WHAT MAGICK MAY NOT ALTER by JC Reilly, reviewed by Su Zi

Every now and then, a book comes along that is pure joy to read.

As experienced readers, we might be a bit jaded, a bit prone to preference; nonetheless there’s also the euphoria of finding a talented voice, a voice that is adept, even to a classically educated ear. The experienced reader may or may not be a professional artist of language, but certain elements are prosaic in any communication: the line of thought and how that line becomes calligraphed. Even in the children of language as common as television, there are still classical structures: character, plot, setting – and if the setting is historical, we get to witness the test of the research in play before us.

Historical fiction, as a product of industrial publishing, has been packaged as a women’s read, mostly. Overtly feminist works, unless they are the products of those produced to be famous, require the reader to be familiar with hunting university or small presses, or astute independent bookstores. If the work’s text concerns ancestral religious practices, the volume might find some proximity to the shelf of tarot decks. The reader might expect to find perhaps instructions on dancing naked, or a narrative with unusual character names. What might be egregiously overlooked is the work’s setting and how faithful it might be regarding authentic regionalism. Of course, the experienced reader is familiar with those in the canon who used their settings as righteous influence on the characters, ever better when the setting is carefully researched. The reader might even have favorites for repeat readings, narratives of resonance, a beloved novel. 

But in poetry?

Yes. Here in What Magick May Not Alter  (Madville, 2020) are seven chapters of poems, researched from sources as varied as newspapers and The Mabinogion, which comprise a full length volume , a narrative structure of the coming of age of twin sisters, Tallulah and Vidalia. The book opens with a vision the two sisters repairing a quilt, as a single introductory chapter told in prose sections that bloom into prose poetry. The first poem in the work is about a photograph, a family portrait that introduces the characters “[…] The twins,/tall for their age and fluffy as meringues/in yards of white, ruffled lawn, hold hands before her”(6)” The work continues through the family saga, with notable inclusions of spirit practice and of place, that give the reader the experience of this family as if through scrapbook and legend.       

Of fascinating placement in the work are three poems "The Colonel’s Last Stand", "Blue Moon" and "Old Wives’ Oak", Again, with the Colonel poem having seen literary publication. The Colonel , “this sage magnolia […] dubbed ‘the Colonel’ after her papa,/ planted on a rise overlooking/the lake when her parents wed (33)” is a landmark for the family; the lake is the Caddo, is named in the text, and the poem both recenters the setting to a specific, authentic place, and foreshadows the curve of the narrative. The following poem, "Blue Moon" asserts, “so the Blue Moon is Judas’ Moon:/ the Old Church would grieve its arrival/ in Lent as the Betrayer, In 1901, (35)”  gives a tone to the work reminiscent of the Greek chorus’s function in Sophocles. The reader is gently wafted with the narrative complication in the assonantly titled "Old Wives’ Oak", Again when one of the twins remarks on the suitor to her sister,

 “ I could not spare/

 her, once the Old Wives’ magick//

 struck; as dumb love clouded her eyes, 

/fate’s yellow trumpet resounded/

through somber-bare branches, like a sigh (37)”.

The poems continue through the lives of these sisters and their family, and the time, and the place. The reader is as swept into this world as if a novel, except that this is a poem sequence of over 70 poems.

Epic poetry is rare in literature overall, with the archetypical journey employed as a way of advancing the text into parable. This text is a history-based journey, but here, the protagonist, the mythic hero, is a Louisiana girl; her challenges are genuine, but of a different realm than the physical battlefields of life.  What Magick May Not Alter is more than a verse novel, although it can be read with that ease; in this work, researched history becomes poetry instead of academic essay, and the lives of women in a family become both testament to region, to their time, and to an unacknowledged heroism.

What Magick May Not Alter  is available through Madville Publishing.

The author is on twitter @aishatonu

and has a blog  JC Reilly: Poeta Venum