Beautiful language choice by Welch. I found myself reading and rereading poems as I made my way through the book, often going back to the more memorable ones.

I confess that Odd Bloom from Space by Timothy Welch didn’t wow me as a collection, though I’m always, with poetry much more so than any of the genres I review, hesitant to move from that knowledge to any sort of recommendation, as poetry more than the other writing forms I’d say is so subjective in one’s response. So if these poems didn’t particularly move me, if the language didn’t strike me or intrigue me, that’s not to say someone else won’t find just the opposite. That said, if the collection didn’t work for me as a whole, I did find several passages or lines, images or situations, that did linger in my mind. One such example comes from “Nose of Least Comparison,” which begins with:
“I have a nose the Greeks might call their own . . . /a great gnomon leaning in the sun . . .
This is my grandfather’s nose —/Who came from Greece during the Second World War.

The poem begins mundanely enough—the easy familiarity of seeing our ancestors in our own facial features, but then moves in a startling direction when we’re told that grandfather was “Unable to carry out his mother’s decree/to kill his unmarried sister who went/with the postal clerk, got pregnant.” We move back and forth between these two poles, and then come full circle to “This is my grandfather’s nose” before learning what happened when the speaker’s grandfather found his sister and her new child—a situation that like the poem combines the familiar and the horrific.

The ever-present past rises again as a theme in “Seal Beach,” a beautiful piece of nostalgia that through the old re-built pier asks the question, “on what do we prop our lives and what if it can’t hold?” Not everything weighs so heavily, though, as Welch shows at times a nice touch with the light and personal, as when one speaker notes, “I like it when the singer is indecipherable/so it’s easier to sing along,” the sort of domestic observation we can all relate to.

I would have liked more such lines—either the heavy or the light—and there were others, but not enough for the collection to win me over fully. But as I always note with poetry, there are always pieces—entire poems or single lines—that make most poetry collection worth picking up to read if not buy. And that hold true here as well

"if a truth is ever told then no one can ever leave."

i always find it difficult to review poetry because often with poems, it either hits you or it doesn't, and you're never entirely sure why you responded in the way you did. poetry is possibly the most subjective of all literature. is it worth writing a review at all?

but i shall attempt. mostly because i got this from netgalley and you're supposed to review things you got from there.

there were a couple of nice lines scattered throughout this anthology, such as the aforementioned one, but overall i found the writing lacklustre, although that's probably just personal taste; i can be rather picky when it comes to modern poetry. finally, i get that the greek references were supposed to be postmodernist allusions, but to be honest it just felt to me like... doing it for the sake of it, or because he's got greek heritage. it didn't really have much of a poetical effect for me.

If we aren't victims of our kind hearts then
our stupid lives are sad


Odd Bloom Seen from Space by Timothy Daniel Welch is the Iowa Poetry Prize winner for 2016. 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.

An odd bloom was the description used by Frank Culbertson to describe the debris cloud he saw when looking down on Manhatten from the International Space Station on 9/11/2001. The title poem is tucked away in the middle of the collection and the poet reflects on the "odd blooms" in his own life. The collection takes an autobiographical tone and the reader can see the "odd blooms" throughout the poet's life. These odd blooms are moments captured when something remarkable happens that one is not sure how to process without more information or time or just some little bit of information or experience that sticks with one for a lifetime. One odd bloom could have been Bolero. The poet titles the second section, and a poem, after the movie or at least what that movie meant to him as he remembers his illicit viewing of the movie and its influence later in life.

The poet looks back at life and the people in it from memories of an old girlfriend who worked at a 1950s themed diner to an eccentric friend named Frank. There is a merging of old Greek gods and the Christian one mingling is well seen in "To Laura -- A Virgin Unwed." The poet also dates himself in his work with not only Bolero but Michael Jackson's Thriller. "Owls," a more disturbing piece, makes the connection with the past and current:

Owls and their Michael Jackson
hooting in the trees, eyes

snow-burned with light, predators of the very
small, and fluttering like
Michael Jackson in his castle for children—

Welsh captures a nostalgic feeling for the past and things in the past that changed him or managed to stick with him through life -- Family, friends, events, tradition, and even pop culture. In a longer poem "Working for My Father" ties the ancient, the near past, family, and what we see together nearly perfectly. A well-done work deserving of the Iowa Poetry Prize.

Thank you to Netgalley, University of Iowa Press, and Timothy Daniel Welch for this for-an-honest review early ARC!

--
"I am no authority on horizons,
the beginning or the end"

In the long run, I truly wanted to love this book more than I ended up loving it. I was quite excited to sink my teeth into a second book that was a winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize.

Sadly, I constantly found myself putting this book down, or changing it out to read other books, text and audio. It is incredibly erudite and the author has an amazing vocabulary, but I didn't find myself feeling his words rise off the page or kindle anything to answer inside of me to his stories. I will be keeping this author and poet on my watch list, but this volume wasn't to my taste.