Time is slippery. At Some Point openly acknowledges this while exploring the intersections between past and present, childhood and adulthood, midlife and mortality. Joyously and solemnly tugging on the threads that connect us-to life, to the planet, to each other-David O'Connell finds meaning in the small things: vacation photos, middle school band concerts, and Halloween decorations. An earworm, a sudden memory, the arrival of a fox in the neighborhood, even camaraderie among other patients awaiting colonoscopies-all are grist for O'Connell's ability to view the world simultaneously anew and as it once appeared. Wistfully admiring his daughter's awareness of how the pandemic has turned snow days into remote teaching days, he observes "thirteen winters, / I'm finding, is enough to become wise." From the quotidian to the profound, this is a collection that hovers around your consciousness, reshaping your own vision and insight.
David O'Connell's previous poetry collections include Our Best Defense and the chapbook A Better Way to Fall. His work has appeared in New Ohio Review, Ploughshares, Cincinnati Review, Southern Poetry Review, and North American Review, among other journals. O'Connell lives in Rhode Island with his wife, the poet Julie Danho, and their daughter. His work can be found at davidoconnellpoet.com.
I. Late at Night, I Watch The Blue Planet We're Thinking of the Black Hole at the Center of the Galaxy Fresh Air I'm Happy Because My Daughter Is Sad Intervale Cemetery Period Piece Frank O'Hara The Physician I'm Calling 911! Hunt You Must Act as Though You'll Live In Spring Let's Talk About the Weather II. Watching My Wife Parasail The Yard Is Full of Light I Was Startled It Was Death We Rush to See Their Movies After The Forecast Calls for Snow My Friend Comes Back This Is How It Happens In College We Were Assigned "The Dead" In Case You Were Wondering Watching My Daughter's Tap Recital The Past Isn't What It Was When It Was The Rational Animal You Were My First Fox Cathedral Ledge III. Minor Planets of the Inner Solar System Oh My Goodness, Here Goes Your Body Procedure Avalanche As If There Were Lessons How to Tell the One About Fatherhood This Time Emitter I Read the Dead are Returning The World As It Is Encore All Summer, the Rain Love Song Starter Home When I Hear It's a Buyer's Market The Elegant Universe Acknowledgments Notes
"Plain-spoken, warm, and affectionate poems give way to deeper observation as O'Connell turns a wry eye on finitude and mortality. These poems never leave us behind, embracing a world in which even a 'lummox' (like us) can be 'gobsmacked' by 'so many choices' that 'the whole universe seemed possible.' This is a capacious and big-hearted book." - Ronald Wallace
