Mangoes from the Seventh Dimension comprises dreams, visions, and strange stories in an ABC order designed to annoy the Librarian of Babel. Cats and eagles will speak to you; ancient Egypt will shine for you; and by the end you will know that every poem is a temple of words.
John Tyndall reaches back to Egypt and other ancient places, to myths and histories, transforming what he sees through his magical spectacles. He describes both the exotic and the ordinary - but nothing is ordinary or mundane in John's vision. A waiter becomes the cupbearer of Alexander the Great. Supermarket mangoes come from the seventh dimension. The magical is never far away: the goddess Danu enchants; George Harrison offers the speaker a ride "out of suburbia"; even something as mundane as a haircut and shave becomes a secret journey to transformation. Three items left on a bench lead John to imagine a dramatic scene, only to see it differently on his second viewing ("Installation"). The mind, the poem, creates and re-creates.
Blended in his poems are his love of The Beatles, of Kate Bush, of mythology, of birds, of all kinds of art. In his final poem of this collection, "Word Temple," he visualizes, even in the shape of the poem, the building of a temple, the creation of a poem, where the writer and reader, the teller and listener, the chant and the chanter, the priest and the acolyte, exchange places, or are one person, or are always in a wonderful dance together. Thus, in words so sensuous, with sounds so evocative of that combination of dreamy fantasy and the surprising world around him, John Tyndall brings us into his poetry, so that we may appreciate the magical along with him.
‒ Marianne Micros, author of the poetry collection Seventeen Trees, the Governor-General's-Award-nominated story collection Eye, and her latest story collection Statue.
