You can see why this won the FutureCycle Press Poetry Prize, it is a wonderful meshing of nature, reality and the spiritual. The book starts of with a man finding his way in life, dealing with those hard moments in life, for example hitting a deer with the car and having to deal with the ending of a life. There are some beautiful lines and Temple Cone share some wonderful memories. I loved “Wharf” remembering time spent with his father was a joy to read.

The second half of the book changes drastically as Temple is becoming a father, from poems about the baby still in the womb and seeing her on the ultrasound to the epic poem as she finally arrives in the world. Any father out there will understand holding your new-born in your arms and knowing they will never be this safe again. The last poem is quite clever, it feels like a conclusion, something you don’t usually get in a poetry book, and it is at that moment you realise you have been on a journey with the poet.

One issue I have with the collection was the religion, in the middle of the book this subject was ramped up a bit and it had a detrimental effect on the words, a poem would be flowing along nice and gentle and then Jesus gets mentioned and it just comes across as too harsh and throws the reader out of the momentum of the poem. That is the only fault I could find in this wonderful collection and is probably more down to me not being a believer.

Blog review: felcherman.wordpress.com/2021/01/24/no-loneliness-by-temple-cone/