Fall 2009 » In Review » The Odor of Sanctity

The Odor of Sanctity

Michael Heffernan
March, 2009

In this volume of poetry, creative writing professor Michael Heffernan often mixes the lofty and the wacky. The resulting "mildly irreverent" poems arise from the sometimes-sad circumstances of life.

The poems often start at a difficult place and end with a hint of hope.

"Idaho Light" begins with pain. Then, Heffernan writes, "In northern Idaho's voluptuous dreamscape / someone had taken ordinary wheatfields / and shaken them like bedsheets tossed into the light / and brought them down in bundles of swollen gold."

The final poem, "Every Journey Has an End," rose from a scrap of a dream discovered in an old dream journal, an image of a boy on a bicycle. He wondered where the boy on the bicycle was going. He begins with a mysterious encounter between two boys at a shabby house near a cemetery.

Toward the end of the poem come words of wisdom from the grandmother about the need to pray, "especially in mid April, / when the skies often had that look of angel feathers, / and the air smelt of the moment of the Resurrection."

The Odor of Sanctity is Heffernan's eighth book of poetry. His work has earned three fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, two Pushcart Prizes and the Porter Prize for Literary Excellence.