Gospel

W.J. Keith is a retired professor of English at the University of Toronto and author A Sense of Style: Studies in the Art of Fiction in English-Speaking Canada.

Gospel: A Poem is, in fact, a sequence of poems in which Jesus, the
Word, tells his own story in human words. But it implies no
archeological reconstruction of the Holy Land two thousand years ago.
Jesus has foreknowledge, and can therefore employ our own words, so this
is also a contemporary poem that can make reference to “public opinion
polls,” “novel,” even “apocalypse now,” without anachronism.

Here is a meditation on the Word in words, simply stated but also
subtly and wittily allusive (“There is no / outside-the-text, for the
text is / God. Is me”). Prose meditations on sacred story
traditionally become sermons; this poetic meditation becomes a
recalling, a recreation, an imagined reliving. It is profound without
being pious, mentally engaging without being didactic. The verse is free
yet controlled, nonflowery but dignified.

Above all, it is a poem both exploratory and revealing that, without
denying the divine that is central to the tradition of Christ, stresses
the human. It presupposes seriousness and sympathy, but no doctrinal
assent.

Stephen Scobie, best known for his award-winning McAlmon’s Chinese
Opera, has here made a notable contribution to religious verse in which
the religious element, though central, never dominates at the expense of
the poetry. It is a remarkable achievement. Moreover, Red Deer College
Press has produced a small, neat, elegant book that is a work of art in
itself.