The Cave Volume 41

Reviews / Votes

"Ryan Vine's The Cave is a book of earthly wonders-from the electric squeeze of a young daughter's tiny hand; to the grizzled old father bathing himself with an air hose at the end of his shift; to 'that rigid, old fuck, / the red oak, mid-/ winter, clutching / its leaves in the wind.' These are poems that don't let go, by a poet who sings of human love with grit and honesty and extraordinary tenderness." - Patrick Phillips, author of Elegy for a Broken Machine and Song of the Closing Doors

"While the poems in The Cave are thoroughly contemporary, many of their philosophical underpinnings are as old as humanity itself. Vine's haunting meditations on fatherhood, for example, are as profound and enduring as any I've ever read. This is manly work, utterly masterful, and deeply moving." - Connie Wanek, author of Rival Gardens and On Speaking Terms

"The Cave is an unforgettable contribution to the poetry of paterfamilias written from deep inside 'love's austere and lonely offices,' as Robert Hayden put it. These poems are as indelible as scars-and just as full of ancient wisdom. Wonders abound: the cloud inside a dog's eye, the way a lake holds up the sky. Ryan Vine's poetry gives me that fully alive feeling, up to my neck in something I don't quite know how to swim and am glad for." - Dobby Gibson, author of Hold Everything and It Becomes You

"There is precision in these poems, and clarity and emotional intelligence. Beautiful writing." - Ilya Kaminski, author of Deaf Republic and Dancing in Odessa

"Ryan Vine enters into The Cave to mine the poetry of fatherhood, of childhood, to dip his cup into the underground river where those twinned currents meet and mingle their wisdom and unknowing. These open-hearted poems are crafty and beautifully crafted, vessels forged of swerving enjambment, sly slant rhyme, flickering illusions of endless imagination and mythic resonance-even Homer's cache of epic similes is plundered-all to hold the ache and tenderness of what can't be held: the hope and fear in trying to teach our kids to see what waits beyond the horizon when we can't see it ourselves, of living in a world where everything we love will disappear." - Michael Bazzett, author of The Echo Chamber and The Interrogation

"The Cave is a collection of poems that serve as a poet's time stamp in living. Ryan Vine divides his poetic findings into three sections, and in turn, the reader bears witness to the writer's becoming through him looking back at moving images and memories to look forward at what miracle is possible with finite time. Vine writes: 'I can't tell you / what I can hear. Maybe someone / else's memory, maybe suffering / muffled. I don't trust myself' and we are transported to the moment one surrenders to the messy act of re-memory. The themes tumble from mortality and lust, to child-rearing and the divine mundane miracle of our living. Vine has a precise way of using language to discover one's capacity for love, desire, loss, rebirth, and one's search for joy." - Mahagony Browne, author of Chrome Valley and Vinyl Moon

"The poems of Ryan Vine shimmer from the tension between tenderness and toughness. This poet is not just messing around with words. The poems are compact, driven, urgent. They've got questions, and the main one seems to be Where's the place for love and wonder in a world so harsh and mean? Vine writes the kind of poem that haunts, that calls you back repeatedly. And that's, at last, the highest test for poetry." - Bart Sutter, author of Cotton Grass: New and Selected Poems of the North