Reconciliation

In poems that are both world-weary yet suffused with a moral force, Adam Getty gives us the perspective of the common man, but gives it in an uncommon voice – a voice of quiet, contemplative directness tinged with the fierce integrity of one who has lived the experience.

Reconciliation, Adam Getty’s first book-length collection of poems, is a work of astounding maturity and depth. In poems of uncompromising honesty and gritty realism, he captures the experiences of hardworking industrial labourers, poor families and the homeless, and grapples not only with the physical toll of such lives but also with the internal conflicts that arise under such demanding conditions. Getty’s vision does not end at the realism of the Hot Mill and the slaughterhouse – there is a visionary quality to these tough, visceral poems that intimates a staunchly held belief in something more than the physical trials one must endure through life. In the tradition of People’s Poetry, but with an added mystical dimension impressively realized, Adam Getty renders in poems both stark and vivid the human spirit that rises above, and sometimes falls beneath, the weight of life’s circumstances.