Clearance Philosophy, by Miriam Moore-Keish

Poetry, chapbook, 44 pages, from Bottlecap Features. Clearance Philosophy is a collection of poems about big things, small things, and all the big things hiding in the small things. Moore-Keish balances the dark realities of Southern history with personal accounts of growing up in it, the complexity of faith and family with the importance of memory in connecting to them, and the gravity of change with the gravity of the unchanging. Clearance Philosophy, in its “important nonsense,” draws attention to the act of writing poetry, using the craft to disrupt, honor, and remind readers that “silent things can have poems too.” Rooted in place, time, and memory, these are poems of human connection. In her lighthearted and conversational tone, Moore-Keish grieves lost innocence. She reveres carrots and cherishes dust. The poems in Clearance Philosophy ache as much as they laugh. “This is a book of self-conscious tenderness, painted luxuriously in layers of boredom, inherited traits, humor, and