Things I Didn't Know I Loved

Tim Nolan's new collection reacquaints us with his quizzical perspective on the world of day-to-day events and ideas. The poems twist and turn through reveries devoted to cars passing on the freeway, a pair of blue socks, room service, Abraham Lincoln, or an album of wedding photos. In several poems an aura of nostalgia is present which is less a yearning for past times than a questioning reappraisal of what was really going on back then. In one poem, the narrator describes himself deftly as a "vague cousin" of the happy six-year-old boy he once was. In another he realizes suddenly that the Mississippi River has always been there, a part of his life. He bends the concept of "the thing in itself" entirely out of shape while perhaps exposing more of the truth about it than we're likely to find in German philosophy. These poems are full of whimsy and insight, the gravity of responsibility and the "lightness of the self." They're refreshing in their directness yet riddled with unexpected corners of speculation, nuance, and insight to life's most precious moments.