The Look of Angels: Angels in Art

M. Wayne Cunningham is a past executive director of the Saskatchewan
Arts Board and the former director of Academic and Career Programs at
East Kootenay Community College.

Nova Scotian Geoff Butler exhibits his considerable talents as a
painter, songwriter, author, and book illustrator in this enchanting
volume. His graphics sweep from quaint to startling. His stories are
captivating, his poems are arresting, and his songs—spread out over
several pages of words and music—are lilting and melodious. Humour,
satire, and wordplay predominate, from the intended ambiguity of the
book’s title, to G.K. Chesterton’s assertion that “Angels can fly
because they take themselves lightly,” to poetic titles like “Fly-By
Knight,” to a parody of Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind.”

In a prose piece titled “Dancing on the Head of a Pin,” Butler
records a “verbatim” transcription of “the angels’ answer to the
question ‘How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?’; he
accompanies this essay with an illustration of a lace doily clamped to a
line with a clothespin. Showing his more serious side, he asks, “How
many angels can dance on the head of an ICBM?” and includes an
illustration of numerous angels on the business end of a missile. He
dedicates his poem “Tending the Flock” to “those children sexually
abused by their priests.”

Butler hopes his book “will provide ‘angel food’ for thought.”
The Look of Angels is a veritable feast.