The Hours, by Matthew J. Andrews
Solum Literary Press, 2025
Review by Stephen A. Allen
Praying the canonical hours may be comforting, but it is not necessarily comfortable. For monks in their monasteries, where rest and ease are not a priority, it can be physically and psychologically demanding, as the introductory, title poem in Michael J. Andrews’s debut collection indicates:
And yet: knees
ground to powder, sweat dripping like blood.
The body a cage, the abbey a prison, the frantic soul
pacing grooves in the dirt floor. And yet:
clenched eyelids. And yet: labored breaths. And yet: (“The Hours”)
For a layperson, prayer may not necessarily involve as much bodily suffering, but there can be pain nonetheless. The Hours explores these difficulties, as well as the consolations, in trying to communicate with the divine.
The collection opens with Vigils, the prayers said in the hours just after midnight, traditionally a time of discomfort and despair: “Do you / also see your face in the clarity of night? / Do you too hear gnawing in your chest? (“Strangers”). This is the time when belief seems most difficult, when prophecy fails, when Isaac imagines how it would feel to hold a knife over his own son (“Isaac at Twilight”), when the sadnesses of childhood cling: “Some things stick / around. Some things don’t wash so easy.” (“Gilroy”). In such circumstances, even heartfelt prayer can seem wrong: “Am I doing this right? Does the stench / of my breath rise any higher / than my nose?” (“Psalm”). When there is doubt that prayer can work, what is the point? Is this just screaming into the void, or trying to communicate with eternal silence? “And yet.” Against this backdrop painted with imagery of death, destruction, and doom, there is still a hint of optimism: “little cracks on the porous edge of darkness / where the light of another world / seeps through like a finger outstretched” (“Desolation Wilderness”). This light of another world, here seen in the stars on a cold October night, gives hope that even in the darkness, prayers may be heard. There is someone out there listening.
After Vigils in The Hours comes Lauds, the morning prayers generally recited at dawn. The light of the new day pushes against the darkness of night, even in a grim and cursed landscape: “Nothing dead must / stay that way. / Morning light brings / night’s decay (“Stumbling on Akeldama in Winter”). If this is possible at Akeldama, the “Field of Blood” where Judas died, it can happen so much more in pleasant surroundings. Several of the poems in this section take place outdoors, offering a communion with nature that is also a communion with God. This communion, however, should not be mistaken for merely appreciating the beautiful scenery; it is an encounter with the physical world in both its glamorous and more earthly aspects, as when Andrews encounters his guardian angel, “who finds me when I am aimless / and gently places my hands in the muck” (“Guardian Angel”). And there is a reminder as well that this earthly world will indeed end, perhaps not in the way envisioned in Revelations, but in fire nonetheless:
It will end as it all began:
two lovers uniting in flesh,
eyes closed to the radiance
burning at the garden’s edge. (“Supernova”)
A helpful lesson: the sun scorches as well as warms.
From Lauds the day moves on to Sext, the sixth hour of light, approximately noon. This is the time for work, both the paid work of gainful employment and the hard work of daily living. Even Jesus is envisioned engaging in the former in a life not cut short by crucifixion:
He keeps his feet on the ground
and his eyes out of the sky so he can see
clearly the details of his work: the nails
held lightly in the fingers as the hammer falls. (“Imagine Jesus Lives a Long Life”)
Such work is a way to find God: “Every hand’s a priest, every work an offering.” As for the work of living, we find Jesus again in “Hunger” feeling the pains of a human existence, tempted in the desert not by the promise of power, but by the thought of “the soft relief of bread.” This is human nature: “If we are a little lower than angels, / we are not much higher than beasts.” Andrews also introduces us to his line of work in “Autobiography of a Private Investigator.” He sounds world-weary: “ultimately it didn’t matter whether I liked it or not because it was a job like any other, and if someone has to do it, it might as well be me.” But even here, there is an opportunity to think about the divine: “I find myself wondering: is God this bored and this titillated all at the same time?”
The day ends with Vespers, the evening prayers at sunset, preparation for the night ahead. It is a time of exhaustion, both physical and spiritual:
I’m tired of defining myself by what is lost.
You buy me another beer and say God
is all around, even here, between us like a mist,
and I laugh because on the horizon flames
exhale their toxic cloud of ash and smoke. (“Coram Deo”)
John, the author of Revelations, feels tired in exile: “he finally understands how one can be / surrounded by life . . . and be so empty” (“Patmos”). Yet even in this time of weariness, there is still an impulse to believe. In “Peter Goes Fishing on the Sea of Tiberias,” the apostle who denied Jesus three times, recognizing his risen Savior on the shore, is drawn to him, “as if the moth / could ever forget the call of the flame.” Peter submits himself to Jesus, recognizing his past failures but hoping for faith:
The sword unsheathes
and summons by name. He closes his eyes
feels the steel at his neck, determined,
for once, to be faithful to something.
There is still beauty as the sun goes down and darkness looms: “Isn’t every evening a gift to be savored, / even the ones made darker by ash? And doesn’t beauty / sparkle like starlight even when smashed into pieces.” (“Evening Walk in the end of Days”). Starlight heralded the end of the night in the opening section of The Hours, and here at the conclusion of the volume it reappears, a token to be carried into the night ahead.
The cyclical nature of the endeavor may make praying the hours seem like an exercise in futility, drowning the hope of faith in the despair of recurring darkness. Standing against futility is the act of prayer itself, a source of comfort and illumination: “When the darkness stretches its shadow / longest, we pilgrims make our own stars” (“Solstice”). Andrews’s faith here is not the sort that cuddles you and tucks you into bed, but rather the sort that keeps you awake at night, working out your salvation with fear and trembling. This sort of faith does not appear all that often in contemporary English-language poetry, which makes The Hours a welcome voice in the ongoing literary conversation surrounding doubt and belief.
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Matthew J. Andrews is a private investigator and writer. He is also the author of the chapbook I Close My Eyes and I Almost Remember, and his work has been widely published in literary journals. A native Californian, he now lives in central Iowa with his wife and two children. He can be contacted at www.matthewjandrews.com.
Stephen A. Allen was born in Vermont and currently lives in Michigan. He has an MA from the University of Illinois at Chicago and also studied poetry at Amherst College and the University of Notre Dame. His poetry has appeared most recently in Northern New England Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, and Rattle.
Psaltery & Lyre 