Sands of Exile by Dustin Pickering
Review of The Ascent by Christopher Manieri, Careggi Press, 85pp (2024)
Those familiar with Christopher Manieri’s other collections such as The Voyage are familiar with his approach to philosophical poetry. What differs in this collection is its use of language. Far more modern yet refined, Ascent presents a resounding image of human nature. Written from the individual longing of the poet, the language bears philosophical reflection with colloquial brevity.
Manieri is deeply familiar with philosophical and religious traditions from across the world. This collection borrows thought from sources such as Plato, Plotinus, Zen Buddhism, Advaita Vendanta, mythological figures and the mystics who are seen as expressing a common vision. This vision is one of unity within plurality. It is not ironic that Manieri divides his thought among these traditions because they resolve in a common longing for ascent. Ascent is taken metaphorically as the realization that the cosmological order is composed of Consciousness (“matter derives from consciousness” he writes in “Consciousness”). This Ultimate Mind transcends the individual mind, its doubts and functions, yet resembles it. The Supreme Mind discovers itself through multitudinous creation. Ascent is the ascent to Mt. Sinai to discover God, realizing one’s true nature is identity with Brahmin; in this ascent, language fails us because awe overtakes us.
“In the Library of My Youth” has a certain resonance with poetry in A Boy’s Will by Robert Frost. Frost writes in “Waiting Afield at Dusk”: “And on the worn book of old-golden song / I brought not here to read, it seems, but hold / And freshen in this air of withering sweetness; / But on the memory of one absent most, / For whom these lines when they shall greet her eye.” Manieri personifies wisdom: “I may never see her glory again. / But how should I approach? […] She’s a modern Diotima. I should / be talking to her, not thinking / of death, always compelled again / towards more aching cogitations.” In both poems, wisdom is held somewhat distantly through longing. While Frost’s colloquialisms feel out-of-date now, Manieri revives the thought.
Ascent is rife with personalities. Aside from the philosophers and mystics who lived, Manieri’s use of allegorical dualism provides attitudinal contrasts between human archetypes. Take for example “The Conqueror and the Hermit,” a poem representing conquest in contrast to the contemplative life. The hermit tells the king, “Your empire is merely a tiny speck of sand,” that he should “detach from that wheel” and take his “voyage to freedom.” Manieri concludes the poem:
Your endless thirst can never be quenched
by the finite, but only by the Infinite
The poem illumines a question. The ‘wheel’ is the wheel of karma. If ambition signifies human frailty and sin, why do we have appetites? Does ambition not quench them? However, Manieri suggests that ambition is quelled living the vita contemplativa. Such a philosophical position reminds me of Aristotle’s expectation of a virtuous society: that it grants enough leisure for contemplation. Another expression of allegorical juxtaposing is “The Cosmos and the Child.” The dialectical conversation between the cosmos and the child offers, “How can you know / anything if you don’t first know the nature of the knower?” The essence of meaning itself is dialectical, “throwing stones into the water, / watching the circles radiating out.” Much of Manieri’s language, though derived from existential anguish, traverses a different realm than Existentialism.
Ascent is not just a poetry collection describing metaphysical ascent in the manner of so many spiritual poetries, it also clasps the heart of what it means to ascend—to live with purpose, to trust “the unfolding of the cosmic way,” as the final poem “Oneness” states. The final verse of the book is a wondrous answer to all its doubts:
Devoted to transcending the cavern,
I must heal my wings for the ascent,
ready to finally vanquish the void,
to triumph over grief, my deep longing
now intensifying as I keep striving
towards that unity, towards that oneness.
Dustin Pickering is founder of Transcendent Zero Press. He has contributed writing to Huffington Post, Los Angeles Review, The Statesman (India), Journal of Liberty and International Affairs, The Colorado Review, World Literature Today, and several other publications. He is author of numerous poetry collections and books including Salt and Sorrow. He placed in the top 100 for the erbacce prize in 2021 and 2023, and was a finalist in Adelaide Literary Journal’s first short fiction contest. He was longlisted for the Rahim Karim World Prize in 2022 and given the honor of Knight of World Peace by the World Institute for Peace that same year. He hosts the popular interview series World Inkers Network on YouTube and co-founded World Inkers Printing and Publishing.
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