To Keep Love Blurry

“Although the persona in these poems toys with annihilation and (twice) with ‘dull blades,’ it survives, and does so through aesthetic will: tight sonnets, a perfect villanelle, a moving prose memoir. ‘True self-haters,’ writes the poet in ‘Confession,’ ‘perform to empty houses, late.’ That won’t be Teicher’s fate.”—Publishers Weekly

“Teicher meticulously probes the intersections of writing poetry and living life. He can be lacerating...Teicher’s poems also obsessively chart a kind of epistemological and existential anxiety..."—Bookforum

“What can it mean To Keep Love Blurry — an infinitive phrase suggesting not only value but vigilance. In his second poetry collection, Craig Morgan Teicher demonstrates what is irreconcilable in our commonplace…Obviously, wise elders abound in this collection, but none will quite account for Teicher’s vigilant candor in the ways that he vitally enacts the “blurry.” Even in a collection that is rich with the past’s re-enactment, he admits that the most relevant memories, the most clarifying instances of forgotten dream, are most likely irretrievable, ‘locked away somewhere.’ Surprisingly, Teicher lets us feel the ways in which such a memory’s very irretrievability will offer him something more valuable than clarity…” - On the Seawall

“Although the persona in these poems toys with annihilation and (twice) with ‘dull blades,’ it survives, and does so through aesthetic will: tight sonnets, a perfect villanelle, a moving prose memoir. ‘True self-haters,’ writes the poet in ‘Confession,’ ‘perform to empty houses, late.’ That won’t be Teicher’s fate.”—Publishers Weekly

“Teicher meticulously probes the intersections of writing poetry and living life. He can be lacerating...Teicher’s poems also obsessively chart a kind of epistemological and existential anxiety..."—Bookforum

“What can it mean To Keep Love Blurry — an infinitive phrase suggesting not only value but vigilance. In his second poetry collection, Craig Morgan Teicher demonstrates what is irreconcilable in our commonplace…Obviously, wise elders abound in this collection, but none will quite account for Teicher’s vigilant candor in the ways that he vitally enacts the “blurry.” Even in a collection that is rich with the past’s re-enactment, he admits that the most relevant memories, the most clarifying instances of forgotten dream, are most likely irretrievable, ‘locked away somewhere.’ Surprisingly, Teicher lets us feel the ways in which such a memory’s very irretrievability will offer him something more valuable than clarity…” - On the Seawall