It is a daunting pleasure to be reviewing this outstanding collection by Paul J. Pastor. A pleasure because the book is emotionally transformative and beautiful. Daunting because its depth and reach are such that a reviewer must be careful to do it justice, for even compliments can cheapen depth.
The hope of this review is to share something of the living wisdom of this work by highlighting how Pastor brings together what might normally be considered opposites, through implicit and explicit content, as well as style and form.
Firstly, Pastor brings together simplicity and complexity. Malcolm Guite praised this collection by saying it resembles the “best of William Blake,” and it is easy to relate to this insightful compliment. The poems are visually visceral and mysteriously deep, yet simple and inviting to read. The best of Blake’s or Emily Dickinson’s lyric poetry, just like the best poetic lyrics of Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen, can be both read to a child or studied at university, and the poetry of this collection is in the same vein. Throughout, the rhythm and repetition are irresistible—reminiscent of nursery rhymes, yet always with a turn, an unanswered question, an image in a new context that leaves the flavour of the poem on the reader’s soul.
The opening poem, “Skookumchuck,” is a fantastic example of this complex simplicity where the repetition, rhyme, and rhythm invite the reader into the beautiful tensions of the collection:
Broken the story, and broken the song,
Broken the river that bore us along,
Broken the cedars, and broken the shack,
Broken my wristwatch that cannot turn back.
This meeting of the opposites of simple and complex makes The Locust Years accessible to readers of any age and background in poetry, and means the book will keep on giving even to the most experienced.
When speaking about why he so often wrote about Dublin (his particular place), James Joyce is famously quoted as saying, “In the particular is contained the universal.” He is one of many writers and thinkers who have observed that one can only access and have experience of universals through particulars. For example, one only knows what the concept of love is by our experience of loving those close to us. Every poem in this book is an embodiment of the truth of this observation. The Locust Years is full of deep universals which are inseparable from the descriptions of the particulars of Pastor’s life and place.
Bringing together the perceived opposites of the particular and the universal is a feature of truly great poetry. That is, not self-consciously shoehorning references to universals into particulars, but allowing the particulars to speak for themselves, naturally and organically. No amount of literary prowess can achieve this, unless the writer is actually living in deep relation to their place, allowing its sounds and silences to resound with the deepest parts of ourselves. This book places Pastor in the great company of poets like Li-Young Lee, Wendell Berry, and Yusef Komunyakaa, achieving this depth through honest expression. Just look at this simple description of a snail in this extract from the poem “Here is a tiny dance; you cannot force it”:
The snail you plucked up from the curling leaf
Now rests with fetal curve in your warm palm,
And waits for your heart’s rhythm to drop slow
And stillness to well up within the hand
Reading this poem, we are invited into a specific experience of a specific snail, and we are invited to participate in the universality of that experience.
Through organically accessing universals in the particulars of the author’s life, The Locust Years enters directly into the particularity of the reader with unprecedented compassion. This poetic balance and Pastor’s compassionate writing style achieve something rather rare, as the book itself develops its own agency. As you read through the sections of this collection, you get the feeling that the book, not only the author, but the book itself cares about you. The book cares about your grief and trauma. It cares about how you respond to the pleasures and pains of life. It cares about your secret crises and wants to accompany you through them. This extract from the poem “Below the Glen” is a great example of how the particularities of Pastor’s place speak with care into the person reading:
Let the silence get inside you. She needs
a place to nestle, with her tealing purr
you feel, but cannot hear, which umbers
louder as it sugars up your ribs.
And is that not the rumble of your need?
To drop the dulling fizz, the burdening
elocutable drone, which harries,
hammers with what you know might kill you
but to which you have resigned yourself.
No, let the silence get inside you. She is kind
and shaggy. She summons strange friends.
Her hands can teach the new and better languages.
Two more opposites that Pastor brings together in beautiful poetic union are grief and joy. Many of the individual poems, and the collection as a whole, draw out these deep feelings. Pastor resists the temptations of either letting grief win out for the sake of dark depth, or letting joy win out for fear of depressing the reader. Instead, he allows both to live in tension, the same tension in which we live as readers. This makes the collection accessible, powerful, deep, and transformative. The poem “Of Bracken, and Other Natural Fractals, as an Image of the Unfurling Soul,” is a beautiful example of this:
The light, the low,
The stooped, the slow,
The way that ferns and crystals grow.
The harsh, the kind,
The marsh, the mind,
The kingdoms that the children find.
….
The prick, the prayer,
The when, the where,
The way that there is something there.
The branch, the leaf,
The hand, the thief,
The way that we grow toward each grief.
In this poem, the joy-inspiring curiosity of childhood exploration is expressed so movingly. However, the poem unexpectedly turns to grief, without turning away from joy. The movement and union of joy and grief in this poem welled within this reviewer a deep feeling of compassion, which is another testament to the power of this work.
Every poem in this collection is underwritten with the mystery of the gospel, and thus, they bring together two of what might be considered the most extreme opposites, that of life and death. Here are just two examples of the way Paul brings life and death together.
From “To One Who Would Mourn Me”:
And let the large griefs lighten you, my love;
You have a friend who has gone on before.
You must not look with longing toward the door.
And from “Chariot of Elijah”:
Was it a gift to be spared death’s indignity?
Or did God simply in compassion scry
That sometimes even prophets lack the strength
To fail, to end, to say that one goodbye?
This organic and seamless way of drawing together the tensions of life and death makes The Locust Years a truly incarnational work. The book isn’t a theological treatise, didactically expressing the gospel, but rather an expression or embodiment of the living gospel, inviting the reader to participate in the experience of death being trampled down by death, through the mysteriously generative gift of language.
A review wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the book’s visual power. The poems are interspersed with beautiful and sobering works of art by the British artist Michael Cook. The images are as organic and welcoming as the poems, with an earthy, dreamlike feeling, which harmonizes perfectly with the words.
The Locust Years is a gift to any reader on many different levels. To be appreciated as beautiful literature, and also as a companion with which the reader can navigate and experience the highs and lows, joys and sorrows of this life. This truly transformative work will speak deeply to any reader, no matter their age, beliefs, or knowledge of poetry. It is a book that should be kept in arm’s reach, for, as all great poetry, it is generative of new meaning, and this reviewer is certain that it is not yet done speaking to me, and that it has a lot to say to you.
The Locust Years by Paul J. Pastor was published by Wiseblood Books in 2025.
Peter Lilly is a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominated poet who grew up in Gloucestershire, England. After studying theology and working with the homeless in London, he moved to the South of France in 2014, where he concentrates on writing, community development, and English teaching. He is the author of the collections A Handful of Prayers (Wipf & Stock, 2024) and An Array of Vapour (TSL Publications, 2023).