Icon and Evidence: Poems

The opening poem situates the poet beneath an endless sky of stars and dark emptiness: "But dear God, all I want is to be here, / my tiny anguish and my joy / a moment's notice, an equivalent cry". The book divides into four sections: Canticle, Complaint, Confession, and Compline. Like the Psalms, the poems praise with one voice, then turn to note human failure, error, and injustice. They contemplate the ways of desire, then enter "the mission of solitude", turning from social practice to meditative practice, "summoned / by pain and darkness by an intrepid joy".

Traditionally, one who makes an icon does so in an attitude of contemplation, the finished icon uniting image and spirit in a presence that challenges and confronts the one who stands before it. Evidence has the force of both data and document, but it also includes "the evidence of things not seen". In this rich and powerful collection, Gibson uses both icon and evidence to probe the human heart -- its entanglements and its freedom.