Overview

This is a classic by one of America's finest working-class writers...The Collected Poems brings together his 50 years of writing what is real from the heart with a fine true voice. It is a needed book.

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9781947504394

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"Timothy Russell's poetry alloys the grit of the Ohio Valley and the delicate brush strokes of Basho and Shiki, as only the white heat of a Weirton Steel blast furnace could do. Both lyric poet and ""Mad Dog,"" Tim was and is the essential voice of the region while never being confined by its boundaries. Tim is a hidden master come here into the light. Valerie Nieman, author of Leopard Lady: A Life in Verse The cumulative effect of reading Tim Russell's Collected Poems is simply staggering. No other poet sounds like Tim. He created a very distinct, recognizable voice apart from whatever was trending in the larger poetry world-humorous, precise, full of surprise and insight. Whether writing about the natural world or the human, Tim was always paying attention, seeing beneath the surfaces. This phenomenal collection brings renewed attention to his body of work and his contribution to American poetry. Jim Daniels, author of Gun/Shy: Poems"

In Plena Vita: The Full Life is aptly titled as it includes most of the poems Timothy Russell published in his life, along with remembrances by his wife and children and photographs of this extraordinary poet as husband, father, gardener, and steel mill worker. It is, indeed, a full life and the collected poems are now, as Russell writes in one poem, ""in a safe place."" This book is that place. Characterized by precise observation, careful attention, and both humor and tenderness, Russell's poems are absolutely original. The Latin titles he gave to most of his poems add a liturgical dimension to his work. Even the gritty mill poems have a sense of the holy within them. I am extremely grateful to have this book of poems and to know that new readers will discover a world here in a voice that is reliably intimate, spacious, and true. -Maggie Anderson, author of DEAR ALL The cumulative effect of reading Tim Russell's Collected Poems is simply staggering. No other poet sounds like Tim. He created a very distinct, recognizable voice apart from whatever was trending in the larger poetry world--humorous, precise, full of surprise and insight. Whether writing about the natural world or the human, Tim was always paying attention, seeing beneath the surfaces. This phenomenal collection brings renewed attention to his body of work and his contribution to American poetry. Jim Daniels, author of Gun/Shy: Poems There is discipline, spirit, no easy optimism, sensibility, heart in these poems. Gary Snyder To read Adversaria is to be in the presence of a lively and supple and various mind, as tough as it is American. Li Young Lee Russell, who works at Weirton Steel, knows how to pare language and image down to a crystal moment....The strength and straight-forwardness of these poems makes them some of the best statements on life not only in a steel mill but the small towns that surround it. Marianna Hofer

Author Information

Timothy Russell (1951-2021) was born and raised in the industrial Ohio Valley. He served in the military as a dog trainer in the early 1970s when he married Jodi (Dolan) Russell. He worked for 22 years at Weirton Steel Company as a millwright and boilermaker while attaining a BA at West Liberty State College and a Master's degree in creative writing from the University of Pittsburgh. He began writing in 1970s and published widely in small literary presses, chapbooks, and in his award-winning Adversaria book in 1993. He and Jodi parented four children with eight grandchildren while living along the Ohio River in Toronto, Ohio. Despite his recurring and debilitating illnesses and being forced to retire, he wrote prolifically and achieved fame as a working-class, nature, and haiku poet.

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