Narrow Cradle

by Wade Kearley

Overview

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE MIRAMICHI READER'S 'THE VERY BEST!' POETRY AWARD**
In Narrow Cradle, Wade Kearley explores the midlife encounter with mortality and the ways we strive to resist, deny, cheat, and even bargain with it. Grounded in both traditional and modern poetic forms, these poems find in the transience of life a new kind of freedom, a rebirth independent of personal circumstance. In crisp, direct, and vivid language—swerving between sonnet, villanelle, and sestina—Kearley offers a compelling collection by turns vicious, lost, ragged, and regal.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781550818161
Publisher:	Breakwater Books Ltd
Publication date:	04/17/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	112
File size:	997 KB

About the Author

Wade Kearley is the author of seven books, including the poetry collections Drawing on Water and Let Me Burn like This, and the travel books The People’s Road and The People’s Road Revisited, based on his 900-kilometer trek along Newfoundland’s abandoned rail line. He lives in St. John’s.

Table of Contents

December on Lawlor's Brook 15

Bar-headed geese 16

Rue 17

Suicide wings 19

Prayer rock 20

In between 21

January on Lawlor's Brook 23

Love doll 24

A winter battle 26

Flurries 28

High anxiety in red head cove 29

February on Lawlor's Brook 31

February/march falafel 32

Changing channels 33

Fighting for father 34

Song in february 35

March on Lawlor's Brook 37

Electric and falling 38

A cold case 39

Letting go 41

Soup bone 42

Binoculars 43

April on Lawlor's Brook 45

American goldfinch 46

Heart failure 48

Shem meditates on his disease 50

Hit and run 51

Undone 52

May on Lawlor's Brook 53

Calvary 54

Mother's day revisited 55

A reason to smile 57

He drank the river 58

June on Lawlor's Brook 61

Coming clean 62

Amy chains 64

And now that you are not there 66

Postcard from the hills above clarenville 67

July on Lawlor's Brook 69

Postcard from under a bridge 70

Il cauto 71

Il audace 72

Winter island 73

Every calipitter in the whole galaxy 75

August on Lawlor's Brook 77

Postcard from the holiday inn 78

Living in the night sky 79

Argument with my heart 80

September on Lawlor's Brook 81

Splitting wood 82

The divorce of aurora borealis 84

From under our blanket 86

The words of the moon 87

Tea & bread rising 88

Full moon over wreck cove 90

October on Lawlor's Brook 91

Crucifying corey 92

First frost 94

Starlings 95

Back to the land of the living 96

Ore pony 98

Kneeling on cranberries 100

After wrestling with gabriel 101

The poem speaks back 102

Once when i was drowning 103

Deciduous 104

Re: the last one in the sequence 106

November on Lawlor's Brook 107

On the road to mount abu 108

What People are Saying About This

Susan Gillis

“The poems of Narrow Cradle mark shifting seasons of place and heart, sounding depths of lives lived among strength, fragility, tenderness, awe and other landscapes. Wade Kearley is writing in peak form here: from expansive ranginess to arrow-like precision and finesse, poem after poem offers up occasions of toughness, joy, reflection, empathy and quiet power.”

Editorial Reviews

“These are by no means simply musings of an ageing poet. This is the raw, real beauty, fraying and resiliency in each of us. Leaving me again inspired by the written word... Whether you're new to the genre or a veteran, read this work. It will be time and emotion well spent. These stories are ours, shared by a highly-skilled storyteller. Perhaps it's all been done. But as tides turn and birds return, you can be wondrously surprised by the beauty and flight of each one.”

The Miramichi Reader - Bill Arnott

“I have been pummeled by the force of heartbreak and pain in some of these offerings. I have been washed in wistfulness and regret. I was metaphorically knocked to my knees by the author's intense viciousness toward the subject in his 'Crucifying Corey.' I have felt the powerful and raw emotions that run through this book. Mr. Kearley has held nothing back in his desire to write about emotions we so often try to deny having... What I have gained through Mr. Kearley's work is invaluable in seeing the range and depth of emotion that can shared through this literary forum.”

Atlantic Book Reviews

"Narrow Cradle is a thoroughly realized, excellent book of poems. Wade Kearley has a fine ear for meter and phrasing, and I often found myself putting down the book to marvel at the beautiful specificity of a line or image. Kearley's carefully nuanced descriptions of nature are detailed enough that had I not lived in St. John's for six years, I'd still get a very strong sense of place. I was also joyed at the facility with which Kearley shifts between fixed and free form poems. But beyond this, I was also fascinated by the book's larger movements, which wrought the many lyric poems into a larger narrative arc about the speaker's dissolving relationships and his attempts to repair them while simultaneously acknowledging his utter inability to do so due to his own character flaws. It was refreshing to see someone take as much care as Kearley did in making sure that there was a larger something to tie everything together."

Jon D. Lee