I picked up a copy of Dark And A Web: Brief Notes On and To the Divine by Nic Sebastian because I was intrigued by what I'd been reading about the nanopress poetry publishing model. (Had this model existed back when I put out Through, my collection of miscarriage poems, I would have co-created a nanopress for it. As it is, I got editorial feedback from some smart poet friends, and I continue to share the poems for free and the print edition at-cost, so it's kind of a nanopress chapbook by any other name.)
I picked up the chapbook also because I've seen Nic's name and work around, and because the collection was edited by my dear friend Beth Adams of the Cassandra Pages (and of Phoenicia Publishing, which published my own recent collection 70 faces.) I wanted to support poets and poetry. I wanted to support this nanopress idea and show that some readers of poetry will still pay a few bucks for a beautiful collection of words. And besides, the chapbook looked like it might bring together poetry and theology, which y'all know are a few of my favorite things.
I'm so glad I bought this small book for myself. Not surprisingly, the collection is gorgeous, both tangibly (beautiful cover, simple clean design) and intangibly (the words, their sounds, their meanings.) These poems are shot through with recurring themes: prayer beads, the ineffability of the divine, travel and the many faces of the world, yearning and time. Here's a taste of one of my favorites from this chapbook:
now the names of your God
she orders Hassan, who drives a fast car
drinks whisky and is oh
lustful and Hassan obeys
his grandmotherthe Compassionate, the Merciful, he begins
his voice deep and easy and suddenly
new to methe hot Muscat afternoon falls away
in swirling amber silence
into a great gold clicking
and the unknown voice of Hassan
reciting all the names of God
(That's from the poem "containing prayer beads and Muscat.") I love the way Nic opens up this scene for us. Reading the poem itself feels to me like prayer.
Another of my favorites is called "the girl and the hours," and contains stanzas like "the passing of the first hour is rich / blue salt, the second / emerald oboe" and "she observes the sleek hours / passing in single file before her / on a catwalk[.]" This poem not only chronicles, but enacts the measured passage of time and the way in which time can be sanctified when we take the time to notice.
The book's website is here: Dark and Like a Web. (At that wordpress blog you can read the poems, read about the author and editor, download the collection for free in a variety of formats, and/or purchase a print edition or an audio cd.) Thanks for writing these poems, Nic, and thanks to you and Beth for putting them out into the world. My poetry bookshelves and my spiritual life are both enriched.
