Reviewed by: Naming of the Bones by John F. Deane Fred Dings John F. Deane Naming of the Bones Manchester, UK. Carcanet Press. 2022. 152 pages. SECULAR ATHEISTS OR adherents to faiths other than Christianity who admire fine poetry should not avoid reading John F. Deane's new book, Naming of the Bones—because its content is overtly concerned with Christian subjects and issues of faith—any more than they would fail to admire the art of Leonardo da Vinci in The Last Supper or The Annunciation. The best passages in this 152-page book rise to the highest levels of poetic craft and persuasion. The title of the book forecasts its architecture and serves also as a multifaceted metaphor for the subjects of the poems. "Bones" are, of course, the most enduring parts of our physical being and the core elements of our supporting structure; they also frequently serve as relics, in this case in early Christianity. Metaphorically, "naming the bones" is the poet's process of identifying and naming the key "old bones" of the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon Christian tradition (his tradition), the "old bones" of his Christian poet precursors (Irish and English), the "bones" of his own personal history (experiential and familial), and the "bones" of his Christian belief. Many of the poems in the first portion of this book locate themselves in island monasteries and vicinities, especially those of Iona, Lindisfarne, and Inishmurray, in the times of Aidan, Cuthbert, and Colman, going as far back, of course, as the sixth century. These early figures and places are indeed the old indispensable bones of a tradition that even survived Viking invasions to persist in present times. Deane is not engaged in a history lesson here; there is nothing abstracted or merely "informational" about these poems. They are deeply personal quests to engage—imaginatively, poetically, and spiritually—the roots of his present being, his incarnate being, and "to scavenge here for understanding." In the poem "Old Bones," we read: "the black rocks / slippery with weed and sea-wet. Herring gulls barked / like guarddogs and a kestrel, / fast as a prayer, flew by. I scaled a rock-trail through thistles / where the testy ghosts // wished to be left in peace. To this abandonment, friars came / centuries after the Christ, to forge / salvation, built rock altars, beehive cells, stone churches, / piled up their cursing stones to keep / women and friends at bay." There is something of an enforced solitude and discomfort in such a quest, which the poet recognizes and shares: "thunder-light on the sea stack, a monk / in tears, huddled under the cold and the coming dark." Implicit here is a belief that difficulty must be sought and endured. In a poem entitled "Triple H," Deane identifies three of his Christian poetic "bones": Gerard Manley Hopkins, George Herbert, and Seamus Heaney. Of them he writes: "Hopkins in his long unglamorous suffering, / small snappy man in a misery of muscled language; // Herbert, his consciousness of dustworth, / his tentative but eager treaty of love; // and Heaney, witness to the gracefulness of the frames / of dailiness, enamoured of the possible, the worth // of next-door otherness and the allsorts savouring of words: / these, O God, your dead, your un-mortals." Common to all is a valuing of humility and love, but in Heaney also a recognition of the extraordinariness of the ordinary. Deane also spends significant time naming the bones of his spiritual journey, including family members who influenced his spiritual development and stations of experience. One particularly moving poem is part 6 of "Grandfather Ted / John Connors" in the form of a letter from his grandfather. In this poem, the grandfather speaks of a time he came to comfort the poet as a young boy who was experiencing a nightmare and crying out in his sleep, but the grandfather found that he himself was comforted. He had held the boy's "small, sweet-smelling body" against his own "bruised, old-century self" until he slept, but found "I did not want to lay you down, your being blessing mine. And I felt safe, at last, rescued by an access of love, and the world turned, and I let go...
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Jun 4, 2024
Paulo Roberto Pereira 
Open Access
