A Madness of Blue Obsidian

In this dazzling and impressive collection, Sheets writes wonder, beauty, mystery, and awe onto what feels like a new contemporariness. Throughout the book, the poet exists as both seeker and what is sought as he examines deeply the esoteric practices that color his lens, practices such as alchemy, occultism, and Hermeticism, notably observed from a perspective of what could only be considered a dynamic poetics of being, pulsating with a linguistic tone and spirited vocabulary that serve to recall the aesthetic power of surrealism and modernism. Poems ice over and ignite in equal measure as the poet transforms image into sanctity. His declarations, often imbued with the radiant gems of a poet's personal myth-making, are equally universal in their urgency, as when he writes:



We have

only this much

in common:



we come

then become

keepers of things.



You set fire

to a wreck of dire roses

and flicker

like an ever-burning lamp

fueled by the charm

of a deeper system.



This book renders a gift of fresh memory. It renews at every one of its sections the beginning of a mythologically charged human experience. If poetry has the force to activate a shift of consciousness, or mystical experience, then Sheets, who "settled effortlessly into the mantle of modern mystic" in The Hour Wasp , continues to prove with this book that he is a true poetic force.