“Solace” is the opening poem of Seth Brady Tucker’s new collection, The Cruelty Virtues released by 3: A Taos Press. This is Tucker’s third poetry collection. In “Solace,” a father observes his children riding skateboards on a half pipe while the speaker views from above behind glass: A man parks his truck sideways …
OPENINGS by Rae Cline
“Solace” is the opening poem of Seth Brady Tucker’s new collection, The Cruelty Virtues released by 3: A Taos Press. This is Tucker’s third poetry collection. In “Solace,” a father observes his children riding skateboards on a half pipe while the speaker views from above behind glass:
A man parks his truck sideways
on the top of the structure, kids
spill out on skateboards, the man
is a father & these children scream
in delight & another man looks up
from his warm beer, searching; the sun
is sideways across the water & a crimson duck
flitters across the bright skyline & disappears
&Trump is still President & somewhere a child
is in a cellar just as Ursula K. Le Guin warned us
they would be — & that we must know this child’s
suffering to know joy….
The “child” is from “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin. The Omelas are a blessed people living in a world free of guns and laws and stock markets because their society is so perfect except for the child who sits naked and in excrement, locked in a broom closet deep below the city. Sometimes, Omelas will descend and open the door of the broom closet and kick the child or simply observe the child then return to the surface, leaving the child to rot. Some of the Omelas leave.
The speaker in “Solace” reminds us that we are, in fact, Omelas, not the elegant kind but a gross transfiguration of the Second Amendment with our guns and campus shootings. This poem hits me hard each time I read it. Like so many teachers, I’ve seen the terror in my students’ eyes when another school shooting hits another campus and the children wonder will we be next? And the terror continues in my students’ eyes when another sexual predator hits another young body and the children wonder will we be next?
Like the speaker of “Solace,” I see the guns and the predations and they do, indeed, seem to outnumber us all. Yes. It is all consuming in the White House and Epstein files and another campus shooting this week, these Omelas with their children locked in broom closets, Pam Bondi on parade in the House of Representatives, descending to the broom closet, kicking the girls again and again.
The few Omelas who walk away, the Melinda Gates, lets say, are not enough, of course. It’s not enough to walk away. There is no solace in silence. But this is the way of it, it seems. The speaker of the poem does allow us one warmth in the love of a single father.
I am equally captivated and enraged with this poem by Seth Tucker Brady. The speaker does not only form tension in the line work but also in the chest. I have anger and tension in my chest each time I read it, especially these lines: “&Trump is still President & somewhere a child/is in a cellar just as Ursula K. Le Guin warned us/they would be — & that we must know this child’s/suffering to know joy….” It is a love-hate response you have with brilliant words that make you remember what you want so desperately to forget.
Thank you, Tucker, for the speaker’s perch as they look down upon the father and his children on the half pipe. This distance is a gift. My heart might break entirely without it.
The Cruelty Virtues is highly recommended.
About Author
Seth Brady Tucker’s newest book, The Cruelty Virtues was published in 2025 by 3:A Taos Press. His second book, (We Deserve the Gods We Ask For) won the Gival Press Poetry Award and went on to win the Eric Hoffer Book Award. His first book, (Mormon Boy) won the 2011 Elixir Press Editor’s Poetry Prize, and was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. His fiction, essays, and poetry have also won a number of individual writing awards including the Shenandoah Bevel Summers Fiction Prize and the Literal Latte Short Fiction Award. among others. His recent work appears in such magazines and journals as Copper Nickel, Los Angeles Review, Driftwood, Iowa Review, December, Pleiades, Shenandoah, Poetry Northwest, Birmingham Poetry Review, Chattahoochee Review, and many others. Read more at sethbradytucker.ink.
About Publisher
3: A Taos Press is an independent publisher committed to fostering and honoring the work of writers of all cultures. We make these promises to our authors: We will treat each writer with honesty, respect, and creative encouragement. We will ensure that each book represents the ideals of its author in an artful and distinct way. We will bring each manuscript to publication in a thoughtful manner as a work to be read once—and then again. Read more at 3taospress.com.
About Openings
Openings is a weekly recommendations column by Rae Cline, published at Eckleburg. Openings features literary musings, culture and book recommendations, focusing on beautiful books with memorable openings, where readers meet intriguing characters, settings and moments in which the mind can explore what is, what might be and how this opens the reader’s imagination. Read more on Instagram @raeclineauthor and at the new raecline.substack, where you can submit recent titles of adult literary fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry for consideration.
