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BUY FROM PUBLISHER Available as an ebook at: Amazon Kindle Apple iBooks Barnes & Noble Nook eBooks Corp. Google Play Kobo	Odd Bloom Seen from Space by Timothy Daniel Welch University of Iowa Press, 2017 Paper: 978-1-60938-504-0 \| eISBN: 978-1-60938-505-7 Library of Congress Classification PS3623.E4637A6 2017 Dewey Decimal Classification 811.6 ABOUT THIS BOOK \| AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY \| REVIEWS \| TOC \| REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE ABOUT THIS BOOK These poems speak an odd nostalgia for what turns on, in, and alongside the world. A tragedy of loss, a miracle of eroticism, or a comedy of road kill, Odd Bloom Seen from Space looks at the self amid the ashes of fleeting exultation and uncertainty. The speaker tells stories with wild candor on matters of heroic inadequacy while searching through his obsessive questions for greater meaning. But it’s in the act of discovery, through the hero’s immediate ancestry that Welch’s debut collection confronts big questions about family, music, art, and memory. Like a contemporary Diogenes who pursues meaning one small gesture at a time, Welch comes to learn truth is a “brutal commerce,” beauty is “white legs / upon which she shed her childhood,” time is “Michael Jackson / hooting in the trees,” and “Love is gradual, a bottle / by sips, a bottle / poured onto the floor.” There is wisdom to be gained from these inventive pursuits, but in the end it’s not what is said, but how it’s said with terse rhetoric, deep imagery, and surprising humor that makes Odd Bloom Seen from Space such a gorgeous, original, and baffling collection. AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY TIMOTHY DANIEL WELCH’s poetry may be found in journals such as Rattle, Arts & Letters, Best New Poets, Green Mountains Review Online, and elsewhere. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida. REVIEWS “In these poems, Welch is an attentive watcher who has ‘lived most of my life alone.’ From the little distance he cultivates, he manages a detailed view of the big picture. He is sometimes at the seashore, where he can observe children at play, seals ‘lifting their backs / upon the water,’ and wonders, ‘is there a story to each wave that crosses the sea?’ He looks to the distant shores of Greece, both for its timeless myths that are the roots of Western thought, and perhaps for more personal connections. This is classical poetry set in our time, with room for ‘Owls and their Michael Jackson / hooting in the trees’ and ‘reading Anna Karenina / on a Kindle.’ The ‘odd bloom’ of the title is an astronaut’s vision of the towers collapsing on 9/11, though Welch sees it ‘peripherally, which is what this is, some side-line / reflection’; history seems to happen to other people, in other places, affording Welch his detached viewpoint from which a kind of unbiased truth might be reported. Finally, for all its subtle sarcasms, this is a deeply earnest book, one sensitive soul’s reckoning with a troubled age.” — Craig Morgan Teicher, judge, Iowa Poetry Prize “In language gemlike, shining, Timothy Daniel Welch invokes the labors of Hercules, an odd bloom seen from space, a mother’s death, fishing, snow, and an ode to a nose, to embrace the vagaries of memory and the mysteries of time and the universe, in poems that continually seduce and surprise. ‘Imagine a book of poems catching fire in the afternoon,’ and you will know this book of marvels, this marvel of a book.” — Ronald Wallace, author, For Dear Life “His work is at once cubist and confessional, aching and wry. Welch’s point-of-view, however eccentric, is an altogether welcome one.” — Publishers Weekly TABLE OF CONTENTS Contents 1. On the Isle of Erytheia Nose of Least Comparison Tell the Truth But Leave Immediately After The Children Seal Beach Parts of a Feather For my colleague, I have an interest— Slobs of the Ineffable Go to Evensong The Odd Bloom of Sept. 11, Seen from Space Containment Outside Los Banos, California 2. Bolero These Arrow-Smitten Stymphalian Birds To Laura, a Virgin-Unwed Owls “I don’t want to die on a listserv” Retractable by Design Portraits at the Funeral Silver Self-Portrait of a Sister, Cubist-Style People Are Taking Advantage of It The Hot Siberians Working for My Father The Park Below We Lost the Avant-Garde to Mass Culture Bolero Blazon for Our Time When She’s Writing Carried by a Bee The Double Life of Veronique The Snow People REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE If you are a student who has a disability that prevents you from using this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you with an electronic file for alternative access. Please have the disability coordinator at your school fill out this form. It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled. See other books on: American \| Poetry \| Space See other titles from University of Iowa Press

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REVIEWS

“In these poems, Welch is an attentive watcher who has ‘lived most of my life alone.’ From the little distance he cultivates, he manages a detailed view of the big picture. He is sometimes at the seashore, where he can observe children at play, seals ‘lifting their backs / upon the water,’ and wonders, ‘is there a story to each wave that crosses the sea?’ He looks to the distant shores of Greece, both for its timeless myths that are the roots of Western thought, and perhaps for more personal connections. This is classical poetry set in our time, with room for ‘Owls and their Michael Jackson / hooting in the trees’ and ‘reading Anna Karenina / on a Kindle.’ The ‘odd bloom’ of the title is an astronaut’s vision of the towers collapsing on 9/11, though Welch sees it ‘peripherally, which is what this is, some side-line / reflection’; history seems to happen to other people, in other places, affording Welch his detached viewpoint from which a kind of unbiased truth might be reported. Finally, for all its subtle sarcasms, this is a deeply earnest book, one sensitive soul’s reckoning with a troubled age.”

— Craig Morgan Teicher, judge, Iowa Poetry Prize

“In language gemlike, shining, Timothy Daniel Welch invokes the labors of Hercules, an odd bloom seen from space, a mother’s death, fishing, snow, and an ode to a nose, to embrace the vagaries of memory and the mysteries of time and the universe, in poems that continually seduce and surprise. ‘Imagine a book of poems catching fire in the afternoon,’ and you will know this book of marvels, this marvel of a book.”

— Ronald Wallace, author, For Dear Life

“His work is at once cubist and confessional, aching and wry. Welch’s point-of-view, however eccentric, is an altogether welcome one.”

— Publishers Weekly