The poems in Spell of the Ordinary reflect the perennial in the everyday, suggesting that deep attention to the moment invites renewal, even in the midst of loss. There must be hundreds of kinds of happiness, the poet notes in First Frost, and most of us know so few of them. Shouldn’t we at least know their names? Or if not that, act as if we do, as if we’ve known them all our lives, welcoming them with open arms when they come to us unannounced, possibly icy and aflame, and then watch them change, as they will…
In this stunning collection, Jerome Gagnon exalts ‘evidence of the enduring mutable, ’ writes Lana Hechtman Ayers, author of The Dead Boy Sings in Heaven. Spell of the Ordinary is a contemplative song that modulates between Gregorian chant and blues hymn, between ‘deep thrum’ and ‘muffled clapping.’ Here you will find beauty in discord and discard, loveliness in the moment and in the minute. Remorse and redemption permeate these poems the way ‘a mist touches everything.’ Spaces are spare, remote, yet welcome with ‘a wink of paradise.’ What surrounds us is not separable from our being, with ‘each of us taking on something of the other.