Ivory Cradle: Poems

Ivory Cradle is the winner of the third annual American Poetry Review /Honickman First Book Prize, as chosen by poet Robert Creeley. In his introduction, Creeley writes, "now and again one comes upon a story so quietly and articulately told that it stays in mind long after, echoing, recasting the usual frames of reference and order, making whatever it is the world had been thought to be, quite changed and even, again, unknown." Ivory Cradle is such a story as it charts a personal journey through questions of faith and history, with its anger redeemed by passion and the transformative power of art. from "Morning in Florence" I was out the door and halfway to the elevator

When he threatened to throw

my clothes into the lobby. With the baby to think of

I had to know when to stay or go So I headed out alone into the consoling brown light

Off the river, feeling the child

Swimming carefully inside me as I walked to see

Fra Angelico's frescoes in cells Where monks once slept and knelt, contemplated

And vanished; where in rapture he worked

fast as the plaster dried to get light to wash the wall

the way God would have done it "Ivory Cradle announces a poet fully formed, fully mature, and wild to say things in ways they've never been said before. Rarely, very rarely, is a so-sane heart so beautifully articulated. This is not just an exceptional first book, it is a flat-out exceptional book, period." --Thomas Lux "Reading Anne Marie Macari's poems I think of Jane Kenyon, in her kindred humor, quietness, fierceness, and plain integrity. But this poet is 'flowering dark.'"--Jean Valentine Anne Marie Macari lives in Mt. Kisco, New York.