The Mystic Beast

Ronald Charles Epstein is a Toronto-based freelance writer and published poet.

Stephen Morrissey, a literature professor at Montreal’s Champlain
College, explores the effect of his childhood loss in The Mystic Beast,
Book Three of The Shadow Trilogy.

The first section, Tapes From the Unconscious, presents the book’s
central theme: the poet’s quest to understand the loss of his father,
who died when Stephen was six. Thirty years later, he visits his
father’s “unmarked and unvisited” grave, reviving memories of his
family’s misguided minimization of that event. It was even rumored
that “[f]or the price / of a monument / Mother bought / a grey lamb
fur coat.” Morrissey can’t—or won’t—explain what would have
produced this strange and inappropriate response to a family tragedy.

The poet seeks understanding through a utilitarian nostalgia. Certain
memories are deliberately sought out; he takes his mother and son to a
restaurant on “Rue Notre Dame.” Other recollections are accidentally
prompted, including “WQEW radio from New York City, featuring ...
Glenn Miller’s orchestra,” his father’s favorite. (One should note
that both men died prematurely.) Morrissey’s memories enlighten
readers, enabling them to accompany him on his spiritual journeys.

The next section, Hangings and Electrocutions, observes the outer
world. “1950,” the poet’s birthdate, is also the midpoint of our
violent century. The middle-class child, who watched World War II
documentaries on television, remembers Jewish classmates who had lost
relatives in the Holocaust and extends his gaze outwards to other
atrocities—“Rwanda, Armenia ... Bosnia.”

Form is content’s ideal servant here, efficient and discreet. Both
effectively animate an emotional odyssey that is guided by a profound
understanding of the past’s effect on the present.