Nick Ripatrazone appreciates a new God-filled collection of poetry by a writer who is both catholic and Catholic.
I first encountered a poem from Butterfly Nebula, the new collection by Laura Reece Hogan, in Scientific American. Founded in 1845, the august publication is not known for its religious content. Yet Hogan, a lay Carmelite who lives in California, appeared in a recent issue with her poem “Lyrebird”.
The poem is not directly spiritual. The narrator speaks of the lyrebird, who mimics the love songs of other birds. The poem, though, seeks to undermine its own proposed meaning and purpose. “This poem wanted to rhapsodise about / the love song of the superb // lyrebird;” the poem “ached // to swoon at the skill and ardour / laid at her passerine feet.” Yet the male lyrebird eternally deceives – even going so far as to trick females that if they leave his presence, they will be attacked. The male then “covers // her eyes with a hood of his beating wings”.
