Poet of the Spirit Blog
Posted by jheitner on Jan 12, 2008
Songs of the Spirit
“Elegant,” “beautiful,” “eloquent” are some of the words used to express readers’ reactions to Jack Heitner’s poems. A fellow graduate student once said that one shorter work was “a little gem.” Its title is “Witness,” and it is a compact rendering of the young soul’s observation of human artistic creativity in its long struggle against the long odds of time and eternity.
Dr. Heitner quotes the German poet Rilke “Inside human beings is where God learns,” and he adds, “if so, our growth is God’s growth.” His poetry evokes the human short term doubt, loss, pain superimposed against the starry images of many-lived, joyous spirit. Such affirmation may express itself in the humble wonders of leaf raking (”A Wind of Leaves”), or squirrels leaping, or even the improbable but true play of children riding whales (”Dream Spray”). In the section that’s called “Songs Of The Master’s,” we find an evocation of the range of the spiritual masters in the galatic infinity of possible universes.
As dedicated teacher, activist, writer, and poet, Jack Heitner has had poems written, not only by, but to and for him. By one dedicated student he has been called “the most inspiring teacher I have ever had.” In this collection he gives us a rich taste of a dream-inspired “CREDO,” an affirmative vision of faith in life.
Jack Heitner is the advisor to the Helix, the literary magazine at Central Connecticut State University. He was literary editor at Peace Digest, and his earlier works include Connecticut Mountain Poems, based on hiking and rock climbing experiences. Songs of the Spirit is centered on his spiritual adventures.
He enlisted in the Marines during wartime, became a company commander, and won jumper’s wings at the Army Parachute Jump School, Fort Benning (”Poem from a Parachute”). He was a worker and local leader in the Civil Rights movement when he taught at Albany State and played a role in the reform of the Democratic Party. His poetry has been read and published in little magazines and at Hofstra, Cornell, and Central Connecticut State Universities. In his teaching adventures he has often explored where others have feared to go, including Mysticism in American literature and Mysticism in World literature. He wrote his doctural dissertation on and teaches Herman Melville, another writer who went where others feared to go.
The titles of his earlier books, The Search for the Real Self (1978) and At the Edge of Consciousness (1996), reflect similar themes. In 1990, by invitation, on sabbatical, he lectured at three universities in China (see “Laoshan” in “Songs of the Masters”) and then completed the circle of the planet, visiting twenty-one cities and fourteen countries in all.
PRAISE FOR JACK HEITNER’S NEW BOOK, SONGS OF THE SPIRIT
SONGS OF THE SPIRIT, by Jack Heitner, is no mere collection of metaphysical verse, but rather the ultimate, whirling cosmic dance, –alchemical gold purified by the mystic author, resounding, remirroring in extended metaphor of sound and image intercoursing, whirling, gyring arms outward and inward into the reader and poet, alike. A must read! Over and over again. This volume is the essence of the celebration of the Word: a victorious union of all levels in sound and image.
Aelbert C. Aehegma M.A.
Editor, Pacific Literary Review,
Prize-winning poet, and author
Heitner has seen sparks glint that illuminate briefly a transient plain upon which earth is but an unnumbered dimension where unfettered imagination cannot fly full. The trouble with such a place is that of language: how speak the unspeakable into existence? Heitner uses an amalgamation of illustration and abstraction to attempt this. That the poems have been written and revised over so many years points to the uneven diction and paradoxical spiritual cohesiveness of Songs of the Spirit…. Jack is fixed to a point beyond, what secret we carry like a fish in our flesh, and how we might make of ourselves a work of art. Songs of the Spirit records his unique experience of the universal.
Ravi Shankar, Poet in Residence
Central Connecticut State University
Editor of Drunken Boat and winner
of numerous poetry awards
Jack Heitner embarks on a difficult space voyage with… Songs of the Spirit. These poems about truth, love, dreams, death, spiritual masters, and star-sprinkled eternity frequently attempt to explore realms beyond the five senses and immediately challenge…. Where the rebellion especially succeeds for me is in Heitner’s expansion of boundaries of some of the words themselves, i.e. , “ Oh Grendel-brother, mother’s baby other,” (“Multiple Casualty”p.32); “Firectasy to realize God’s touch,” (“Arsonists”p.53); and Naufrage (“The Good Ship Disaster”p.52). Paul Gobell’s surreal renderings dovetail this collection of lofty poems, and Virginia Bergeron’s cover paintings of an expanding galaxy beautifully illustrate the poets’s star-sailing themes.
Laura Salerno, Language Teacher
New Britain, Connecticut
In addition to the world beyond us, Heitner takes hold of the feelings and experiences we have in this world…with each other , and puts into word those incidents we often cannot verbalize but know their meaning at our innermost being. These include the “Lost Leaves” section where…reality often crosses into the realm of the supernatural while still retaining the sense of human feeling. Some poems are not to be read but sung out loud [with guitar chords](he calls his poem “the Fool of Love” a children”s song for adults). … In the last poem of his book “Credo,” Heitner answers [“from dream”] what he calls “the final question of the Creative [of love]”…
Andrew Bieszad, Associate News Editor
The Recorder
One of the reasons I liked Heitner’s verse so much was that it seemed in some way reminiscent of Wordsworth and Whitman. Heitner seems to have the same yearning to surmount the sensory/spiritual barrier. In “Master Song,” for instance, he speaks of that beyond for which great poets longed . . . What can be said of it? Only the silence.” . . .
Heitner too, I would argue, rides along the margin between this world and the other. He frequently crosses the border, However trangressively, and returns from such raids with the sacred fires of the heavens. But as he himself says in “Beyond the Dream,” the lights are “so bright! / so bright! / We cannot see them” (17-19). Like Wordsworth and Whitman, Heitner always uses the concrete to represent the ineffable. His poems depict sacred summits, whirlpools, melodies, swirling galaxies, torches, hurricanes, shadows, portals—in a word, the stuff of the physical plane. His verse is unquestionably grounded in the sensory world, but it points to the unutterable beyond. In the great tradition of cosmic poets, Heitner marries heaven and earth. Songs of the Spirit is thus a treasure trove of poetic wisdom, a sparkling gem of a book.
Donald J. Moores Ph.D.
Adjunct Professor, Albertus Magnus College