The Trembling Answers

by Craig Morgan Teicher

WINNER OF THE 2018 LENORE MARSHALL POETRY PRIZE At once an extension of and a departure from his previous explorations of family and art, Craig Morgan Teicher’s The Trembling Answers delves boldly into the tangled realms of fatherhood, marriage, and poetry. Dealing with the day-to-day of family life—including the alert anxiety and remarkable beauty of caring for a child with severe cerebral palsy—these personal narratives brightly illuminate the relationship that exists between poetry and a life fiercely lived. Video Baby Monitor A watched
pot never boils, so perhaps a son on a screen never
dies. Like the eyes of a painting this image
follows wherever we move. Surveillance is love, love
is every moment the last. Barely moving picture, memory
of now, sleep, be still, be safe. Night is long, life short.
I cover you with my eyes. Craig Morgan Teicher: is the author of four books of poetry and fiction and the editor of Once and For All: The Best of Delmore Schwartz (2016). A prolific critic and reviewer of poetry, he has worked at Publishers Weekly for 10 years, where he is currently Director of Digital Operations. He teaches at New York University and Princeton University.

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Paperback

First published April 11, 2017

About the author

Craig Morgan Teicher is a poet, critic, and freelance writer. His first book of poems, Brenda Is In The Room And Other Poems, was chosen by Paul Hoover as winner of the 2007 Colorado Prize for Poetry and is due out this November from the Center for Literary Publishing. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in many publications, including The Paris Review, The Yale Review, A Public Space, Jubilat, Seneca Review, Forklift Ohio, Octopus, La Petit Zine, Verse, and Colorado Review. His reviews of poetry and fiction, and profiles of poets, appear widely in places like Poets & Writers, Poets.org, Time Out New York, Boston Review and Bookforum. He is a contributing editor of Pleiades and works at Publishers Weekly. He lives in Brooklyn, NY with his wife and son and plays drums in the band The Fourelles.

Reviews

[C. Varn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Teicher's poetry here is intimate and wry at equal parts, but the intensity and dairy-like candor of the poems make the collection feel very uneven. Furthermore, at points, the language is so unadorned and unrooted from any particular imaginary, the candor feels outright prosaic and the line breaks do not always add to the rhythm. Yet when Teicher lands a punch in a poem or a line, it's a dead-on hit. This leaves the collection feeling raw, uneven, but also vital and honest.

[Nahid Soltanzadeh]

.

These are very self-conscious poems. They are so aware of their poem-ness and their formation through language. As a poet I think this is such a risky thing to do to your poems. There is a very fine line between self-aware poetry and braggy show-offy poetry. And he has done it SO well. The poems, directly or indirectly, speak about (among other things) themselves and the language in a sharp witty way. Loved it.

I also enjoyed the sheer honesty in the love/family poems of this book. Teicher builds a tender and clear language for the hatred that comes with love and often goes unnoticed or unsaid (duh! It's terrifying to hate the person/people you love)

[David Anthony Sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this very personal and moving collection, Craig Morgan Teicher explores his own biography. We feel his worry and pain as a father of a health young girl and a very sick boy. We listen to his love for his wife, his children, for the mother he lost when he was young, for the housekeeper who raised him, for the father who loved only through his emotional distance.

Some of the lines are very fine, such as:

...She lived and she grows
like joy spreading from the syllables
of songs.

Or

I could hold that rock
and rewind time and find myself
standing between verb tenses.

Or

I can divide all life
into breath and waiting
for the next breath, and
the calm in the troughs
between.

Some of the poems are complete, and touching, and real. You read the collection and imagine you are listening to a friend, pretending you know them, as much as any human can know another. A worthwhile read.

[John Madera · Rating 5 out of 5]

In The Trembling Answers, Craig Morgan Teicher works out notions of and questions about fathers, fathering, and fatherhood with fear and trembling, yes, but also with acute awareness, stark honesty, and comic self-deprecation, the collection's evocative images carefully observed and rendered, its narratives alternately sad, angry, loving, nurturing, defiant, doubtful, and hopeful, self-portraiture, the epistolary, and poetry qua poetry itself among the genres both deftly employed and deeply interrogated.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

More of a 3.5, but poetry always gets the bump. A straight 4 if it was more consistent, the arresting images and line breaks are devastating when they land, but occasionally plodding. Perhaps due to the almost diary-like aspect of many of the personal poems, the "hot take" of "real" feeling sometimes dull the writing. The honesty is its strength, but to a fault. Also bardic turns are always a bit self aggrandizing for me.

[Joshua Gage · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very abstract and introspective poetry. Not enough imagery or metaphor to hold my attention, and while the tone and themes are there, a lot of this read more like rhythmic prose than poetry.

[hh · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5-4

[Lukáš Palán · Rating 2 out of 5]

Poezie level prvak na stredni.

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

The poems about his children are heartbreaking. “Tracheostomy” is one of the most moving beautiful poems I’ve come across in the last decade.