Book Review: Seizures of the Sun, Poems by Meschach McLachan, New Native Press, 34 pages, $6.00, 1996, ISBN: 1-883297-11-2. PO Box 661, Cullowhee, NC 25723.

Out of the Mouths of ...

When I looked at the press release that accompanied this book, I thought that I’d be the least likely to review it. Publisher Thomas Rain Crowe announces this young poet (17 years old upon publication, with some of the poems from when he was 13) as a would-be prophet of the Mormon Church. I have no use for religion and even less for religious poets and even less for prophets. And probably even less for Mormons. Religion and prophecy produce poor poetry: I may be the only poet in the country who considers John Clare a better poet than William Blake. But I am reviewing this book. And I know why.

Meschach McLachan may be a prophet, and he may be a sincere practitioner of the Mormon religion (though I bet the patriarchal thought police Elders suspect a heretic). And, admittedly, he is very young. But he is also a poet, a fine one, and this book lets us see that the publisher’s comments are not hyperbole. These are accomplished poems no matter what the age of the writer. Perhaps you will be drawn to the work out of curiosity: can a young man barely in his teens write real poetry? Perhaps your idea of religious poetry is some Eastern spin-off in the shape New Age blather, perhaps excremental pearls of wisdom dug from the Iron John. Whatever draws you, if you know poetry then you will stay with this book.

These poems do have a visionary quality, and they may be influenced by psalms, but they make their impact as poems not prayers. The first poem, “After Everything,” begins:

I am in the serpent’s land

far from you—

This shall be our penitence,

when the reachings of hours call

return—

a lamb whose leg is eaten

with some burning disease,

hovering us there.

Now you may consider Bob Dylan a religious rocker because he draws upon the Apocalypse (or is that Apocalisp?) and proclaims that “you must serve somebody.” But he is reaching back beyond Christianity for the force that propels his message. And so it is with McLachan. You pick up that lamb reference as religious all right, but then what do you do with it? Serve it up for dinner? And take a good close look at your fork. This young man knows what he is doing, and he shows us more in his poetry than what I see in most of the poems published in any number of books and magazines that come my way to review.

McLachan has been served well by New Native Press. The book is handsomely designed. Since the founding of the press in 1979,  Crowe has published many fine writers: he mentions Fred Chappell, Stephen Knauth, John Lane, Philip Daughtry, Emoke B’Racz, and Ken Wainio. McLachan finds himself in good company, and his true elders, these poets, should be proud to have him with them.

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