Spiritual and theological poetry. A few are not. Written in a conglomeration of rhyme styles but mostly open form. Different perspectives that many might have thought about themselves, or maybe not. Some written from an introspective perspective. Not just for self, but the reader as well. They were written for those that were, that are, and yet to be. A dedicated poem to my father who passed last New Year 2021, and all veterans, yet the word "everyone" is within the poem.
Spiritual and theological poetry. A few are not. Written in a conglomeration of rhyme styles but mostly open form. Different perspectives that many might have thought about themselves, or maybe not. Some written from an introspective perspective. Not just for self, but the reader as well. They were written for those that were, that are, and yet to be. A dedicated poem to my father who passed last New Year 2021, and all veterans, yet the word "everyone" is within the poem.
While standing upon this terrestrial ground
To see the unending universe and hear all the sounds
My mind often wanders into the unknown
To reflect on self and self alone.
This beautiful wonder my soul imagines
How can it be that it all took fashion?
From the size of the micro illumination
To the size of the sun and all its duration.
How can one think that major explosions
Bound the universe in harmonious rotations?
If we are to think that coincidence thrives
Then we have yet to really explore our minds.
To really believe in invisible things
Is a proven notation that reality brings
If life should be a burdening ground
It is only for learning on this temporal mound.
To come to that place when life at last leaves
How sweet it might be to them that believe
Though the cosmos has an unknown source
One can only think it’s invisible, of course.
For why life is lived as if an everyday fashion
And yet on the deathbed a cry for salvation
Even if one does not at first believe
When their soul is free then maybe they’ll see.
Though centuries have passed and the earth many times restored
It will all be disclosed at heaven’s gate and more
For what is a life that will not believe
If in this world we are only self, and yet only self-conceived.
There is much to be commended in 60 Considerations. For starters, Phillip LaRochelle tells his reader at the outset that the collection’s ‘last poem “I Know This Man” should be first, but it is the last’, suggesting that the book’s structure tends towards cyclicality. This resonates with the book’s deep spiritual conviction that the end is not the end, only the beginning. Within this, the collection starts with poems heavily concerned with the past and nostalgia, while the second half calls for us to ‘move forward and not turn back’.
The opening poems that are concerned with the past, however, might also speak to the style in which the poems have been written. Formally speaking, none of the poems in 60 Considerations read like modern poems at all, but rather like something from a different age entirely (excepting the distinctly American diction and references dotted throughout). Practically all the poems, though ‘In the Blink of an Eye’ especially, share a Victorian hymn-like quality, while LaRochelle’s penchant for rhyming couplets is redolent of eighteenth-century versifying. The collection’s overarching preoccupation with death and all matters eschatological, moreover, draws the poems into alignment with the work of the metaphysical poets, at least on a thematic level. ‘O Grave Where Is Thy Victory’, for example, is inspired by the same line in Corinthians that inspired John Donne’s tenth Holy Sonnet ‘Death be not proud, though some have called thee’. 60 Considerations does, however, fall somewhat short of the technical skill and metrical finesse of the old poetic masters. Contrary to the promise of ‘perfect rhyme’ in the collection’s synopsis, LaRochelle’s rhymes frequently feel rather forced. Nowhere is this more apparent than in ‘Come unto Me’, which contains the lines ‘Come unto Me for your heart is broke / I will lighten the load and you take of My yoke’.
Yet, as I say, there is much to be commended here. In ‘Life, Liberty, and Happiness’, ‘The Wisdom Within Christ’, and ‘Teach Your Children’ LaRochelle gives us spiritual poetry with a social conscience, though the references to the climate crisis in the latter did mean that I was somewhat perplexed by the apparent repudiation of evolution in ‘Save Yourself’. Furthermore, in ‘Two Edged Sword’ we get references to both the Ancient Chinese philosophical concept of Yin and Yang and the concept of Karma in Buddhism and Hinduism. It seems LaRochelle has penned devotional poems more concerned with exploring a multiplicity of spiritual beliefs than with pursuing rigid dogma, and that is all to the collection’s credit. As LaRochelle writes in ‘At the End of Time’: ‘It works for many whether or not they believe.’ The same may well be said of 60 Considerations, too.