“Why I Left the Church” by Richard Garcia is a poem that explores the constricting nature of worship and the complicated relationship that the innocence of children has with the body of the church through the lens his contemplation over the real reason he left his faith. It is a narrative that mixes a realist approach of storytelling with a fantasy twist that goes from literal metaphors to figurative metaphors in the description of why the narrator left the church.
The poem is written in free verse and it has no rhyme scheme nor meter. It is 51 lines longs and follows no specific structure with varied line lengths throughout the work. It is told as narrative from what can be assumed is a young boys perspective. There are places in the poem where it makes it clear the story is being told later on, as in line 8 where it is written “Even / twenty-five years later….” but much of the story is told in the present tense. This fluctuation makes readers feel as if we are getting the story from a young boy even though our common sense tells us that this is not the case. I do believe this is intentional and important because it adds to the connotation of uncertainty that is many times paired with faith.
The imagery in the poem is rich and it really makes the story work that is being told. It is a serious subject this crisis, per se, of faith but the childish hyperbole as found in line 11-15’s “Maybe it was the demon-stoked / rotisseries of purgatory / where we would roast / hundreds of years / for the smallest of sins” shows the impressionability of a young mind being told how to live life. When the poem moves from contemplation over the reason for leaving the narrator seems to settle on the final straw being when he wore his “space-helmet to catechism.” From this point it is a fantastical retelling of the boy floating up through the roof of the church and escaping the church. The polar nature of the subject mature is expressed superbly in the image of his body being “cold on one side and hot / on the other” “in the blackness / and brightness of space.”
The poem superbly lays out a story of how children must forge their own paths and beliefs, and that sometimes the most impactful decisions must be made based on innocent whims.
twonames15 