“Out of the Underworld of Loss”… 

Todd Turner’s poem sequence, Wondrous Lessons, written for Sophia’s Notebook, is indeed both wonderful and full of rich insight. Reflecting the conversation with time (capital-T Time) which Sophia thought so necessary to both art and society, Todd draws on the life and work of Keats as the frame for the text. Keats, like Sophia, died very young (at 25 to Sophia’s 22), but he also (as did Sophia) achieved a level of insight well beyond those few years, insight which continues to be given voice in his letters and verse.

In Aeschylus’s Agamemnon, the Chorus (in their role of observing and commenting upon the human narrative) notes that“Wisdom is learned through suffering.”  A subtle distinction is being made here: Wisdom is not taught through suffering; it is learnt. In other words, to gain wisdom requires an act of will. It involves agency, a determination to reach beyond limits and circumstance to greater understanding; to approach existence (as does Sisyphus in Todd’s reworking of the motif in Wondrous Lessons) with directed attention to the task of being.

Keats would no doubt agree, writing as he did (in a letter to his brother and sister-in-law) that he saw the world not in terms of the conventional Vale of Suffering but as “a Vale of Soul-making.” In such a worldview, we are each the poet of our own lives, our lives the poem. Beauty and meaning are what we wrest from it. For the poet (in Ancient Greek, the very word for “poet”— poiétés—means “maker”), the task is central. As Todd observes, experience is not enough. Meaning must be consciously wrought from it, To be a poet, young Sophia states (in a poem Todd cites in Wondrous; Sophia’s poem can be read Here), is thus to be “a verb in a world / Of nouns.”

Todd is in every sense a “maker”—in art, in poetry and in life. Todd and I have had many conversations (“wondrous” conversations!) over the course of his writing Wondrous Lessons. More than a few of them have been held against the soundtrack of his craft: the shaping rasp and precision tap of jeweller’s tool on precious metal and stone, as Todd worked on a piece while he spoke.

The visual arts (of which Todd’s jeweller’s craft is a part) played a special role in both Sophia’s life and her understanding of the world. It therefore seemed fitting to use as the cover art for Wondrous Lessons one of Peter Hudson’s spirit-imbued paintings (Peter painted the Diptych of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection which Sophia wished given to St John’s Cathedral). Peter’s coiled, iconic fish, in all their mysterious potency, find exactly the right place to be, here with Todd’s work. (They sing the harmonies of the universe, Peter.: The Reminder is, quite literally, the mystical “music of the spheres” made visible.)

With discipline, grace and power, Todd Turner has shaped and crafted Wondrous Lessons from the experience of life into beauty—and beauty, as Keats and Sophia would remind us, beauty is a joy.

 To read Todd’s Wondrous Lessons, click Here.

(Cover art: The Reminder, Peter Hudson © 2007)

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In the process of the writing of Wondrous Lessons, Todd’s father, Richard (Bruce) Turner died. He is a living presence in Todd’s work

Vale, Bruce. Yours was a life lived nobly.