Book review:
Let Us Rejoice: Poems 2003-2008
by Seth Jani

Seth Jani is a young writer from Maine who demonstrates the growth of
spirit and the realization of adulthood in his coming of age book, Let
Us Rejoice.  The book is a sampling of Jani's poetry and prose from
the years 2003 - 2008.

It is always interesting to observe a writer's transformation over a
span of time.  For Seth Jani, the five years covered in the book
possess the same quality and introspective voice.  Luckily for the
reader, however, this voice has the ability to mature with age and
delve further into more complicated questions about life, faith, and
the nature of man.  To Jani, "poets are mythmakers, transforming the
intimate details of their inner lives into a grand symphony that on
occasion can offer hints of that which is purely beyond the mechanisms
of mouth and mind."  Seth Jani is able to achieve these
transformations and they are well documented within the pages of this
book.

Jani's poem "Seventeen" is written from the perspective of a young man
reaching the boundary that divides childhood from adulthood.  The poem
itself is an achievement for such a young writer.  It demonstrates how
the steady hand of Seth Jani has always been so.  He shows the
uncertainty of leaving youth behind and delving full force into the as
yet unknown world of risk, freedom, and hope:

You no longer know who you are,
Even your name takes on a strange dissonance,
As a string suddenly slackened out of tune
Surprises you with its disheveled music,
Everything, familiar and unknown,
Takes on the same uncertain haze...

Jani also takes a well aimed stab at prose in Let Us Rejoice.  "A
Negative God," in particular, shows Jani's ability to write of his
faith in a way that is accessible to readers of any creed.  "A
Negative God" shows the darkness and loneliness that sometimes comes
with believing in a higher power.  Doubt will come and with that:

God is silence, and nothing but silence, and not the silence between
two breaths, and not the silence of the night, and not the silence
posed between finger and flute, but the silence that surrounds us,
devours us, that makes us scream for any sound but that of our own
voice scraping against its immense emptiness.

But hope is also found within the silence:

It is silence and nothing but silence, the silence of a mother awed by
infant eyes, and of the child held innocent in her arms.

Seth Jani's Let Us Rejoice is an honest work of losing faith and
finding it again over time.  Jani is a writer who has experienced
struggle, defeat, confidence, and hope.  These experiences are aptly
recorded in Let Us Rejoice.

Seth Jani is a 21 year old poet from Rangeley, Me. He is the founder
and editor-in-chief of Seven CirclePress . His book Let Us Rejoice:
Poems 2003-2008 (www.sevencirclepress.com/ letusrejoice.htm) was
published by the press in 2008 and contains the bulk of his work
written during his formative years in the mountains of Maine.  Samples
of his work and the work of many other poets can be read at
www.sevencirclepress.com.