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 cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
University of Iowa Press, 2017 Paper: 978-1-60938-504-0 eISBN: 978-1-60938-505-7
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 cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE