Lines: poems

Tim Nolan's new collection charms us with its subtle blend of boyish nostalgia and cosmic reverie. He imbues such everyday activities as raking leaves (but in spring, when they resemble regrets), seeing a fox in the yard, with sweetness and significance, while also giving weighty themes such as warfare, Christianity, and "the meaning of life" a thoughtful personal twist. The very first poem sets the tone, as Nolan follows a fractured early-morning logic from a simple phrase, "The beginning of the beginning," which he likes, to the Cole Porter tune "Beguine the Beguine." By the end of the poem he's longing to rumba around the room, but is too embarrassed to do so, while also fearing that he's about to lose his mind—which might be the beginning of the end. Time and again in subsequent poems Nolan maintains an easy rapport between metaphysical musing and the common experiences that we all come to hold dear. One poem is devoted to the smell of watermelon, another to watching the freckles grow darker on his mother's skin as summer advances, at an age when he has not yet learned the word "freckles." With Lines Nolan has entered the company of Anselm Hollo, Louis Jenkins, and other poets who trust in their own native impressions and patterns of thought in making sense of the modern world, and reminding us of its latent beauty and mystery.   Tim Nolan was born in Minneapolis, graduated from the University of Minnesota with a B.A. in English, and from Columbia University in New York City with an M.F.A. in writing. Tim is an attorney in private practice in Minneapolis. His poems have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, The Nation, The New Republic, Ploughshares, and on The Writer's Almanac and American Life in Poetry. His three collections—The Sound of It, And Then, and The Field have all been published by New Rivers Press. He is the host of the series Readings by Writers at the University Club in St. Paul.   "Lines is a whimsical adventure into recollections of a boyhood long gone, ghosts that linger on the streets we know, through the phone lines we no longer use, our connections to our past and each other. Nolan is unafraid of the politics of the moment and employs a playful timelessness as he examines the problems of America. These poems are studies of everyday events, relationships that form our consciousness, and the nature of that changing consciousness across time." - Kao Kalia Yang "Tim Nolan's great humanity is evident in both his poems and his devotion to making poetry immediate and accessible. In Lines, his new collection, we are treated to observations both large—current politics, life in the time of Covid—and small, as when the poet recalls specific moments from childhood or observes his beloved cats. Firmly rooted in the northern Midwest, in mid-life, Nolan's poems work on the reader the way memory itself does, when moments from the past shimmer up to reveal the patient glimmers of wisdom that are the lucky prizes of growing older." - Alison McGhee "Tim Nolan wants his voice to 'pass through / Brick walls slip through the space / Under doors flow over the rocks under the bridge,' and so it does in these Lines. Like Whitman before him, Tim contains multitudes, but being from Minnesota, he's understated (Midwest Modest) in his claims and topics, which tend to be local and spontaneous, like Frank O'Hara's. He's recording his way of seeing the world from 'right in the middle of it,' with the poems coming so easily that 'Anywhere I look / There's a poem' about grandfather, the little cat, or the pandemic. Tim Nolan knows the power of words: 'They could do so much / And so quickly,' and he never forgets that he's talking to you, the dear reader: 'I don't / Know what I might say you don't / Either that binds us one to another / that's the whole deal between us.' And it's a pretty good deal!" - Joyce Sutphen