Cracks in the Invisible

Stephen Kampas 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 Englishshigh and low registers: a twentyone 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 Spanishlanguage movie version of Dracula. 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.