St. Matthew Passion

Schnackenberg’s meditative latest, her first since 2010’s Heavenly Questions, offers a response to Bach’s St. Matthew Passion that reflects on music and the act of listening. “I’m standing/ In the presence/ Of his wild tribulation,” she writes, considering questions of craft through this studied attention and immersion in sound, “As if listening could help.” Schnackenberg is an adept interpreter and participant in Bach’s music (“A sound so charged with care/ It turns its listeners/ Into involuntary witnesses”), meeting it on its own terms and relating to the “secret” behind his genius: “Ceaseless work, analysis, reflection,/ writing much, and endless self-correction,/ that is my secret.” Much like the music this collection is in dialogue with, Schnackenberg’s poems are interested in “intimate compassion.” They pose questions about the sacred (“What is a holy sound? What constitutes/ The sound of holiness?”) as she finds at the core of Bach’s composition qualities of art, holiness, and love, “Without which life is little more/ Than empty errands.” Stately and subtly layered, these poems do justice to the complexity and beauty of Bach’s composition. (Oct.)