Hymns to Phenomena

Beryl Baigent is a poet; her published collections include Absorbing the
Dark, Hiraeth: In Search of Celtic Origins, Triptych: Virgins, Victims,
Votives, and Mystic Animals.

S.D. Johnson’s second collection of poetry is organized into five
sections that evoke the five traditional elements. Part 1 is titled
“Lessons for the Body” and contains eight poems offering insights
into the qualities that the body will appreciate. Part 2, “In the
Rind,” suggests the outer layer where phenomena are discovered if one
is open to the showing. Part 3 is “Mostly Nought,” and Part 4 tells
us “The Way Metal is Born.” Part 5 is “An Omnigravis,” which is
translated in the notes as “the sorrow which comes after the fall.”

Johnson exhibits her knowledge blatantly in use of unusual words and in
Latin titles and phrases (“a blankie Dei,” “Fiat soatium,”
etc.). Echoes of ee cummings reverberate in lines like “my isn’t /
bruises your what…. / be wary / of my isn’t / the not / of my
dancing.”

Despite the apparent linear construction of this book, linearity is not
otherwise a feature. Johnson points out that “what is drawn on the
page, / [is] a lie, — you can’t / build it, / or tear it apart.”
Images leap from the “page” to “a spider in the grass,” to
“the hero’s eye” and “what binds / each piece together yet / is
the sound of praise.” She speaks with the voice of a mystic. Like St.
Francis she tries to “deepen [her] poverty” to which she falls on
her knees. She gathers “patience … for the beloved” whom (like
Julian of Norwich) she finds “in the smallest things.”

This is not a book for one looking for entertainment and ease. Johnson
expects her readers to meet her poems with a cosmic understanding of the
universe and to know their classics and literature in order to
experience the allusions and resonances. However, if you are in search
of originality and mysticism and are prepared to read and reread the
poems until the images erupt and permeate your senses, then you can join
in the singing of Hymns to Phenomena.