The Holy Grail

Author: Noah Ross

Publisher: Wry Press (2025)

The Holy Grail through the ages, it just keeps tumbling down, right? I guess the thing about a quest is that the experience is always new, and that you never really know what you’re actually going to find. Could be you’re after something you want, or something you’ve once lost, or maybe even something completely external to your own interiority that you’d never even thought about to begin with. Maybe something tangible, maybe something weightless. I don’t know, could be anything really. In 1965, poet Jack Spicer published a book called The Holy Grail. The Holy Grail by Noah Ross isn’t that book, exactly, how could it be? Sure, it shares a name, and there’s a familiar cast of characters, possibly reenacting their own private but related dramas. But archetypes get rewritten; the ages change, the ages stay the same. Just yesterday I was walking down the block I’ve lived on for fifteen years and swear I passed a house I’d never seen before. This book is kind of like that.