Cracks in the Invisible e-bog

Stephen Kampa's poems are witty and restless in their pursuit of an intelligent modern faith. They range from a four-line satire of office inspirational posters to a lengthy meditation on the silence of God. The poems also revel in the prosodic possibilities of English'shigh and low registers: a twenty-one line homageto Lord Byron that turns on three rhymes (one of which is "e;eisegesis"e;); a sestina whose end words include "e;sentimental,"e; "e;Marseilles,"e; and "e;Martian;"e; sapphics on the death of Ray Charles; and intricately modulated stanzas on the 1931 Spanish-language movie version of Dracula.Despite the metaphysical seriousness, there is alwaysan undercurrent of stylistic levity - a panoply of puns, comic rhymes, and loving misquotations of canonical literature - that suggests comedy and tragedy are inextricably bound in human experience.