I’m enchanted by Richard Chess’s new poetry collection, The Loneliest Monk. And by
the loneliest monk himself. Though not all the poems are about this (imagined) monk,
I want to focus here on some that are—or at least seem to be.

Chess, I should say at the start, is not a monk. But he is a practicing Jew and a poet often
reaching for the mystical—qualities that his loneliest monk character shares.

Here’s a bit of the monk’s mysticism. He is, in one poem, “a mystic of ten dreams.” In
another “he’s drawn to a God / who will not turn to face him.” And in another

The dog at his feet sleeps
in one world, the angels

Like snow illuminate the room
with the light of another.

Then in the long poem “If He Were to Find Her”:

What? You think you are God?

                Most nights I think I am the absence of God.

What? You think you are not God?

                I’m devoted to seeking. It’s the life I’ve chosen. 
                Who would I be if I were to find Her?

(Parenthetically I need to express my gratitude to Chess for always in these poems referring to God
as “Her,” since “She” is the God to whom I myself pray.)

But these lines from “If He Were to Find Her” lead me into another quality of many poems in
The Loneliest Monk: their playfulness. In this case, it’s the playfulness of structure. Except for
the verses quoted above, each question is repeated exactly—but with a different answer. For instance:

What kind of monk are you?

                I am a desert monk.

What kind of monk are you?

I have never been to the desert, never entered a cave, never prayed in a

monastery. I play solitaire at night, flipping over each card as if expecting a miracle.

How did you know you wanted to be a monk?

I was called. I answered the phone. I gave away my credit card number, my social

security number. I gave away everything. With nothing left, I considered my options.

How did you know you wanted to be a monk?

I was born with a rare heart disease. I wasn’t expected to live. I’m

living up to expectations now.

I can’t resist one more delightful image in these poems. It’s from “An Actual Monk”:

The other monks look to the rafters.
His eyes lower to the radish
                 on the plate before him.

Why “radish”? Just for the fun of it, I’d say.

Which brings me to other lines in the book that I find especially intriguing. So, also from “An
Actual Monk” here’s the marvelously unexpected image:

His lone voice is a loose thread
dangling from a sleeve.

And from the same poem:

That shadow? It’s him,
how the neighbors see him,
a recluse whose aspirations

They might understand if only
he would wave hello, shake a hand,
join them

As each in their own way
plods in the direction
of heaven.

So the neighbors are plodding toward heaven. But the monk isn’t.

Yet maybe he doesn’t need heaven, since in the poem “Between Worlds”:

All morning, a suburban monk
falls into the dusk of prayer.

At his feet, angels fallen
like letters of an extinct alphabet.

I’m fascinated by these images that begin the poem. The “dusk” of prayer in the
“morning”? Time seems to be folding in on itself. And those angels fallen at his feet:
what fun to try to picture them as “letters of an extinct alphabet.”

As the poem goes on, Chess continues to tease us with intriguing images:

Harsh, downward scratches,
curls like tangled locks of hair:

marks carved into rock,
inscribed in stalks of bamboo

no one alive can read,
messages from afar.

I take these “scratches,” “curls,” and “marks” as that extinct alphabet’s letters.
Though of course if the letters are “extinct,” they can hardly create scratches.
Chess is enjoying his play with the impossible.

But I shouldn’t end this post without noting the “loneliness” in the poems—since the
book’s title is, after all, The Loneliest Monk. So, there’s one poem’s title: “The Loneliest
Monk in America Longs for Jerusalem.” Elsewhere there’s “You could shovel snow / in
the moonlight of his loneliness.” And in the book’s longest poem, titled “He Is” (four
pages, though with lots of space and stars between lines), there’s:

he’s the loneliest Jew, a monk

*

refusing Christ, he’s the loneliest

*

monk

That’s it. But many of the lines I’ve quoted throughout this post image the monk’s loneliness.
And more that I haven’t mentioned include: he’s “a minyan of one” (whereas a
minyan—a quorum for Jewish prayer—needs ten people); neighbors see him as a “recluse”
(in “An Actual Monk”); “there’s no way for you to reach him” (in “He Is”).

Yet of course we do reach him: through Richard Chess’s creation of him in these poems.

Peggy Rosenthal has a PhD in English Literature. Her first published book was Words and Values,
a close reading of popular language. Since then she has published widely on the spirituality
of poetry, in periodicals such as America, The Christian Century, and Image, and in books that can
be found here.

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