Ars Poetica: Canticles

 

for Esther Phillips, Poet Laureate of Barbados

 

“Yet why not say what happened?

Pray for the grace of accuracy

Vermeer gave to the sun’s illumination…”  Robert Lowell

 

A Review of John Robert Lee's Collected Poems 1975-2015

COLLECTED POEMS 1975-2015 by John Robert Lee represents one man’s spiritual journey meandering through thorny labyrinths of faith, “from inner city provinces to southern islands of Amerika” (“Challenger”). This journey began long before 1975: when a young Lee witnessed his father, Alleyne, relishing a dessert of fresh ripe mangoes on a Sunday afternoon and began to contemplate seriously his romance with the written word.