2 a.m. with Keats

As I read Eileen Clearys 2 a.m. with Keats I felt breathless suspended in a place of red keys plum stones cats willows and sphinxes. It would minimize the reach of this brilliant collection to call it an elegy or a eulogy or even a love story to Lucie Brock-Broido or John Keats - though it is all of those things. Here in this place where the elm says Grief and the oak Grief the poems shine and scatter across the pages like a phantom of stars. Cleary engages the rhythms of another world of sweet music honeyed and unheard where Lucie reaches forty years back. . . . Embracing the quirkiness of Brock-Broidos imagery and the love of Keatss line Cleary creates a séance of astronomy searching for the origins of human and poetic magic where looking for signs means Ive / once been broken. I will return to 2 a.m. with Keats again and again to remember Lucie and Keats to inhale rose milk . . . mint. - Jennifer Martelli author of In the Year of Ferraro