Circle Back: Poems - Adam Clay

An aching meditation on the cyclical nature of grief and memory's limited capacity to preserve everything time takes from us. How does one make sense of loss--personal and collective? When language and memory are at capacity, where do we turn? Confronted with a year meant to end all / those to come, acclaimed poet Adam Clay questions whether anything is wide enough to contain what's left / of hope. In the absence of a clear way forward, the poems of Circle Back wander grief's strange and winding path. Along the way, the line between reality and dreams blurs: cows stare with otherworldly eyes, 78s play under cactus needles, a father becomes his own child, and the dead become something more complicated--a sketch turned to painting / left in a room dusty from / lack of passing through. But amidst these liminal landscapes, a thread of promise persists in poetry. As flawed as language is, we still turn to it for longevity, for love, like Keats, / sketching himself back into place. Vulnerable and nuanced, Clay details the difficult work of healing--and in doing so, captures those needful moments of reprieve in grief's strange circle. Two friends dashing through a sprinkler. A garden of startled birds. Out for a run some gray morning: a sudden patch of wildflowers. Circle Back is a bared heart, one readers will find as thoughtful as it is tender.