Description
There is grief, to be sure, in Patrick Daly's new poetry collection, especially associated with the madness of war and its aftermath. And horses, yes, along with many other animals, all with wisdom to offer. But most of all there is language, the love of it and the skillful use of it, as in the opening poem "Words" in which he wishes to learn the language of trees, "But the words of trees / are so large we cannot hear them." Perhaps not, but in Daly's poetry, we nevertheless can sense that wider world. Writing in the foreword to the book, J. David Cummings observes that "Empathy is the rich center of all the poems in this book," the "hidden alchemy" by which Daly works this wonder, such that in the end it is not grief that we take away from these poems, but hope.
Poetry. Literary Nonfiction.
Author Bio
For the past decade Patrick Daly has been working for a software start-ups, writing poetry on his lunch hours. His poem "Words" was a 2015 poem of the year in the New Statesman (London). He has published poetry in many other magazines and e-zines, most recently in Portside, Ekphrasis, and The Sand Hill Review, and poems of his have appeared recently in the anthologies Extreme Sonnets, The Place that Inhabits Us, A Bird Black as the Sun, Transfer One Hundredth Edition, and America, We Call Your Name. His poem "Tiananmen Square" received honorable mention in the Pushcart Prizes, and his chapbook "Playing with Fire" won the Abby Niebauer Memorial Prize. He has published articles and book reviews in The Times (London), the San Jose Mercury News, the Palo Alto Weekly, and The Montserrat Review. Nicholas Kristof published a portion of his poem "The War" in his column in The New York Times. He and his wife Charlotte Muse were the founders of Out of Our Minds, a prime-time poetry show still running on KKUP radio in Cupertino, California.
Author City: MENLO PARK, CA USA