In Jean Gallagher’s second collection, Stubborn, we are presented with the “stubborn mass of all big ideas,” that is, the broad topics of religion, art, and science. However theologically minded Stubborn may appear, this collection is no soapbox or pulpit.

This collection is not merely an experiment in religious poetry, but a lesson on artwork and the Biblical events they depict. Gallagher challenges theological thinking and approaches her work through the use of voice—the Virgin Mary, St. Catherine of Siena, Jesus, and the Disciples are all weaved into the tapestry of Gallagher’s ‘panels’ (which is how the majority of the collection is divided). These personas address the world as the human beings they once were before their “bright, / permanent elsewhere” (from “Past It”). The focus here is not only on the divine or holy, but Gallagher’s stubborn world of religion as love, science, fear, and redemption.

Stubborn opens with five ekphrastic poems, each a different depiction or theory of the annunciation of the Virgin Mary. In “Particular Annunciation” the angel Gabriel negotiates with Mary to carry Christ. “I could do it,” she says, with the halo around her head “contained but expandable” saying “think it over.” Although all of the poems in this section exhibit a slightly altered version of the known annunciation story, they work together to create a human portrait of Mary. “Annunciation Suspended” is the most interesting of the cycle in that it gives an almost taboo account of Mary questioning her decision:

And what if she remains uninterrupted

by the spectacular descent       the difficult

worthy agenda?

Gallagher skillfully creates Mary’s secret life, which becomes the entrée to the secrets the rest of Stubborn explores.

Stubborn is concerned with the “how does it work” (from “Nativity”). Perhaps one of the more interesting sections of the collection is the Catherine Cycle. The eight poems in this section deal with the mysterious visions and events surrounding St. Catherine of Siena. In “Mysterious Communion,” St. Catherine’s confessor says “it is always something happening in another room,” which we learn through the epigraph that while she was in another room receiving a miraculous communion, he held up the Eucharist and found a piece had disappeared.

The largest portion of the collection, Stubborn, moves through a series of six panels. In “Early Photograph II (Temptation on the Mountain),” Christ learns

                                                  that whatever I wanted,

and I mean whatever—bread, power,

     the expensive thrill of throwing myself away—

was always already coating my hands, the dust

     of a million exploded lightbulbs, a million crushed ideas.

Christ as a new technology is both frightening and alluring. Christ’s sudden appearance is rendered like a new-fangled techno-gadget that threatens to overturn the proverbial apple cart. Christ is an ominous event. The historical divinity of Christ is not present here. Christ himself questions his presence and role in the bigger picture of the world: “I am just / an astronaut here, wearing the gravity suit” (from “Native”). Gallagher forgoes conventional notions of Christ as the all-knowing son of God and aims to undertake the very real, believable human aspects of an ordinary man situated in extraordinary circumstances.

Stubborn explores the what if, the why, that is, the secret things even the most devout person has wondered on occasion. There is a subtle beauty in this doubt, a human factor inside the divine light Gallagher sweeps across each panel:

          OK, so the fish were just an idea you had,

          the roughest of sketches, really.

          And yet you were sure that they weighed something;

          your back still hurt when you hauled them in.

(from “What Now (Calling of Apostles Peter and Andrew)”)

Gallagher’s poems are timely and their high-voltage lyricism leans toward theological taboo or risqué. This risk is appreciated and a delight to read. While the poems in this collection are neither political nor dogmatic, there is an undercurrent of truth in faith that many may find universal:

                                        But you are the stubborn, homely

animal in the middle of the only road; the scratchy

gold sweater that’s all I have to wear.

(from “Any Idea (Crown of Thorns)”)

In Stubborn, Gallagher takes what is already known about Christ and the surrounding ‘big ideas’ and turns it into an artful, rich, at times gothic plot where Jesus, St. Catherine, Mary, the Disciples, are all suspect, desirous, human, yet sublime. In these beautiful poems, where the “the baby falls forever,” the resonance lingers long after the last poem ends and “the bracelets clatter off.”

Amanda Auchter (TX)  is the editor of Pebble Lake Review and the author of Light Under Skin (Finishing Line Press, 2006). She is the recipient of the 2006 BOMB Magazine Poetry Prize, the 2005 James Wright Poetry Prize from Mid-American Review, the 2005 Milton Kessler Memorial Poetry Prize from Harpur Palate, and was a finalist for the 2006 Marlboro Review Poetry Prize. Her recent poetry appears or is forthcoming in AGNI, Best New Poets 2006, LIT, Perihelion, Pleiades, and elsewhere.