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Walsh's Parallel Press poetry chapbook evokes the quiet outdoors of the upper Midwest
By Gabriel Miller
Library Communications
Posted 9/20/2004
MADISON, Wis. -- In Wild Apples, the latest poetry chapbook released by the Parallel Press, author Timothy Walsh takes readers from the minute seedlings of the garden through the epic grandeur of grown cedars, calling forth the seasonal experience of living in the upper midwest. The collection of poems draws on the timeless mysteries of nature as a backdrop for the more human questions of birth, mortality and relationships.
"In my poems, I try to see beyond the mask of ordinariness that disguises the everyday miracles and mysteries that surround us. I tend to find or discover unsuspected significance in the commonplace and everyday rather than search out subjects in the exotic or unfamiliar. Poems are a way of seeing, a lens crafted and created for others to look through," Walsh says.
The sensuality of Wild Apples is reflected in Walsh's meticulous attention to the details of the forest: the sounds of wind, the color of waterfowl, and the scent of pine. In "The Marsh in Winter," he writes, "If you stand and listen / you will hear the voice. / Reeds sharp as rapiers rasp the wind. / Frost creaks in the trees. / Sunlight, ice-bright, falls from the sky."
The twenty-five poem collection was published as a chapbook, a small format work usually reserved for poetry and essays that employs a straight-forward design. Wild Apples is the 33rd chapbook published by the Parallel Press, an imprint of the UW–Madison Libraries.
Walsh has spent the last 20 years living in Madison, Wisconsin. When he's not writing, he spends his time on the water--sailing, canoeing, and kayaking. His poems and short stories have appears in many publications, including The Midwest Quarterly, Soundings East, Rivendell, Wisconsin Academy Review, Chiron Review, Free Verse, and West Wind Review. Walsh won the "Grand Prize" in the 2004 Atlanta Review International Poetry Competition and was a finalist for the Ann Stafford Poetry Prize. Two of his short stories have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes. His is also the author of a book of literary criticism, The Dark Matter of Words: Absence, Unknowing, and Emptiness in Literature.
Wild Apples and other Parallel Press chapbooks may be purchased for $10 each or $50 for six. For more information, visit: http://parallelpress.library.wisc.edu/chapbooks/poetry/.
Orders may be sent to:
The Parallel Press
372 Memorial Library
728 State Street
Madison, WI 53706
Phone: (608) 262-2600
E-mail: parallelpress@library.wisc.edu.
The opening poem, "Words from Wine", from Wild Apples:
Was it from a wine press, then,
that all this flows?
That rickety wine press Gutenberg rigged
into a printing press,
the movable type interchangeable as grapes?
Do we owe to wine, then,
these great harvests of words
pressed into vast yields of books,
portable as bottles,
precious as spring water flowing through
a thirsty land?
Do we owe it all to the vine
that we shelve our books in libraries
as we cellar our wine in waiting rows,
putting up words and wine against our future need?
Was it the wine press, after all, that has made us
into such drunkards of the word
that we imbibe by the hour from folded sheets
of paper,
turning pages like doors that open up
fathomless spaces within ourselves?
