Existence, by Christopher Manners

[Note:  This book was provided free of charge by the author.  All thoughts and opinions are my own.]

In reading this lengthy cycle of poems, written in ABAB rhyming lines as well as occasional accents to mark which syllable receives the emphasis in the reading, so that one reads blesséd instead of blessed, a few qualities are very evident.  For one, the author has an intense degree of interest in questions of sehnsucht [1], or longing, and with the pain of being exiled from paradise and burdened with the weight of transient glory from the deepest epochs of antiquity.  Over and over again the author dwells on problems of despair and goes from place to place within the world of classics (or the pre-Christian realm of the Norse), facing with repeated examples of the same situation occurring over and over again, with the author longing for a return to childhood and its innocence or a enjoyment of the bliss of the infinite or the real enjoyment of romantic love, and yet for most of the book the author simply finds himself carrying the burden of myth and history on his shoulders as he longs for what he cannot have, an resents being an exile and an outcast on the face of a cruel earth.

Coming it at around 150 pages, this book is a fairly sizable collection of poetry of its kind, as most collections of works, especially thematically connected poetry cycles like one, are far smaller and far less ambitious.  The poems come one after another, without any section breaks, and tend to cycle through much of the length of the book before the end provides greater insight and the possibility that the cycle of futility faced by the poet/narrator can be overcome.  The author imagines himself alternatively as a monk and a knight, sees the Sisyphean task of life as being futile and pointless, and frequently battles against despair.  There are numerous references to both Greek and Roman as well as Norse gods and to the myth and history of the Mediterranean world ranging from the time of the Roman kings in remote antiquity to the Roman Republic to the twilight of late antiquity to Renaissance Florence and Venice, for example.  The author expertly weaves his own intense feelings in a clear poetic form with a staggering array of classical knowledge that demonstrates the author’s deep familiarity with the subjects he writes about.

In reading this book, the reader is led into a variety of different sorts of areas of wondering.  How was it that the author got to be so accomplished at the classics, and what connection is being drawn between Mediterranean and Nordic paganism.  The last poem of the book as a whole, with its passionate desire on the part of the poet to connect with the infinite, appears almost like a gnostic desire to enjoy the fullness of heaven and to leave the struggles of the material world behind.  It is perhaps unsurprising, though, with a title like “Existence” that this work would deal with heavy questions about what it means to exist and how it is that existence can be a heavy burden to those with a longing to overcome the frustrations and limitations and the feelings of solitude and corruption that one finds all too readily in this mortal life.  One can easily wonder the extent to which the author’s obviously high degree of understanding about myth and history only increases the burden and frustration of feeling as if life cycles over and over again with the same mistakes and the same unfortunate patterns and seldom reaches above violence and vain attempts at securing eternal glory to really reach the infinite that we all long for deep within our hearts.

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2015/11/15/leave-a-tender-moment-alone/