Overview

In this new book of poems, Sean McDowell seeks fresh ways of seeing during a season of losses. His habits of paying attention here probe the imaginative lives of others, including animals and various historical figures. Several poems on Renaissance scientists--Galileo, Kepler, and Nicolas Steno--chase moments of inspiration and insight, while others on the miracles of Saint Francis of Paola marvel at mysteries. Elsewhere, the blowing of wind through alder leaves, the slaughter of a duck, the felling of a great oak, the purge of books from office shelves, and the death of a junco provide glances at larger sorrows people face in their collective lives. But consolation comes in verse letters to lost and distant friends, advice poems, expressions of gratitude, and closely held moments of beauty, all to find some new plot of peace.

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Reviews

""James Merrill once wrote, 'To be twenty and a poet is to be twenty. To be forty and a poet is to be a poet.' Sean McDowell's first book, Learning to Jump, established him as a poet of unusual maturity. Galileo's Spyglass builds impressively on this achievement. As with his poem on Kepler's snowflake, these are lyrics of exceptional beauty, carefully constructed, everywhere alert to what Robert Herrick memorably called 'Times-transhifting.'"" -Jonathan F. S. Post, author of Elizabeth Bishop: A Very Short Introduction ""McDowell's title poem narrating Galileo's labors to perfect the lenses that 'magnified his vision twenty, thirty / times normal sight' and allow him to watch 'the endless, unfolding, comingling light, ' is the controlling metaphor for McDowell's own honing a craft that allows him to appreciate the radiant significance inherent in quotidian experience. I am particularly taken with his several poems of loss that manifest what Tagore calls 'the joy that sits still with its tears on the open red lotus of pain.'"" -Raymond-Jean Frontain, author of Reclaiming the Sacred: The Bible in Gay and Lesbian Culture ""It's rare for the same person to write an endorsement for an author, but it shouldn't be. If you go to a favorite restaurant and get a new and lovely dish, don't you want to share the news, even if you've badgered your friends before? And that's how it is with this new book by Sean McDowell, full of tender and reluctant elegies for friends and family ('Too many/old friends gone, or gone away'), ruminations on the fragile existence of animals and birds. It's a book that stresses gratitude, celebration, and a deliberate tenacity to live this life as well as possible. In one poem, he calls his uncle's recipe for tomato gravy a 'gift, comfort and remedy.' So are these poems."" -Samuel Green, author of Disturbing the Light ""Sean McDowell's Galileo's Spyglass is a beautiful book with his delicate, dreamy watercolor paintings carefully scattered like leaves through the volume, deepening the meaning of adjacent poems. Who knew so many colors could be present in small paintings, reduced to blacks, greys, and whites. Intellect, knowledge, craft, and heart are in this book. His poems make present the past. Some are subtly connected. The poem about Galileo making his 'spyglass' is followed by Sean imagining the thoughts of the housemaid looking out the window, standing behind the woman writing a letter in Vermeer's famous painting. There are many poems about personal loss, mourning and memorializing beloved friends who have passed yet remain very present in these poems. Sean McDowell's beautifully crafted poems have powerful endings that pack an emotional punch that make you want to return to them, again and again."" -Achsah Guibbory, Professor of English, Barnard College ""James Merrill once wrote, 'To be twenty and a poet is to be twenty. To be forty and a poet is to be a poet.' Sean McDowell's first book, Learning to Jump, established him as a poet of unusual maturity. Galileo's Spyglass builds impressively on this achievement. As with his poem on Kepler's snowflake, these are lyrics of exceptional beauty, carefully constructed, everywhere alert to what Robert Herrick memorably called 'Times-transhifting.'"" --Jonathan F. S. Post, author of Elizabeth Bishop: A Very Short Introduction ""McDowell's title poem narrating Galileo's labors to perfect the lenses that 'magnified his vision twenty, thirty / times normal sight' and allow him to watch 'the endless, unfolding, comingling light, ' is the controlling metaphor for McDowell's own honing a craft that allows him to appreciate the radiant significance inherent in quotidian experience. I am particularly taken with his several poems of loss that manifest what Tagore calls 'the joy that sits still with its tears on the open red lotus of pain.'"" --Raymond-Jean Frontain, author of Reclaiming the Sacred: The Bible in Gay and Lesbian Culture ""It's rare for the same person to write an endorsement for an author, but it shouldn't be. If you go to a favorite restaurant and get a new and lovely dish, don't you want to share the news, even if you've badgered your friends before? And that's how it is with this new book by Sean McDowell, full of tender and reluctant elegies for friends and family ('Too many/old friends gone, or gone away'), ruminations on the fragile existence of animals and birds. It's a book that stresses gratitude, celebration, and a deliberate tenacity to live this life as well as possible. In one poem, he calls his uncle's recipe for tomato gravy a 'gift, comfort and remedy.' So are these poems."" --Samuel Green, author of Disturbing the Light ""Sean McDowell's Galileo's Spyglass is a beautiful book with his delicate, dreamy watercolor paintings carefully scattered like leaves through the volume, deepening the meaning of adjacent poems. Who knew so many colors could be present in small paintings, reduced to blacks, greys, and whites. Intellect, knowledge, craft, and heart are in this book. His poems make present the past. Some are subtly connected. The poem about Galileo making his 'spyglass' is followed by Sean imagining the thoughts of the housemaid looking out the window, standing behind the woman writing a letter in Vermeer's famous painting. There are many poems about personal loss, mourning and memorializing beloved friends who have passed yet remain very present in these poems. Sean McDowell's beautifully crafted poems have powerful endings that pack an emotional punch that make you want to return to them, again and again."" --Achsah Guibbory, Professor of English, Barnard College ""What does one see through Galileo's Spyglass? The collection reaches deep down inside as much as it looks out to the stars and moon--or magnifies the beauty of the tiniest grain of dust or snow. It tells us of all sorts of losses, the deaths of loved ones or of a bird on Election Day, discarded books, disappointments and broken ties, neglect, oblivion and fear. But it looks at them in the face. McDowell's voice never gives into self-complacency or self-pity; it is fueled by a genuine generosity that makes us commune with everything that breathes and lives, however close or remote, in time or in space. 'Gift, comfort, and remedy' are to be found in the simple gestures and objects of everyday life, in shared cooking and handiwork that thre

Author Information

Sean McDowell is Professor of English at Seattle University. He is the author most recently of Learning to Jump (2023) and Metaphysical Shadows: The Persistence of Donne, Herbert, Vaughan, and Marvell in Contemporary Poetry (2022).

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