Olwen Whiteside
St. Hildegard of Bingen Writing Group
Light at the Torn Horizon by Paul Murray is a compilation of free verse poems, the sixth of seven poetry books by Murray. The collection explores the spiritual experience of traveling from darkness and doubt to light and hope.
These sixty-seven compact poems are arranged into five sections, each with a different focus. The first takes a deep dive into the wrenching uncertainty and distressing doubt we can meet when faced by the confusion, aimlessness, and sufferings of life. The poems grope for hope and direction. Murray uses the senses to examine the source and purpose of beauty, art, life, and language. By combining language’s sounds and simple but evocative visual images from nature, he makes these probing philosophical questions palpable, carrying the reader with him. For example, in “Perspective,” he writes: “caught by / a tumult of longing, you search / among . . . / the chaff of things for the golden / corn of meaning.”
Memories of Murray’s childhood, landscapes, and father are evoked in the second section, delving into the dimensions of the heart’s search for foundations and identity.
The pain of paradoxes is laid bare in the third section. Murray confronts many challenges, such as those of seemingly unanswered prayer and the inexplicable events and turmoil of life. An acute longing for comfort and answers, caused by our floundering and emotional wounds, is revealed in these eight poems. We, the readers, can recognize that we share the same disquieting plight and deep yearnings.
There is also a sharp sense of the inadequacy of language to express the fullness of both our delights and our trials. Thus, Murray’s prayerful plea in “In the Future” is “teach . . . those / dead words how to live.” The deficiencies of language to encapsulate our feelings and experiences is in fact a recurring theme throughout the book: As a wordsmith, Murray is perhaps particularly aware of, and agonized by, this perceived meagerness. Indeed, the final poem, “Afterword,” lingers on the intent and value of poems themselves.
In the fourth section, “Days and Hours,” the road turns toward hope. “Look up. Yellow light is already / flooding the sky,” Murray urges the reader in “Wound.” The prevailing themes here are the continuity of time and existence, confidence in the power of patience and redemption, and belief in courage when facing fear, doubts, and the heart’s troubles. Murray’s message to the voyager in life is: Step out into the void and be brave.
The fifteen poems of the final, crucial section convey dawning light and Murray’s faith in a journey worth taking. Seeking is presented as a worthy road and a path to human fulfilment. The poems’ route steers into the redemptive and transcendent. What might feel like a rather grim and desolate exploration of the philosophical struggles of being and of ultimate meaning transforms to a conviction that beauty and direction underpin all existence. It exposes the radiant peace and joy that this certainty brings, however intangible that may have felt at times along the track. For example, Murray speaks of rivulets emerging “out of the darkest hollows / . . . deep and clear into the light of / morning” (“Hope Against Hope”). A sense of arrival, of eternal harmony and tranquility, is the enduring impact of this concluding section. The book’s cover image, Monet’s Sunset on the Seine at Lavacourt, Winter Effect, beautifully echoes this final serenity too.
As well as the more spiritual poems, there are many that simply capture a moment in time, or an insight, without reference to faith or the transcendent (e.g., “Weather,” “In the Forest,” “On Hayling Island”). Occasionally these feel like a distraction, as could the initial poem, “A Reading,” which precedes the “journeying” sections. (Although, in fact, Christian readers will detect a hint of the collection’s salvific quest and path in the poem’s line “How can this be?”, which is Mary’s query at the annunciation.) Despite these side steps, however, profound sensitivity and humility tinge every line, regardless of the specific theme.
Individually, each poem stands alone and can be pondered and meditated upon separately. They can be dipped into sporadically and randomly. The themes are those any seeker of truth, or anyone experiencing life’s highs and lows, is likely to have ruminated upon. However, as a whole the author holds our hand through a personal journey from pain, uncertainty, restless doubt, and darkness toward hope, acceptance, and enduring faith. It is therefore worth reading the collection roughly in the order presented to be drawn along Murray’s intended trajectory. As this will not initially be apparent to a reader selecting only a handful of poems from across the sections, it could be a drawback, for they will then miss the cumulative ascendancy of the journey.
These compact poems have a colloquial style that makes for easy accessibility, as does the clarity of the book’s font, layout, and contents page. Some readers may prefer more formal poetic forms or balk at the location of specific line breaks. But the lyrical cadence of the words and phrases evoking nature, the senses, language, and the eternal Presence makes each poem sing.
Murray is absolutely honest about his own inadequacy, trials, dryness, and difficulties, as well as his experience of wonder, revelation, exuberance, and confidence in the transcendent. Readers may well find reassurance in the fact that within these questing, probing poems, Murray undergoes the same struggles and questions with which they too may have wrestled. As a man of faith, an Irish Dominican priest, and an expert in the literature of Western mystical tradition, Murray’s conviction in an eternal Presence and purpose undergirds the journey of these poems. But don’t let this deter, or indeed attract, you. Any reader who enjoys poetry, no matter what their faith or lack of it, will be drawn to Murray’s stirring words because they reflect the ebb and flow of every person’s intellectual and emotional life and daily experiences.
This collection will speak powerfully to anyone who has confronted grief, suffering, or missed opportunities; who has searched for truth, and the nature and purpose of life and of its creator; or who has known uplift, delight, and joy after travails. It does indeed offer a shining “light at the torn horizon” to today’s troubled and tumultuous world.