The Hours: Poems. By Matthew J. Andrews. Anaheim, CA: Solum Literary Press, 2025. 87 pp. $16.11 (paper).
The Hours is a new collection of poetry by Matthew J. Andrews, one that uses dense and cryptic imagery to examine the Christian experience of our broken humanity. Structurally, as the name foreshadows, the volume is divided into four sections: Vigils, Lauds, Sext and Vespers, these being the medieval monastic hours of prayer. In this structure Mr. Andrews explores themes of the rigidity of the Christian tradition, the inherent sinfulness in people, relationships and the bloody consequences of both.
Stylistically Mr. Andrews’ influences are on clear display in this volume, as he draws upon the biblical imagery and language of the Psalter, the Old Testament Day of the Lord, and the book of Revelation. The volume as a whole seeks to deconstruct the simple, comfortable depiction of faith so common in modern Christianity, doing so through difficult and cramped poems that rarely allow any glimmer of hope or redemptive love to break through.
In “Sundays” Mr. Andrews paints a sparse but affecting image, that of a young boy’s experience of a narrow and cruel religious tradition, one that is deeply unpleasant and precarious, leading him to wonder if he wants the salvation offered. The poem critiques the way religion is used as a tool of domination within families, a message made all the more impactful by its simple language and tight structure:
In the morning, I sat and stared at the messiah, and her fingers snapped if I looked away. Under midday sun, a sermon: her right hand holding a chisel, her left fingers vise-gripping my hair. All afternoon, she cried as the house swamped, and I pumped cloudy water in the gutter as the sun drowned. At night, she prowled while I, wide-eyed in bed, wondered if I wanted to go to heaven after all. (8)
“Jonah and the King” is a poem that imagines the experience of the King of Nineveh as he is confronted by the prophet Jonah. This piece is one of a number through the volume that take biblical figures and seek to recontextualize their familiar stories and present them afresh, allowing us to appreciate the magnitude of what God is doing. Mr. Andrews is here inviting us to wonder at how God used Jonah to bring a whole kingdom to repentance simply through words.
Of course I doubted him: crazed man of dust blown in by wind, waterlogged eyes, salt baked onto his skin, demanding penance in the name of a god foreign to my ears, telling stories dripping wet with madness… and as I imagined the pain his god had made him endure, he drew my eyes up to his and asked me: do you now believe?” (53)
“Capela dos Osos” is a macabre piece, situating the reader inside the titular Chapel of Bones in Èvora, Portugal, where the walls, alcoves and arches are lined with thousands of human bones, with a golden relief of Christ shining on the altar. Like many poems in this volume, Mr. Andrews brings the imagery of suffering and death to bear on the life of the believer and the church. It is simultaneously a description of the Chapel in Èvora, and a condemnation of spiritually dead churches and believers. In an image reminiscent of Jesus’ rebuke of the religious leaders in Matthew 23:27, “You are like whitewashed tombs,”
The risen Christ stands magnetic at the chapel’s center, preaching to an audience of bleached bones, words reverberating off solemn ivory walls and the cavities within them, former housings for eyes, for ears. Grooved pieces of macabre masonry present history in stratal columns, fate in arches layered like tree rings: you are, and then you are not, the flesh evaporated like vapor, the remaining dust petrified to wisdom and stacked high into an altar, a beacon for skin and bone.” (76)
The Hours is not a comfortable read. We don’t know what is in the mind of the author, and his presence within the poems is often unclear, leaving us guessing at what he intends us to take away from the work. However, taken as a whole, the volume feels like a dogged deconstruction of hollow Christian culture. It is abrasive and disquieting in its relentless imagery of suffering and mortality. There is no warm and fuzzy experience of God’s goodness here, no mention of blessing, fellowship or hope in heaven. Instead it forces us to look on our human brokenness, the dense and difficult reality of sinful humanity. It forces us to question whether our own faith faces up to the depth of suffering in our broken world, as well as the reality of our sinfulness, to ask ourselves, have I really sat with this pain, or have I hidden my eyes? In this goal it succeeds viscerally. It rejects a polished and comfortable Christian faith in favour of an apocalyptic one. While it draws inspiration from Revelation, the Psalter, and the Old Testament Day of the Lord, it rarely touches on Jesus’ redemptive work on the cross or God’s promises of a remnant and restoration. For the reader the central question must be, where is Jesus in all this suffering? Mr Andrews has presented a challenging volume of poems, but a challenge many of us need.
