God - I. Death (NCV) (057844321X)

With growing ecological, economic, and political instability, one wonders how long things can continue as they are. Don't we seem overdue for some fundamental restructuring of our systems? Our society? Ourselves? What lies beyond the transition?

In his work, the Icon, Brendan Graham Dempsey imagines a future civilization through its own canon of sacred scriptures. Beginning with its foundational epic, GOD, the Icon offers a glimpse into a possible world of human and ecological flourishing, complete with myths, rituals, songs and ceremonies.

DEATH is the first installment in the GOD trilogy. It develops and expands upon an already existing myth--one of the last, one might say, with any currency in secular times: the death of God. What the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche had once ominously alluded to, this poem chronicles in full color, enlarging the redolent philosophical metaphor to 7 blank verse cantos of human mutiny in Heaven.

We hear it all from Joel, an angel of Heaven turned traitor, who eventually sides with the modern insurrectionists after seeing his own na ve faith literally crumble before his eyes. Reluctantly, Joel joins the revolution's leaders: scientist John Faust, and a Congolese refugee known only as 'Job.'

The fallout from this existential war, and the personal quest it sets in motion for the speaker, are taken up in the poem's sequels, DESCENT and RESURRECTION (forthcoming).