Book Review: Sun & Moon -- Michel Weatherall

Purgatory is a State of Mine

The trip of transcendence reaches its zenith when demolishing a stereotype and replacing old tropes with new insight. Weatherall’s poetry collection Sun & Moon is a candid examination of one’s fears and fragilities magnified by a cancer diagnosis of a loved one. How perceptions in such circumstances change and often steer inward are explored with depth and erratic honesty. His poetry manages the instinctual edge to jolt the universe with rhyming verse built on solid literary schemes that remain fresh and urgent.


In The Unknown, a lament akin to the psalms of biblical past, the writer shouts to the heavens a cry bemoaning an impending artistic fate of neglect and indifference. Sweet Silver Sister pivots to mining favor and fantasy from the silver moon. The blending of classic rhyme stanzas and modern syntax makes this poem a personal favorite in the collection. With The Binds of Normalcy the philosophical personality emerges from the poet and starkly points out the boring restrictions inherent in social conformity. We learn the “freedom” promoted in congruency is a facsimile destined to morph into a stifling existence for a creative individual. 

Many in life are faced with the supernatural irony of attaining a measure of wisdom through the trials of psychological duress. Writers are not immune to the tribulations of humanity; yet better equipped to absorb a larger share of naked truth. Sadly, we must face the tragic fact that Truth once stripped of practicality is incapable of setting everyone free. The greeting card morality of the unthinking is precisely why books like Sun & Moon are cesarean born into a turbulent world. The poet is tasked with provoking emotional intelligence by awakening the sleepy conscience of a community that often confuses the demands of security with the desires of liberty. Weatherall knows the difference. In those moments of melancholy he never loses his core humanity but instead delivers to the reader a metaphorical picture of the lashes, lessons and long halls of Purgatory. 

Book Buy Links