Eternal Rhapsody

What was before Creation is not known By mortal intellects...this Mystery Is only understood by God alone, Who spoke the Word, and all things came to be. Omnipotence looked out on emptiness, And Chaos suddenly was cast aside, The universe replaced it with success, When light outran the darkness with one stride. For space and time were brought into the game, And then the void began to disappear, Thus nothing was no more...space overcame The empty depths, and time at last was here. So Truth, before the Cosmos was designed, Was only known to God's Omniscient Mind. -Sonnet 12 of Eternal Rhapsody Two hundred and two anodyne sonnets with biblical themes. Roughly the first third of these sonnets are devoted to the Creation story. Poet Beach reflects on the nothingness that existed before Creation, and then ...the six days of Creation described in Genesis, incorporating the Jewish teaching that Adam had a wife before Eve; Lilith "was a demoness and bad, / With no regard for domesticity." Influenced by the opening of the Gospel of John, Beach's Creation story explicitly invokes Jesus-in fact, Adam has a vision of Christ on the Cross. In Sonnet 68, Adam and Eve taste the forbidden fruit, and suffer the consequent expulsion from the garden. Then Beach turns to the Ten Commandments, the prophets, Christ's sufferings at Calvary and the theological mysteries of the Trinity. One sonnet riffs on the parable of the lost sheep, another offers a meditation on the Book of Ecclesiastes. The central theme of the last half, however, is apocalypse. Beach is interested in the Day of Judgment, false prophecies and "the final hour"-he frequently employs imagery and phrasing from the Book of Revelation: Alpha and Omega, the Lamb of God, the Book of Life. Despite the intriguing premise, there are few surprises here-no arresting turns of phrase, no subtle weak rhyme.-Kirkus Discoveries