Cradle Book

Thirty-three sublime, deceptively simple reflections on states of human awareness comprise this prose collection by poet Teicher (Brenda Is in the Room ), who is also PW ’s poetry editor. In bedtime-story selections grouped under themes of “Silence,” “Fear,” “Sleep,” Teicher gives voice to our suppressed terrors of the dark, animism, unclean urges, and supernatural convergences: a man is granted the wish of invisibility in “The Reward,” using the power to observe everything he can until he becomes “a repository... of moments that threaten to repeat themselves for all eternity,” in short, a poet; dust collecting in clumps in corners takes on life as “it is simply waiting for us to join it” (“The Dust”); a tree stump finds a remedy for its acute loneliness by engulfing a monk in its gnarled roots so that they can die together (“The Monk and the Stump”). The immutable condition of the stone becomes the metaphor for life in “The Story of the Stone.” Teicher’s subtly composed fables are effortless and enduring, celebrate the virtue of story above all, and render philosophers of his readers. (June)