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In the words of Russel Shaw, "Good religious poetry — poetry that is truly religious and truly poetic — is a rare and precious commodity nowadays. The spirit of the age works against it. Which in itself makes the appearance of Pavel Chichikov's Mysteries and Stations in the Manner of Ignatius a welcome event.
But so, more important, does the quality of these poems. As meditations, whose manner resembles the Ignatian technique called composition of place, they mine the Mysteries of the Rosary and the Stations of the Cross in order to bring forth a luminous iconography of redemption. A sensibility in the tradition of Dickinson and Donne, an eye for vivid imagery, and an ear for the telling phrase meet here in verse that is as much to be prayed as read. "
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