Sonnets

The Gothic cathedrals of the Middle Ages remain structures of astonishment to the modern eye: their genesis and structure is an overwhelming story of theological geography and sacred geometry whose metaphysical splendor remains unmatched. In his F for Fake, Orson Welles notes that Chartres Cathedral may well serve as the single greatest testament to the spirit of humanity’s creative potential in existence. Working from several years’ worth of research into the cathedral builders, their lives, visions, and architectural genius, Joseph Nicolello creates a cycle of one hundred poems, predominantly sonnets, with interludes, songs, and variations on the rondel. Here, the spirit of the cathedral builders is fused with contemporary spiritual and secular issues in a volume of poetry heavily infused with Greek and Latin themes as well as early modern verse. The methodology of the cathedral builders is infused into poetic cognition, resulting in a poetic testament that is meant to last within our age of the intuition of the instant. The sonnets may well prove a permanent companion for persons seeking a contemporary poetical interior cathedral, in the spirit of Virgil, Petrarch, Ficino, Milton, Blake, and others.