Review of
Bearable Weight

from Skylar Hamilton Burris, Small Press Poetry Book Reviews

Bearable Weight
by Michael Cleary
CW Books, © 2011, ISBN 978-1-936370-51-1

Michael Cleary's Bearable Weight contains frequent allusions to religious life or the Bible in emotionally fraught settings and paints a sometimes bleak landscape penetrated by occasional rays of hope. There’s a bitter-sweet tone to several of his poems. The reader will be introduced to a diverse cast of characters, each with his or her own unique life story. Many of the poems left me wanting to know more about their subjects and speakers. I question the reader who doesn’t cry at some point in the course of digesting this volume, and I found poems such as “First Wife,” “Relative,” “Some You Remember, Some You Can’t Forget” and “Bless the Child in Any Juke Box Bar” especially affecting. As with any collection, there were a few poems I just didn’t “get,” or that failed to hold my interest, or that seemed to be trying too hard, but, on the whole, the collection is impressive, and when I am hit hard emotionally by more than four poems in a single volume, I generally take note of the poet.

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