

Reviewed by: Heresies by Orlando Ricardo Menes Tom Griffen (bio) Orlando Ricardo Menes. Heresies. University of New Mexico Press. Orlando Ricardo Menes’s fourth book of poetry, Heresies, is an exquisite follow-up to his 2013 Prairie Schooner Book Prize-winning collection, Fetish (UNP). It compacts his past experiences, religious beliefs, and historical opinions into a lush journey through his magical imagination. In an interview with West Branch Wired, Orlando Ricardo Menes said, “I cannot bear any type of disassociation, division, fragmentation. I have a passion for amalgamation, not just as a trope but as a way of thinking, a style of living.” Heresies embodies this statement. [End Page 179] Most of Heresies is written in long-lines of free verse, sometimes with a slanting rhyme scheme that wanes just as it makes itself known. In “Toussaint L’Ouverture Imprisoned at Fort de Joux,” Menes propels readers forward with scattered sounds that hold echoes, “my plantation / of snow where trees shiver without leaves, my icy cell where wind / cuts like blades of cane, jailers tapping taunts on iron bars.” Or, as in “St. Dollar Welcomes Cuban Refugees at the Freedom Tower,” irregular cadence links unlikely imagery: Scrap love of country, junk allpieties. Your Lady of Charity marches in olive green down theMalecón, your apostle Martí a dummy blathering the communistcreed. Homesick? Drink a cuba libre on the beach. Lines of independent melody repeatedly soften alarming moments, for example, “then back to port the nuns snag orphans,” and, “Let’s fry his juicy eyes, boil the brain.” Traditional forms also make an appearance. “Ghazal For Mango,” dedicated to Derek Walcott, suggests that death occurs at the moment perfection is achieved. “To Indians, the dying geezer is / a mango about to drop.” And “Cuban Villanelle” is an antipastoral homage replete with promiscuity, child abuse and violent revenge. Here, the built-in repetition works like so many of Menes’s own craft decisions, to achieve a lush complexity devoid of pretension. Heresies contains a prudent and meticulous sequencing of forty-nine poems. Nearly half have a Catholic saint in the title, such as: “St. Catejan, Patron of Gamblers” and “St. Cecilia of the Andes, Patroness of Musical Butchers” and “St. Rose Counsels the Washerwomen of Lima.” Some of these saints are the tutelary spirit of the named trade; others seem to be the poet’s invention. Heavenly advocates intercede with the human realm and invoke the importance of the natural world. “Water is the / parchment of angels, & I read their scribbles in purls, riΔes, rings & / eddies, prophecies that sizzle in my ears.” The saintly counsel accepts human folly and contradicts parochial doctrine. “To abstain is mortal sin. Beware of teetotalers / who scorn the Eucharist, tempting with grape juice or ginger beer, / heretics who deny that God’s clouds rained alcohol, life’s water, on / the seventh day. Praise be to His seven spirits: gin, vodka, whiskey, rum, tequila, brandy & schnapps.” Menes weaves Yoruban orishas with Christian icons, placing them in variance of established norms. Though these “heresies” usually pit one ideology against another, they ought not be considered renunciations. A devout sensibility mixes with stern reality, giving the poet accessible language to better understand and communicate this tangled existence. In “St. Primitivo, Patron of Heretics, Exhorts His Catechumens,” he writes “Utility is holier than ritual. Put those fonts / to good use as bird baths, those missals as mulch, those catafalques / as oxcarts.” After mentioning Richard Crashaw, the seventeenth-century metaphysical [End Page 180] poet whose work is also influenced by Spanish mysticism, Menes asks, “Isn’t irreverence a sign of holiness?” Then, as if suggesting religion could be more engaging, Menes states, “If I had my own creed, the Mass / would be a spectacle of gaffes, riddles, puns, tricks, tongue twisters, even slapstick, the Three Stooges my Trinity.” He claims, “their liturgy / of jokes the surest path to grace in a fallen world.” Menes frequently uses limestone as a faith metaphor; patient, porous, and brittle, it is vulnerable to natural elements. He writes, “The poorest among you know that / happiness springs from hardship. How well you mill limestone into / flour, make cheese from tree sap. You are by...