Overview

In his latest book A DAY IN THE REPUBLIC Tim Suermondt continues to show himself to be one of our most interesting poets. Suermondt doesn't have just one subject or one angle or one idea: like Whitman he contains multitudes and is not shy about showing it. The poet and novelist Charlie Smith has written that ""a writer is like a worker with a toolbox."" And few poets use what's in their literary toolbox better than Tim Suermondt in his new collection of poems A Day in the Republic. The singular and the cosmopolitan side-by-side as they explore and live in the neighborhood and the world: The night rides its moonlight cover/and the city and its inhabitants/are rolled up in its folds. Not to worry, /there's plenty of life still inside/starting with marigolds, hammers-shoes/and books that will take you anywhere. These poems teem with heart and brio, open to the celebratory in this often difficult and tragic world. A Day in the Republic helps explain as best it can in striking poems what it takes to make the world bearable and why anything is possible: Not everything is right, it never/is, but there's no stopping me now, /the world in a cap tagging along. Tim Suermondt has been called ""an erudite and entertaining poet"" a creator of some of the finest love poems. His new collection is brimming with human relationships, his beloved cities, history and literature, the everyday magical and disappointing occurrences, and his jump shot, still sublime in memory. A DAY IN THE REPUBLIC might make us also ready to repair anything the world keeps breaking.

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9781962847421

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Reviews

The speaker of Tim Suermondt's magical book of poems, A Day in the Republic, is an optimist. ""In my study I am working on a poem about irretrievable loss,"" he tells us, "" but I can't get it written, the poem becoming/more hopeful and gentle with every line."" I am so grateful for these poems which celebrate the beauty of a moon, doing nothing, and a magician pulling nothing out of his hat. -Faith Shearin, author of The Owl Question and Lost Language ""Obviously, this poem isn't about me,"" begins ""The Great Artist"", one of my favorite Tim Suermondt poems. ""Though of course it will be."" And now that he has a new book, A Day in the Republic, who am I to disagree? -Lloyd Schwartz, author of Who's on First? New and Selected poems Tim Suermondt's A Day in the Republic is comprised of brief meditations on the quotidian by a companionable and empathetic poet who embraces life with a bear hug. ""Short poems can be scattered/easily,"" he asserts, ""but cover more territory."" You'll find here wry humor mellowed with sweetness and throughout this collection a generous appreciation for his fellow creatures human and otherwise. Whether the subject is love for his wife, caring for an aged father, a homeless man on the street offering a ragged umbrella, or a tough veteran with a Purple heart and a Bronze Star who bawled for days when his wife left him, his touch is never sentimental or ponderous. ""A little girl by a statue half covered in grime/is dressed as an angel/her mother trying to fix/a wing that fell."" A diet of Suermondt poems doesn't make for heavy meals, but instead offers a menu of satisfying soufflés you'll be eager to sample, again and again. -Mark Pawlak, author of 'Away' Away

Author Information

Tim Suermondt's sixth full-length book of poems A Doughnut And The Great Beauty Of The World came out in 2023 from MadHat Press. He has published in Poetry, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Georgia Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Stand Magazine, Smartish Pace, Barrow Street, Amsterdam Review and Plume, among many others. He lives in Cambridge, MA, with his wife, the poet Pui Ying Wong.

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