Poems from the Myst

By Michael Resman. Zumbro River Press, 2018. 176 pages. $7.40/paperback; $0.99/eBook.

Deep sharing is a gift, and Michael Resman is generous in this collection. The introduction is important too; in it Resman explains how his life included a time of crisis followed by an opening. The experience of the opening has never left him, and many of these poems translate that life into words. Also in the introduction, Resman places a poem side-by-side with narration of how it came to be, and what literal parts of his life it connects to.

Poems from the Myst sounds almost like “from the Mystery,” and these poems seem to fit that description. They are a gift of searching, struggle, gratitude, and the rawness of a certain way of seeing. I liked “Braying,” where Resman feels “as if / I am a jackass / braying into the void,” but if he is a donkey (like the one Jesus rode into Jerusalem), “I pray / I can carry / Him / even one step further / in this / physical world.”