Soliloquies in a Country of Memory: The Quiet Magnificence of
Michael Ryle’s Braeland Poems
Michael Ryle’s The Braeland Poems: Soliloquies reads like an off-Broadway production held in the theater of the soul. Twenty dramatic monologues — plus four stunning voices from biblical women — form a mosaic of desire, shame, revelation, and empathy. Published by Westbrae Literary Group, this inaugural volume in the Braeland trilogy places Ryle firmly in the tradition of persona poetry — but the intimacy, theatricality, and humanity of his speakers elevate this book far beyond mere literary exercise.
As the title implies, these are soliloquies — confessions not necessarily meant for others, yet overheard in ways that feel both sacred and uncomfortably familiar. The voices are vivid and varied: a jazz musician balancing lust and music, a betrayed man plotting vengeance, an AA member fumbling toward redemption, a newt in a shrinking pond, a child scarred by early shame. Ryle is a dramatist in verse, and Soliloquies is a masterclass in character, emotion, and restraint.
Persona as Revelation: The Art of the Monologue
The power of Ryle’s poetry lies in its ability to hold contradictions without flinching. His narrators — flawed, haunted, often morally compromised — speak with unfiltered honesty. In the stunning second poem, a woman named Linda shares in an AA meeting:
"The shit was so good at covering up / the pain, I didn’t notice it became / the pain, bit by bit, usurping me..."
We’ve all met Linda. Or we’ve been her. She’s real — raw, confused, funny, trying. Ryle doesn’t romanticize his speakers, nor does he shame them. Instead, he listens. He lets them speak for themselves.
The Music of Voice, the Weight of Silence
Some of the strongest soliloquies in this collection feel like plays condensed to their essence. The jazz player in poem iii evokes Miles Davis and Chet Baker while lusting after a woman in the audience:
"Get to the bridge, / Db’s a lyrical key, / get lyrical, / woo her with the horn..."
Elsewhere, we enter the paranoid imagination of a man obsessing over revenge (poem iv), the silent rupture of a love discovered too late (poem v), and the existential reflections of a psychiatric patient clutching a newspaper like a holy relic (poem vi).
Each voice feels earned, distinct, and fully inhabited — aided by Ryle’s rhythmic blank verse and theatrical instincts. These are not poems that posture; they reveal. And in the gaps between their words, Ryle’s compassion is quietly thunderous.
The Four Women: Reclaiming the Margins
The book concludes with four dramatic monologues spoken by Old Testament women: Abigail, Michal, Bathsheba, and Abishag. These are not the docile or symbolic versions we find in scripture or Sunday School. Ryle gives them back their agency, complexity, and interiority. Abigail is sharp and observant. Bathsheba defends her story. Abishag, the most tender and haunting of the four, delivers perhaps the book’s quietest heartbreak.
These final poems reframe the book's themes of longing, power, shame, and truth through a timeless lens. They also preview the broader project of the Braeland cycle — a poetic mythology rooted in both personal memory and collective reimagining.
Blank Verse as Worn Leather: Ryle’s Style
A brief epigraph near the beginning offers a sly insight:
"Blank verse, / it hardly seems / like verse at all sometimes, / more like a favorite worn-out pair / of shoes."
Indeed, Ryle’s lines carry the quiet confidence of someone who’s walked long distances in the shoes of others. His iambic pentameter breathes naturally, unobtrusively — never calling attention to itself but always supporting the speaker’s rhythms.
This subtle music is what makes Soliloquies feel timeless. It is contemporary in subject but Shakespearean in technique. And that combination — modern confession framed in classic form — gives the poems both gravity and grace.
A Place Called Braeland
This is only the beginning. Ryle’s Braeland is not just a setting or a conceit — it’s a universe. A world of flawed people trying to live, love, and make sense of themselves in the ruins and rituals of daily life. Future volumes will expand the vision: *Cinquains* and *Lyrics* promise different forms and new dimensions.
But for now, we have Soliloquies — and that is more than enough. It is a deeply humane, deeply literary book. It asks us to listen. To recognize ourselves. To remember that everyone, no matter how wounded or lost, is speaking — if only someone will hear them.
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