Abstract
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.