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The Justice of the Night
by Glen Cavaliero
(Tartarus Press, 2007; 88 pages; ISBN: 978-1-905784-01-1.)
Review by William P Simmons
 Diverse
in its night-haunted subject's stylistic approach, Glen Cavaliero's
disturbingly beautiful yet emotionally scathing collection The Justice
of the Night is most notable in its unflinching ability to evoke
the ambiguity of human experience and the various degrees of possibly
supernatural and subjective mental perceptions that help comprise such.
Cavaliero's themes are grounded in a style both intellectually rigorous
and emotionally intensive. Carefully chosen words are utilized for their
ability to describe not only a moment, an object, a perception or a
character; they are also utilized as philosophically penetrative talismans,
revealing levels of possible meaning behind themselves. Practically
any one of these poems -- frozen glimpses of reality that may or may
not be aware of itself -- suggest moments of truth both mythological
and realistic in so far as their imagery and informing themes hint at
-- and often mirror -- twilight-time observations and feelings that
are neither one nor another but composites of both the objective and
subjective.
Born in 1927, Cavaliero is a man of many literary and intellectual
pursuits, including a devotion to English supernatural fiction, mysticism,
and critical studies of Charles Williams. These interests appear to
have lent an emotional lens through which he examines haunting moments
of glory and despair, drab reality and those mystical glimpses into
otherness and the infinite which owes as much to individual perception
and identity as to powers of intellectual observation and a hint of
the infinite. This sense of great, unknown powers and phenomena, truths
and revelations, hanging on the very edge of conscience reality and
the subjective mind are as often gleaned through the senses as through
the calm voiced self-analysis of an intellectual responding to external
stimuli. This paradoxical, self feeding relationship between self and
nature, identity and the cosmic, objectivity and subjectivity is mirrored
in both the subject and themes of the poetry, most clearly reflected
in the reoccurring images and thoughts associated with borderland imagery
and experiences.
While a majority of supernatural fiction and poetry has traditionally
described the supernatural and fantastic as direct contrasts of the
rational everyday order of objective thought and 'reality,' the truly
visionary authors of the genre have tended to treat the infinite and
occult not so much as refutations of consensual reality but as intricate
shadings of the everyday -- the magical, the religious, the strange
and terrifying doesn't necessarily occur outside truthful existence
but is, in fact, a breathing, crucial aspect of it simply hidden from
us. Our limited senses, intellectual prowess, and scientific/religious
prejudices are in part responsible for hiding the infinite from us.
Such pieces as "Points of Recognition," "Dark Tower,"
and "Metamorphosis" resemble in their manner and implications
some of the more powerful writings and ideas held by such authors as
Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, and the philosophically searching
lines of Charles Williams. Admittedly from varied viewpoints and suppositions,
each of these men felt a sense of relationship with the unknown, a sense
of greater truths hidden either behind or deeply within the onion peel
of everyday existence. Cavaliero appears to share this suspicion, as
a number of these evocations of inner turmoil and deeply felt reflection
appear to suggest intuitive knowledge of/belief in times between times,
worlds within worlds.
The four sections comprising this deeply penetrating collection of
insight and spiritual observation is bound together by the poet's intimate
connection with/reflection of the various possible layers of meaning,
knowing, and feeling within (and occasionally just beyond) the depths
of personal revelation, instinct, intellect, and actual supernatural
experience. Fifty four meditations on nature, the self, the psyche,
the subtlety occult, and the mystical pathways and darkened byways of
the human heart and the universe in general make up the contents of
"The First Lesson," "That Old Black Magic," "Ground
Level," and "By Command." That the aforementioned 'borderland'
moments are rarely over dramatized only adds to their raw power.
A simplicity of approach and sureness of style -- a quiet yet firm
voice -- lends disquieting insights undeniable authority. No standard
ghosts, revenants, Faerie, or succubi are unleashed herein, not directly
anyways. Rather, shades and vague suspicions trouble the waking dreams
of outsiders and contemplative men, and shadows of the uncanny and fantastic
stem from everyday, common, yet no less painful moments of relationships,
romantic love, family, etc. Displacement, grief, love, and even faith
carve the conduits through with SUGGESTIONS of the nightmarish and sublime
approach the surface of our understanding. In fact, then, this follow
up to Steeple on a Hill (1997) occupies a special borderland
itself, somewhere between personal reflection and archetypal memory,
confession and dream-scape. Bold, lively, and capable of peeling back
the robe of possibility with a voice as unobtrusive as it is startling,
The Justice of the Night is nothing less than art.
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