Joseph Featherstone

Brace's Cove - First Book Joseph Featherstone 1st edition

The poems of Brace's Cove consider the seemingly random connections between the cosmos and our daily lives. As Featherstone see it, we are as close to heaven / as it gets," and even "the Milky Way pouring down" is reflected in smaller ways so that we may witness its routine: "Waterlilies, filling with rain, / tipping, filling again." The greater foretells its microcosms, much as waves report momentum for a larger body when they break against a cove then ebb again to open water. The poet recognizes the wearing-down such a process brings, but sees this erosion as necessity rather than diminishment, a recognition that even the sun seems to uphold: "Such radiance-- / rinsing the broken world clean." Featherstone's poems work a similar magic, casting their considerable light on the small moment or particular to reveal the vastness that informs it.