‘New Interpretations of Faith’
— Hannah Cohen
There’s a cross between who you are
& who you want to be.
I’m forever in love with poems that contain or express religious imagery. Even so, there is a challenge in approaching the cross, the blood, and all those old-as-time symbols without falling into cliché or forced evangelicalism. Devin Kelly’s poem is reflective and refreshing in its aesthetically pleasing stanzas and ampersands.
Bodies of men and women, even the speaker, are present here, along with their interactions of material and immaterial—always in conflict with what we need or want for ourselves and the world around us. ‘New Interpretations of Faith’ is just that. What I see in this poem will be different from what you’ll see, and that in itself is beautiful.