My Limbs a Cradle, my Whisper a Song by Cathy Gilbert

Cathy Gilbert’s My Limbs a Cradle, my Whisper a Song beautifully deals with the big issues—life and death and the murky in-between of a mother with dementia.  Gilbert grapples with the death of her parents and the birth of twins. (Of the latter, she writes “The blood stayed/under my fingernails/for three days.”) These poems of domestic space honor a couple busy with chores children, “occupied/ with the raising of small people,/our hands filled with their wriggling, instead of each others’.” These poems honor what it is to be a family.

–DENISE DUHAMEL, author of Second Story and Scald (University of Pittsburgh Press)

The sublime and ordinary tangle beautifully in My Limbs a Cradle, My Whisper a Song, a collection that celebrates the nuances of parenting and grief with unending empathy. Gilbert ably captures the burning urgency and quiet hours of motherhood with grace and keen insight. Vivid, intimate imagery breathes through each poem, creating a stunning meditation on how to hold fragile moments without shattering them. This luminous chapbook is an essential read for mothers everywhere.

–THAO THAI, author of Banyan Moon (Mariner Books)

These poems form a perfect chapbook, reminding us of the pleasure of reading a collection in one sitting. Gilbert’s unflinching look at grief and joy will stay with readers for a long time. The way space can be both too full and too empty, the way the past can be present, and the present future, are at the metaphoric core of these poems. And her language (the description of the air below her son’s heels, as he stands on tiptoe for the first time, is absolutely gorgeous) brings those ideas into immediate, profound clarity. What a joy to read!

–JENNIFER RANE HANCOCK, author of Between Hurricanes (Lithic Press)