Cracks in the Invisible

<div> <p><b>Stephen Kampa</b>'s poems are witty and restless in their pursuit of an intelligent modern faith. They range from a four-line satire of office inspirational posters to a lengthy meditation on the silence of God. The poems also revel in the prosodic possibilities of English'shigh and low registers: a twenty-one line homageto Lord Byron that turns on three rhymes (one of which is eisegesis); a sestina whose end words include sentimental Marseilles and Martian; sapphics on the death of Ray Charles; and intricately modulated stanzas on the 1931 Spanish-language movie version of <i>Dracula</i>.</p> <p>Despite the metaphysical seriousness there is alwaysan undercurrent of stylistic levity - a panoply of puns comic rhymes and loving misquotations of canonical literature - that suggests comedy and tragedy are inextricably bound in human experience.</p> </div>