Psalm to Whom(e) by Diane Glancy (review)

Reviewed by: Psalm to Whom (e) by Diane Glancy Mark D. Bennion Psalm to Whom (e). By Diane Glancy. Brooklyn, NY: Turtle Point Press, 2023. ISBN 978-1-885983-34-3. Pp. 127. 18. 00. In my head, and on paper, I have started and stopped this review many times. I have wondered what I might add regarding the latest offering from author Diane Glancy. I should stop right now. No one needs me to introduce the work of this towering figure in the fields of poetry, creative nonfiction, indigenous studies, and Christian literature. My invitation is simple, go read Psalm for Whom (e). You will not be disappointed to study this latest distillation of psalms, definitions, field notes, prose poems, journal entries, biblical analysis, art history, and mixed genre ruminations. With that admission out in the open, I will adhere to duty and protocol. The author of over seventy books, Diane Glancy's latest work shows her prodigious output does not appear to slow down (and I hope it will not anytime soon). When considering the breadth and depth of her literary oeuvre, I am reminded of that old joke about Jewish scholar Jacob Neusner. Someone once called his office, wanting to speak with the acclaimed author. Neusner's office assistant said, "He can't come to the phone right now. He's writing a book. " The caller replied, "That's okay. I'll hold. " This joke is by no means a slight to Glancy or her work (or to Neusner for that matter). Rather, it speaks to her ability—in an age of unending distraction—to continually create stylistically rich anecdotes, essays, poems, reflections, and epiphanies. Her work is a testament to exploring the complications and reconciliations within liminal space. She deftly navigates the place between here and there, Christian and indigenous, movement and stillness, pilgrimage and place. Psalm to Whom (e) functions like a quilt with a variety of complex designs, layered and woven, stitched so carefully that each piece works in relationship to every other one, but how easy it is to miss the connections if we focus only on a single swatch. The quilt is Glancy's metaphor, not mine, reference to which is ubiquitous in this collection and comes to a fever pitch in the book's final section. The quilt provides a landscape of Glancy's life, thought, and experience, yet it also reminds us how interconnected or interleaved our lives are even between our different religions, backgrounds, politics, weaknesses, etc. Separating these quilting squares is to compartmentalize the richness of life. Each piece feeds the others in ways End Page 306 that almost defy comprehension but ultimately bring about glorious and difficult contrasts, leading us to see a bigger, and at the same time, more intimate picture of life and longing in the twenty-first century. After an introduction and a poem entitled "Allusion, " the work divides into eight sections: Driving in Kansas and Texas, Severance, Alphabet, But Also of Thought, Quiltline, Psalms, John the Baptist and the Critical Work of Writing with Scaffolding Left in Place, and Quilting. Certainly, quilting is the central metaphor in this text; however, in a recent episode of the Faith and Imagination podcast, Glancy discusses another apt comparison to describe her creative process, "I often feel like I'm assembling a puzzle with pieces from different puzzle boxes, but there is somehow a sense of continuity. " That continuity unfolds across the course of this collection by means of a consistent rate of revelation. She delays and then returns, brilliantly so, to the use of an intriguing word, image, sound, and/or idea. Within this portmanteau puzzle, then, Glancy looks for and holds up "the story of a world pieced together with its absurdities" (115) and "the unfathomable mystery of the Bible, " which as she declares "has always held me in its depths, these deep waters that are our Savior" (Glancy, Faith and Imagination, Sept. 11, 2023). The book's structure follows patterns found in Island of the Innocent and Home is the Road. Glancy knows as well as any writer how to effectively establish an image by means of immense detail. She relays what Jerome Rothenberg. . .