How to Paint the Savior Dead

by Jason Gray

“Jason Gray’s How to Paint the Savior Dead rethinks the complex traditional connections among women’s bodies, spirituality, and art. Gray is not afraid of hard work, hard thought, and big vision just because the subject of his fascination has been both exalted and besmirched by tradition, both enriched and impoverished by the hands of our predecessors. Gray throws himself into the mix of muses, amore, and immortality with more―much more―than common wit, passion, and intelligence. As he separates out mortal beauty from immortal, he ignores, as one of his poems says, ‘what is heavenly for what is Heaven.’” ― Andrew Hudgins “Jason Gray ends his sequence ‘Meditations of the Tomb Painters’ with the ‘Here is my heart in paint, a stowaway / Inside the art that only God would see.’ And indeed, in all of Gray’s work there is a sense that the heart, the faithful and abiding heart, is best (and most safely) transported via the artifice of poetry. From the heart-wrenching, blank-verse ekphrastic ‘My Daughter as the Angel Gabriel . . .’ to the heartily clever nonce ‘You Put Your Right Hand In. . . ,’ this is work that is always worshipful of its medium.” ― Kathy Fagan “The ekphrastic poems in How to Paint the Savior Dead celebrate and enact the power of words to exhume a living body―a human’s or a god’s―from the stilled depths of the painted image. Jason Gray, a chiaroscurist drawn to the drama at the border between light and dark, the seen and the hidden, and the sacred and the profane, writes wisely, wryly, wonderfully, and, at times, wickedly about the ‘common beauty’ of the quotidian and the ‘mundane miracle’ of the divine.” ― Eric Pankey

Genres: Poetry

32 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2007

About the author

Jason Gray is the author of Radiation King, winner of the Idaho Prize for Poetry (Lost Horse, 2019), Photographing Eden (Ohio UP, 2008), winner of the Hollis Summers Prize, and two chapbooks of poetry, How to Paint the Savior Dead (Kent State UP, 2007), winner of the Wick Chapbook Award, and Adam & Eve Go the the Zoo (Dream Horse, 2003). His poems have appeared in Poetry, The American Poetry Review, Poetry Ireland Review, The Prague Revue, The Kenyon Review, The Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. He has reviewed poetry, nonfiction, and fiction for The Southern Review, Shenandoah, The Missouri Review, and The Journal, among others. His poetry has been awarded a grant from the Maryland State Arts Council and a Tennessee Williams Scholarship from the Sewanee Writers' Conference. He co-edits the online poetry journal, Unsplendid .

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. A good chapbook from an emerging writer, examining topics including religion, art (representation), etc. I particularly like how in "Hey, You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" Gray semiotically analyzes the purpose of the veil , Hitchcock's "Frenzy," and the inherent violence in creating art. I'm interested to read what he does next.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

How good is this book? There's just no telling. We haven't the language. Buy two copies. Wrap one in oilcloth and store it for future generations in case of an apocalypse.

[Nulty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just spectacular. A chapbook that I'd love to own, even if it wasn't written by a friend. That makes it all the more special

[Michael Kocinski]

A slim volume of very smart poems. Most of them deal with religious subject matter. The opening poem, 'Adam's Tongue', and later in the volume, 'The Little Sphinx', are two that really sing. All the poems are fine, but there are a few examples of the kinds of poems that let so much content in, the figurative movements get buried or left out altogether.