The Book of the Angel

Medbh McGuckian’s subject in The Book of the Angel is religious, but it is never conventional. The title is derived from the Liber Angeli, a Latin document of Early Christian Ireland in which Saint Patrick, speaking with an angel, is granted the ecclesiastical see of Armagh. The images are drawn from Mediaeval and Renaissance art and are as driven by the irreconcilable mysteries of Christ’s Passion and Incarnation, by the sacred and profane, as was the work of the old masters. The poet’s landscapes are tangible, painterly, moving from the angels of Ireland to those of Los Angeles and Hollywood—and toward unreality in the Baroque tradition of trompe l’oeil. McGuckian’s poems remind one how different poetry is from prose; why it is a sister art of music and painting.