The work of John Amen has found its way to me, through a new friend, and as a result of this process I will be able to advance further into literary work understanding that critique is an offering from one's peers from wherever it may come. It is with comeraderie that I approach a work called At the Threshold of Alchemy. I feel confident that the title is apt, though it is my testimony that the poet indeed crosses the threshold of alchemy in the creation of this narrative and in the events that it relates. Amen's devotion to the practice is evident in the narrative because he manages to reach a message to the reader across the great chasm of time and distance, and having captured our attention it is we who watch him slip back behind the threshold again.
Amen's free verse persuades me of its need to be verse and not prose because I am often able to recognize truth in it, and tend to have faith that as long as truth is clear, structure need not be altered. Nonetheless I find it remarkable how the sight of the bunched lines in the corner of the page offers the suggestion that I move on. Fortunately I've come to care about the experience in which I'm sharing. I care about Mary. First, her name made her real by offering a traditionally acceptable significance, a sort of tool for transliterating her importance to the reader. I have to wonder if such an artificial transferance of meaning were necessary in order to enter her Portraits with full sensitivity to the verse. I would thank you, John, for showing me a very simple reason for writing in verse. I was at times rapt with the events, and then in the triplets of "Portraits of Mary" I thought to regard the vehicle that carried me. It seemed to me that the author wove his life and times, for a while, into a structure that begged constant rhythm, and found that his life and times were fertile ground for it. In the longer poems throughout the collection patience is rewarded with access to each line’s expansive rythm. Such being the case it's worth mentioning that I became mildly surprised or even disappointed when a poem ended with a throw-away sort of line like "some days you just write off." It is effective to end on one line, however one might say the poet has set before him the task of coaxing each orchid’s petal to grow to a measured length. The challenge is considerable.
The verse's departures from virtuosity ultimately have a way of serving the experience of reading. I perceive an individual whose craft is a microcosm of his living, and moments of brilliance occur at times when we might have just as soon abandoned our work. The code language we hear at ornrier moments, such as in the Missives, show me an individual who has an alchemist's mind, being comparable to a worker’s hands. One nevers seems to wash all the grease off or ever quite remove the smell of fish. Neither is one going to manage a craft where only the truest of lies may pass without their work betraying their chitonous ego-defenses. Sometimes we show off and say things like "oh, you and your rectitude," and at a poetry reading it can be fun. I prefer to see a tired alchemist indulging in a little self-righteousness on a Saturday night. We can afford him such moments when it is his constant practice to communicate events in all of their simplicity. There is a humility in the way details about crucial events are offered to us on a need-to-know basis only that I readily believe. It is because I believe this verse that I think it is great.
However the codes within Amen's work may be deciphered, he has succeeded in a small act of creation. I enter the book and go to a space where a connection opens up to the life of another human being. A broadcast has been received. I sensed the moment coming when the author was about to mention Mary, though assumptions about chronology would have otherwise been confusing. The author is present in his work. At the Threshold of Alchemy is a source of light for one who would like to consider himself a peer in the pursuit of the literary craft.—Joseph Crespo