by Ted Bookey

The poems in Rags of Prayer have impact--not only of the new, always luminously palpable found in "real" poetry -- but the bang of the newly recognized. Poems recalling old loves, first loves, the poet's parochial school days, a torturous first marriage, encounter with a dying family member, and loved animals, memories on their way to sliding in and out of range, all recalled and nailed to the page with a kind of heightened exactitude that transports the reader to the comic vistas of Sweeney¹s risible universe.

Those familiar with his poems know that Sweeney is one of the funniest men writing in Maine today. Anyone who has enjoyed hearing him at his hilarious readings or discovered his marvelously funny and wise poems in the pages of the poetry journals will welcome Rags of Prayer as the book they've been waiting for. His warm, life-embracing - often sexy, often philosophical, always playful - clarifications of the inherent opacity of our human situation are masterfully embodied in his wise and vastly likable and beautifully crafted poems that tickle the mind and soothe the heart. I want to say, too, that he is a kind poet, too, kind without ever stooping to the sentimental and its cornball pieties. Sweeney¹s poetry aspires to seeing the world as it is. Which it does amply, and more so.

"Things are rare as they are good," said Spinoza. The existence of anything good fills me with astonishment. And since the poems in Rags of Prayer are very good indeed, I find everything about them amazing.