Embers of Radical Empathy
A Review of
Invited to the Feast: Poems
Bonnie Naradzay
Paperback: Slant Books, 2025
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Reviewed by Brad Davis
Slant Books has given us a treasure in octogenarian Bonnie Naradzay’s literary debut, Invited to the Feast, a title that recalls for me one of Jesus’s devastating parables.
In the parable, those initially invited to the feast are the well-heeled and well-connected. And though they’re all smiles and nods at first, in the end they decline the host’s invitation. So, with the feast prepared, the host sends servants into the streets to enjoin common folk and lowlifes to come and dine with him, which of course they do. No doubt the host’s generosity is good news to those who don’t normally live high-on-the-hog, but for those accustomed to round-the-clock abundance (ahem), the parable is a cautionary tale.
But “literary debut” is deceiving. Though Invited to the Feast is her first collection, Ms. Naradzay is an award-winning poet who has been on the literary scene for decades, with poems published in dozens of excellent journals. For years she, a former Peace Corps volunteer, has led creative writing workshops in such under-the-radar settings as jails, homeless shelters, and retirement communities. Her commitment to serve the underserved has been a consistent theme throughout her life, and many of the poems in Invited to the Feast testify to her time spent leading writing groups in underserved communities.
Of these poems, poet D. Nurske has written that they “burn with a radical empathy…frighteningly vulnerable to the suffering they discover” and yet are “never performative.” Hers is a reportage from the front lines of the dominical mission to bring good news to the poor and freedom for prisoners and the oppressed. For those like me who struggle with what faithfulness looks like, these poems cut two ways. They encourage by example, yes, but also pique my conscience: Couldn’t I be doing so much more?
As for the poems themselves, even at their literary thickest (e.g., “Reading Dante”—where, in only twenty-seven lines, we encounter Virgil, Dante, Homer, Ovid, and Primo Levi), she confesses up front her inability “to discern my way through the darkest woods” of classical literature, and then wonders, concerning Homer’s Odysseus, “Why does his restless search enthrall me so?” This is followed by the timeless question, “Who guides a pilgrim / to the good, and what’s the way to wisdom and virtue?” You don’t have to have read the classics to feel the force of the poem’s last line (which I learned, thanks to my go-to search engine, is a line from Dante’s Divine Comedy, with Naradzay quoting it from Primo Levi’s memoir, If This is a Man): “For you were not formed to live the life of brutes [italics hers]”
Though there is a wonderful abundance of such allusions in her poetry, Naradzay never employs them without making clear for any reader their relevance. She does not use her erudition as a cudgel against those less well-read but as a warm invitation to dig deeper to see the connections across generations and cultures.
Bonnie Naradzay’s poems are not quickie-meals. Her poetry is food for a proper feast—nothing to rush through, rather something to savor one course at a time, one poem at a time.
Brad Davis
Brad Davis is a poet (MFA, Vermont College of Fine Arts) and retired Episcopal priest (MDiv, Trinity School for Ministry). He is the author of On the Way to Putnam: New, Selected, & Early Poems and Trespassing on the Mount of Olives: Poems in Conversation with the Gospels (Poiema Poetry Series). For more, visit braddavispoet.com
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