Dan Albergotti Reviewed at "The Rumpus"

A Questioning Faith

A Review of Dan Albergotti’s The Boatloads

Brian Spears bio ↓ · February 12th, 2009

I have a special place in my heart for literature that juxtaposes the sacred and profane, that challenges perhaps the most successful meme ever to spring from the human brain: the belief that God is unwaveringly good.

That’s the matter at the heart of Dan Albergotti’s first collection of poems, The Boatloads, winner of the 2007 A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize. The one constant in The Boatloads is doubt—doubt about God’s benevolence, about His existence, about the speaker’s worthiness of the blessings he has received—and in a world where certainty is fleeting, doubt plays an increasingly pivotal role.

Which is not to say that Albergotti isn’t searching for the transcendent in the universe. It’s in the clash between the sacred and the profane where he most often finds it. For instance, the opening poem, “Vestibule,” reflects on the speaker’s experience of sex in a university chapel. He wants to thank his partner, not so much for giving him a winning story, but “for the truth of it. / For knowing that the heart is holy even when / our own hearts were so frail and callow.” His speaker is a pilgrim much as Dante was, looking for guidance through a darkened wood. Even the direct statement, “What I know is what is sacred,” is undercut by the line that follows, the plea to the “Lord of this other world, let me recall that night,” as though the speaker really isn’t sure of what is sacred on his own, as though he needs permission from another to recognize the superlative.

Read the entire review here:

http://therumpus.net/2009/02/a-questioning-faith/