The Katechon

Author: Michael Cross

Publisher: Compline Press (2018)

"While the scale of The Katechon and its intentions may be epic, the poem surely unfolds as a series of intensely listened passages, and as these threads unspool, appear and disappear, nothing is represented and nothing is not represented; the core question of the poem—the epistemology it models and demands—is a futural regard for the ongoing facts, actions and processes of one's life alongside, within, the poem. Rather than projecting backward to some cut in time, or declaring itself causally unlinked to those kneeling men and women, The Katechon establishes these and other moments as temporal ground for some as of yet illegible, inaudible future . . . We listen to The Katechon, but we listen forward; as the poem's lyric frictions call our attention to the process of the poem unfolding, it prepares us to think our way toward the actual liberties and redemptions of a truly unknown future."

–Andrew Rippeon