Kitchen Hymns

Host of On Being’s beloved Poetry Unbound podcast, Irish poet Ó Tuama continues his search for a faith not borne strictly of religious practice. The title references Irish religious songs heard at home, suggesting the conversational tone of this meditative work. “I know you expect me to bless you in the mysteries of God, / but I prefer the strangeness of each other, darlings,” says a woman at mass, and elsewhere: “And do you?… Lift up your heart? / Yes,… but I don’t know to who. / Whom, she said. Let’s get started on the soup.” Ó Tuama does want to lift up his heart. Acknowledging “I need a direction for my need,” he can be drawn back to Christian ritual (“I like the smells, the psalms”), and he defines his life through a God no longer there (“God is / the only language that I speak. / I need to describe this loss”). Sex with men brings its own sort of religious ecstasy, and he inclines less toward doctrine than an embrace of “whatever makes up life”—as exemplified by the intriguing and ambitious closing poem, with a befuddled Jesus encountering wise Persephone when he descends into hell.