The Somnambulist and the Good Life

The heart beats. The open heart knows
what has gone before, what harms,
what helps. The hurt heart turns
inward, then out, and without
ignoring anything
applauds.

The poems in The Somnambulist and the Good Life, David Cavanagh’s fifth book, probe what it means to be attentive in this life, the pain and beauty of living with open eyes and heart. They consider the dangers of sleepwalking through existence, as well as the mysterious power of what lies below the surface of awareness. Dealing with relationships, the environment, gun violence, dying, birds’ flight, musical earworms and more, these poems explore with precision and clarity the urgent need for an engaged thoughtfulness if “the good life” is to be anything more than a sad irony.

“This is the poetry of a man with an eye for the smallest of things and their tragedy. Or their joy. Or their divinity — and all of the above. I want to write out all the images in this work that changed my own sight, but that would be telling. For the beauty of this writing is the way that Cavanagh lets his readers see each poem’s discovery with the corners of their own eyes. It’s a subtle art, and rare, and through this book’s pervasive figure of the sleepwalker, this is a poet who leads us to understand that, set to words, every poem is the private truth of a dream.”
Richard Harrison, author of On Not Losing My Father’s Ashes in the Flood, winner of Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry