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NewPages reviews THE TREMBLING ANSWERS

A NewPages review of Craig Morgan Teicher's The Trembling Answers is calling the book "art that transcends the political and economic stirrings of our day."

Reviewer Kimberly Ann Priest says, "While most of the nation is wrangling over politics, some poets, like Craig Morgan Teicher, are reminding us of our human fragility in this pandemonium of voices. Poets like Teicher are forced by circumstance to cultivate a stillness of spirit for fear of inhaling or exhaling too carelessly and thereby breaking the already frayed cord of life struggling to hold itself together—that frayed cord being the speaker’s son so consciously observed in this 88-page manuscript of poems, The Trembling Answers.

"I read these poems as resistance to the clash and clang of hard words meant to overthrow oppositional arguments. It is the hallmark of our current political landscape, and while these arguments are necessary to engage for the sake of social justice and preserved liberties, battle lines always divide. But that thin veil that separates us from being known and the unknowing tends to disrupt our divisions and inspire us to gather in awe, prayers, and reminiscence since, all of a sudden, we recall our common vulnerability."

At once an extension of and a departure from his previous explorations of family and art, Craig Morgan Teicher’s The Trembling Answers delves boldly into the tangled realms of fatherhood, marriage, and poetry. Dealing with the day-to-day of family life—including the alert anxiety and remarkable beauty of caring for a child with severe cerebral palsy—these personal narratives brightly illuminate the relationship that exists between poetry and a life fiercely lived.

The review concludes: "These trembling poems, containing more questions than answers, will certainly live on. If you’re seeking art that transcends the political and economic stirrings of our day, art that stirs a renewed awareness of what it means to be strictly human—desirable and relational as such—then The Trembling Answers is a book worth contemplating over a quiet weekend at home, the sun saturating a nearby window, the sound of children or neighbors cavorting outdoors and, on the table, a tall glass of freshly squeezed lemonade to sip between each thought-provoking phrase."

Click here to read the full NewPages review

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