Dear Morpheus, the Glue That Is You

A new collection by an award winning poet, and the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, a Pushcart Prize, and a grant from the Illinois Arts Council.

Anyone who has ever woken at 3 a.m. unable to turn off the brain knows the value of that precious elixir we call sleep. DEAR MORPHEUS, THE GLUE THAT IS YOU explores the realms of sleep, sleeplessness, and dreams. There are poems addressed to Morpheus, looking for answers from the Greek god of dreams. There are also memories that keep the seeker of sleep from finding rest, yet how can these memories ever be released? And there are dream poems, portals to the world where Morpheus, in many forms and disguises, dwells. It's here, in dreams, that we seem closest to the mysteries of Morpheus and that "glue" of sleep that restores and heals. The book opens and closes with an invocation to "the balm of sleep," useful for those 3 a.m. islands of insomnia.

"In a culture where communication must be clear and sleep evades us, Dear Morpheus, The Glue That Is You reminds us that the landscape of sleep should be like poetry: an oceanic vastness where we are comforted precisely because 'one word can spin / a lemon into a lime, and two words back into a wooden egg.' Sleep, like poetry, is where we encounter the amalgamation of personal and literary history 'until there is nothing else but.' This book is everything we need to exchange one realm for another, lighter one. John Bradley offers us a balm of delirium and the weightless feeling of 'all the feathers one body can bear.'"--Beth McDermott, author of Figure 1

Poetry.