No Reason (Poiema Poetry)

Jack Stewarts No Reason explores the relationship between faith art and the everyday identifying the holy in both the imagined and the common. The poems about paintings as diverse as El Grecos Holy Family and Mary Magdalene Sisleys Snow at Veneux and Turners Burning of the House of Lords meditate upon the lives outside of the canvases. For Stewart narratives do not end at the frames edge. Other poems reimagine biblical narratives as Stewart sees Adam Eve Lots wife and Job still among us. In No Reason Jesus is most fully divine when he is fully human. Interspersed with these poems are ones from Stewarts own life his unwillingness to believe that this world is all there is (his angels not only pity Adam and Eve but get tangled in the branches of elm trees or are embarrassed when caught humming just after the air conditioner quits) and his conviction that at its most accessible grace grows out of doubt: You lift your face / When you cant go on.