The Inner Dialect, Lennon Stravato’s debut poetry book, shines like a multi-faceted gem with echoes and gleams of Emily Dickinson. Stravato’s studies in religion inform his literary quest for “love, destiny, and the divine.” His work as a screenwriter and television producer is reflected by the pairing of photographs with some of the poems in this multi-media collection.

Stravato’s carefully constructed and rhymed verse is an intellectual, philosophical, and spiritual exploration of love, time, and faith. Only Dickinson or Stravato could so skillfully combine the language of love and faith with financial terms as in “The Image Restored: “as if the heavens chose him to disburse” which brings to mind Dickinson’s line “Is Heaven an Exchequer?”

A keen observer of time, Stravato’s poetry is a meditation on love and loss in both the romantic and spiritual sense. These poems examine love as a “dimension / beyond the body” and the ways in which physical and spiritual love converge, overlap, and break apart.

Many poems respond to lost love; carrying a torch for the beloved. The opening poem “Unwritten Love” contradicts its title by writing about love. Aside from that well-placed em dash, this poem, like many in the book, flows flawlessly despite its lack of punctuation; a testament to Stravato’s mastery of the line break. Paired with a photo of a woman “kneeling there beside the bay” the speaker resurrects heartbreak:

in a memory that won’t decay

Now there’s a million pages
fate never chose to write
. . .
like every bygone season
nobody can retrieve—

“Dust” is a recurring theme in these poems and, despite the frequency with which variations of the word appear, rather than feel repetitive, meaning accrues as the book progresses. Dust is what the body is made of and it is our destiny in “Final Thread” where “time makes dust of all affairs.“ Dust, perhaps, invokes our impending mortality. With clever word play, the heart can be set like a clock in “My Retreat” which seeks to transcend the limits of physical time:

A body’s made of dust
a spirit holds some light
. . .
I yearn for that much more
than the mandate of a clock
I’ve set my heart to what endures
long after it has stopped

These poems chronicle a pilgrim’s journey in search of the truth. “Alchemy” is an aptly titled description of the mystical transformation of sorrow into timeless wisdom:

I’ve been accused of alchemy
making beauty from despair
But the great divine mystery
resides in ordinary air
. . .
So it’s time to see life’s meaning
transcends every mold
and when wisdom comes streaming
it’s neither new nor old

Music is one of the catalysts that fuels creativity in these pages. In “First Poem for Leonard Cohen,” a pilgrim waits to receive divine inspiration from the “communal well:”

So I sat there for a moment, and then found
some fresh new pages,
knowing that is all a pilgrim has, when he goes
to meet the ages
And dutifully I wait here, with that paper and
my pen
and my little promise, that when the spirit
speaks, I’ll transcribe all I can

Closing out this philosophical collection is another tribute to the elusive muse, the poet’s vocation, and poetry as mysticism. In “Divine Ink” poetry is the “last refuge:”

The poet holds the final license
to utter the word of God, with dignity

Poetry is when, to the human pen
Divine ink is given

Stravato is, indeed, a skilled transcriber of divine poetry. The Inner Dialect is a symphony of verse, but also a travelogue for your spiritual journey and a testament to the enduring power of art. It will teach you how to “shine that heart like polished chrome.”

Feminist, activist, certified ennui therapist, and fairy tale revisionist. Deborah Hauser is the author of Ennui: From the Diagnostic and Statistical Field Guide of Feminine Disorders (Finishing Line Press). Her poems and book reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in Ms. Magazine, Women’s Review of Books, The Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Bellevue Literary Review, and Calyx. Poet Laureate of Suffolk County and founder of Poetry In Action, she leads a double life on Long Island where she works in the insurance industry.