Cherubims

The poems in Cherubims explore the complex labyrinth of childhood-and parenting-in ways that are unflinchingly candid, delightfully entertaining, and unmistakably wise. The collection offers readers a sustained and thoughtful musing on life, one that gives voice to puzzlement alongside praise, to worries as well as wonder. Throughout this volume Edward Clarke's writing weds reverence and wit, a rare accomplishment in contemporary poetry, and make no mistake about it: these are brilliantly crafted poems, quietly elegant in style, unobtrusively measured in form, and thoroughly delicious to read.

-Mark S. Burrows, author of The Chance of Home. Poems (2018) and Meister Eckhart's Book of Secrets (2019)



Clarke's themes of love and spiritual longing, set within the domestic realm of husbandhood and fatherhood, offer us a real philosophy of how language might connect us to those we love most. In this collection, he reveals himself to be a poet aware of the "miraculous influence" of the everyday light and world around us, as Wallace Stevens wrote. These poems are composed with ambition and wonder of the highest order: "My intention is to match the hymns Sung by the seraphims" ("Holy, Holy, Holy.") Is it possible to achieve this? Clarke's efforts are the reader's reward.

-Anthony Caleshu, Professor of Poetry, University of Plymouth, and author of A Dynamic Exchange Between Us (2019)



If words indeed are living things, then they live intensely in these poems which might best be read as "thin" places where the divisions between earth and heaven, the sacred and the secular, are almost transparent. Most of them are rooted in the life of the family, in the poet's relationships with his wife, two sons and parents, in the chaos and vitality of "cherubims" at home, in school assemblies, nativity plays, Halloween. They are also founded upon the Bible and Christian liturgy, with subtly hidden learning from Angelus Silesius to Orpheus. These poems are precious ventures into the holy in our midst, carefully crafted expressions of love and faith.

-David Jasper, Emeritus Professor, University of Glasgow, and author of Heaven in Ordinary (2018)