In this very personal and moving collection, Craig Morgan Teicher explores his own biography. We feel his worry and pain as a father of a health young girl and a very sick boy. We listen to his love for his wife, his children, for the mother he lost when he was young, for the housekeeper who raised him, for the father who loved only through his emotional distance.

Some of the lines are very fine, such as:

...She lived and she grows
like joy spreading from the syllables
of songs.

Or

I could hold that rock
and rewind time and find myself
standing between verb tenses.

Or

I can divide all life
into breath and waiting
for the next breath, and
the calm in the troughs
between.

Some of the poems are complete, and touching, and real. You read the collection and imagine you are listening to a friend, pretending you know them, as much as any human can know another. A worthwhile read.


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