Spiritual Exercises

This sixth book from Yakich (The Dangerous Book of Poetry for Planes) is named after Ignatius of Loyola’s prayers, but borrows more from absurdism and parable than any particular religious practice. Yakich triangulates the quandaries and contradictions of spirituality through a variety of familial relationships; ex-husbands, ex-wives, miscarried sons, and dead daughters hover over the zany exploits of those still living, creating moments of profundity: “ ‘No, Dad,’ Son says, ‘it’s just that/ When you die maybe it won’t// Be any worse than my eyes/ Blinded for a moment by a star.’ ” The phrase “SORRY-GODSORRYGODSORRYGOD” is repeated in a visual poem titled “Circle Jerk,” an example of the juxtaposition of spirituality and humor at work throughout the book. Other visual poems evoke the objects of religion (the church door, the cross, a rosary), although an “Ars Poetica” signals the presence of nondenominational existential crises, too. Nothing in this book is “sacred” in a way that precludes it from humor or critique: “Does everybody feel like a kink/ in the evolutionary chain, or was that merely us/ post-coitus in at the All Seasons Inn?” the speaker wonders in one poem; “But love, never deny it—/ Nature’s an asshole,” he declares in another. In these poems, Yakich takes his humor seriously. (July)