(Minneapolis, MN) — May 17, 2022 — ORGIA: Songlines of Fear, Desire, & the Sublime is a poetic cantata whose invitation to readers it disguises as a mystical warning – To Drink From The Cup Of The Divine Is To Drink From The Cup Of Madness!
Like Priest‘s earlier works, Salt of the Dancer: Selected Verse and The Passion of Valentino Santi, ORGIA is a spiritual endeavor, weaving metaphorical threads of various mythological systems and religions into a single luminous cloth. Once again, Priest’s penchant for perennial wisdom is on lavish display.
Nevertheless, ORGIA feels different in a way. Its poems (or songlines as Priest calls them) possess a threefold nature; they are part sinner’s confession, socio-political admonishment, and candid conversation with the unconscious.
Upon reading ORGIA, one arrives at three truths; first, the foot and stem of the divine cup exist in the bosom of the mundane; second, its author has sipped copiously from it; and third, Life is messy and gloriously so.
