“In this collection of deeply felt poems—fine-tuned and beautifully rendered—Carroll Kearley constructs watches of great intricacy and accuracy whose hands point to the temper of the tragic times we call the twentieth century… At the beginning of The Armenian Watchmaker the poet promises to set no more fires. He spends the rest of the book setting fires. His fires leave no ashes, only insight and illumination. With the discordant sounds of the century in the background, images enter our consciousness and exit like fragments of a dream just as they coalesce into a nightmare that gives way itself to the recurring appearances of noble-spirited survivors who will continue to inhabit the reader’s mind....This archeology of “blackened souls” plows new fields and yields treasures of the ever ascending human spirit.”
—Demetrios Liappas, Director of Modern Greek Studies, Loyola Marymount University
“I cannot adequately say how much I am moved by the collection of poems The Armenian Watchmaker. Carroll Kearley’s sense of character, dramatic situation, place, command of language and syntax are marvelous beyond marvelous.”
—Katharine Free, Professor of Theatre Arts, Loyola Marymount University
“The Armenian Watchmaker is a rich journey through treasures of art and heart-wringing history, seamlessly woven into a compelling love story. Kearley magically takes on the voice of the Armenian, as a boy, as a young man whose legs are crushed by a train and finally as a sightless, aging watchmaker. Some poems are meditations, celebrations. Others are plaintive, prayer-like, painterly. Flawless transition from poem to poem seduces with ripe and illuminating lyricism.”
—Ellen Reich, author of The Gynecic Papers
Carroll C. Kearley, retired professor of philosophy, lives with his wife Tacui in Los Angeles. He was born in 1930 in a farmhouse on the Snake River Plain. His early education, grades 1-12 took place in two small towns, and in a one-room country school just up the road from his parents’ poverty-line farm. He was awarded a B.A. in English Literature from Santa Clara University, an M.A. in English Literature from Loyola Marymount University, and the Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame. His first collection of poetry is Deity-Alphabets (Tebot Bach, 2009).
