A Cluster of Noisy Planets
Charles Rafferty’s latest collection of prose poems turns philosophical. In A Cluster of Noisy Planets, Rafferty captures the rhythms and patterns of life as a lover, father, and poet, distilling each moment to its essence and grounding them collectively in the wider perspective of a changing world, the constant turning of the stars and the changing seasons of the New England countryside. With a knowing nod to the passage of time—day to day, year to year, epoch to epoch—these lyrical poems form a record of the profound, ephemeral joys, losses, and echoes of commonplace moments.
Charles Rafferty is the author of 14 poetry books and chapbooks, most recently The Smoke of Horses (BOA Editions, 2017), Something an Atheist Might Bring Up at a Cocktail Party (Mayapple Press, 2018), and The Problem With Abundance (Grayson Books, 2019). His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, O, Oprah Magazine, The Southern Review, Gettysburg Review, Rhino, Prairie Schooner, and Ploughshares. His stories have been collected in Saturday Night at Magellan’s (Fomite Press, 2013) and Somebody Who Knows Somebody (Gold Wake Press, 2021). He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism. Currently, he co-directs the MFA program at Albertus Magnus College and teaches in the Westport Writers’ Workshop. He lives in Sandy Hook, CT.
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