My Limbs a Cradle, my Whisper a Song by Cathy Gilbert
$17.99
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)
Description
My Limbs a Cradle, my Whisper a Song
by Cathy Gilbert
Paper
List: $17.99
979-8-88838-661-3
2024
My Limbs a Cradle, my Whisper a Song explores motherhood and loss through poems that reveal the bittersweet truths of raising infants and the devastation of losing a parent to dementia. Whether contemplating the stars, stirring a pot of soup at the stove, watching a child learn to press their feet to the floor and rise, or stumbling over a mother’s inability to recognize her own daughter, these poems try and try again to focus on small moments in order to stay grounded through a time of great upheaval. Parent/child relationships reverse and transform as the poet learns how to mother through the slow loss of her own mother and her memories.
Cathy Gilbert received her MA from the Master of Arts Program in the Humanities at the University of Chicago. She now lives in Central Illinois where she is a Professor of English at Heartland Community College and mother to twins. Her poems and essays have previously appeared in Hobart, decomP, and Peoria Magazine.
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