Cruel Fever of the Sky

Carey Scott Wilkersons Cruel Fever of the Sky is like a magic carpet that sails easily between classical myth and popular culture. With touches of Symbolism Magical Realism and Post-Modernism the poems are seductive. Their language is astonishingly beautiful. Whether under faerie lights strung in pepper trees or atop a Ferris wheel on the Santa Monica pier magic and myth abound. With characters as unexpected as Norman Mailer Jacques Cousteaus pastry chef Mayhaley Lancaster we watch Icarus plunge time after time--into the Hudson Bay the Potomac the Chattahoochee River even onto the dark side of the Moon. In spite of the miracles of salted tomatoes fireflies and the scent of gardenias trilling the air with their white perfume we come to recognize our own cycles of cataclysm. We realize that for us as for Icarus those wings weve been told to spread will eventually fail us and gravity will bring us down.Marian Carcache Author of The Moon and the Stars and The Tongues of Men and Angels