Book Review: Doorway: The English Cantos, Volume III by James Sale

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Book Reviewed: Doorway: The English Cantos, Volume III, by James Sale, 2025

by Cynthia Erlandson

It’s been several years since I’ve read Dante’s Divine Comedy; yet as I read James Sale’s Doorway, memories of it echoed in my mind. Clearly, Sale has immersed himself in Dante’s masterpiece and has created his own autobiographical work of poetic art in the master’s image.

He does this in several ways. He places his travels among the stars of heaven, with a convincing understanding of astronomy displayed throughout the story. He encounters, on this journey through the heavens, people whom he knows or has known on earth, as well as historical figures and mythological characters. He sees angels. Though his destination is eternity, much of his thought and longing is for Linda, who has reflected for him God’s heavenly love through her earthly love for him. He has guides: a butterfly—universal symbol of transformation and resurrection, representing here an aborted son—and, at various points, long-lost relatives and other guides. It is clear that he has gone through much earthly trauma and is seeking spiritual healing from it. He portrays in many different ways his experiences of being awed by God’s forgiveness and love, during which times he is drawn closer to Him and more deeply into His truth.

Beginning his story with his cleansing baptismal plunge, and then—brilliantly—with an encounter with the repentant thief on a cross next to Jesus’ cross (St. Dismas, who tells his own story in the opening canto), the poet brings us to understand that his poem is a confessional history of one who has come, later in life, to an understanding of his own and mankind’s sinful nature and need of forgiveness, and through this understanding, comes to profound gratitude for the abundant grace of God:

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“And million, million voices in that place

Let rip their singing, and Dismas their star.
Somehow, impossibly, I saw them all—
All those who sought repentance—door ajar

At that last moment when they made their call,
Now glorying in the blood of Jesus Christ:
Their Master who had overcome the Fall.”

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Throughout Doorway the poet reflects on the themes of time and eternity and their mysteries, bringing them together in scenes of an afterlife “where mortal time and eternal truths converge.” He connects all of these themes using his deep knowledge and love of biblical literature, in a way that convinces the reader that he has come to a new, life-giving belief, and has had his eyes opened, through grace, to what is truly real:

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“. . . a sea, completely clear,

Upon which my feet trod in relief,
And yet upheld as once in Galilee
Before, the Rock whom Christ named his chief

Apostle also strode—free, seemingly,
From gravity and all the downward laws
Besetting us, till stumbling in the sea

Poor Peter bared his—yes, and all—our flaws,
Which drown and overwhelm the human soul.”

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The poet-pilgrim wrestles with universal human questions about God’s plan, such as the one John Milton, poet of Paradise Lost, has the spiritual insight to detect inside of this poet’s mind: Why did the Fall have to happen?

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“And you, to wish that Adam

Had never fallen, as now your heart stalls
Within and wishes for its perfect state,
Is wishing only that your own life’s trail

Never and not occurred—you missed life’s fate!”

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The author makes beautiful use of metaphorical imagery to embody spiritual truths; to illustrate how spiritual growth can occur in the human heart and soul; and to flesh out paradoxes like the puzzle of how good can be brought out of evil, and how God could have been separated from God:

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“ ‘For your (Dismas’) sake,’ he said, ‘great God was bereaved;
So God was cut from God as by a knife. . .'”

“With burning coal to touch my lips”; “My lips ablaze—cremating all my lies”; and “but now I too becoming flame”

“. . . some invisible surge
Of energy burst forth from every suture
That stitched the universe and made it charged:”

“But there she stood before me, sun at noon
Not moving, locked into its heavenly burse: . . .”

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His impressive number of scriptural allusions, woven adroitly into the terza rima narrative, include the still, small voice that spoke to Elijah; the Samaritan woman spoken to by Jesus; the women at the 8th Station of the Cross; Joseph’s famous colorful coat; Ezekiel’s dry bones; the tower of Babel; Isaiah’s poem about mounting up with wings as eagles; the love song of Solomon; the sacrifice of Isaac; St. Paul’s metaphor of seeing “through a glass, darkly”, and many others. He also alludes to Gerard Manley Hopkins, and encounters John Milton and the Society of Classical Poets’ own Andrew Benson Brown.

Another notable type of imagery (if it can be called imagery) that occurs frequently in this volume is musical imagery (necessary for any portrayal of heaven) as in these lovely lines:

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“Foundations in His faith like wild notes spread
On thinnest air where symphonies are made?”

“To this surpassing choir where sound is joy.”

“Some living melody all creatures caught . . .”

“Like some atomic charge—where elements
Are changed—I became pure fire, pure hymn: . . .” [This so delightfully Dantean!]

“From distant skies I heard harmony’s store
Of resonating hum and holy sound: . . .”

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Having woven together his immense knowledge and insight into Dante and other famous poets, Biblical history and poetry, mythology, astronomy and astrology, and his willingness to open his life and heart to the reader in poetic biography, James Sale has completed his literary journey through the heavens, and has fulfilled “My task to write the poetry of His truth”, conveying to the reader a palpable catharsis that has lifted him as on eagles’ wings above human frailty and failure. He has composed a poem packed with beauty and wisdom, and overflowing with human emotions from sorrow and shame to overwhelming joy and celebration of the divine love that, in Dante’s words, “moves the sun and the other stars.”

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Cynthia Erlandson is a poet and fitness professional living in Michigan.  Her third collection of poems, Foundations of the Cross and Other Bible Stories, was released in July, 2024 by Wipf and Stock Publishers.  Her other collections are These Holy Mysteries and Notes on Time.  Her poems have also appeared in First Things, Modern Age, The North American Anglican, The Orchards Poetry Review, The Book of Common Praise hymnal, The Catholic Poetry Room, and elsewhere.