Review
. . . the comedy . . . is almost always deceptive, a screen for filtering complex truths that reside beneath the surface of things. -- THE FLORIDA REVIEW, Summer 2000
Like all of our best poets, William Trowbridge has not stood still. He has continued to improve. -- PRAIRIE SCHOONER, forthcoming
This collection of impressively well-wrought poems is one in which many readers will recognize and better appreciate . . . their lives. -- BOOKLIST, February, 15, 2000
This is an entertaining and powerful collection. -- POETIC VOICES, August, 2000
Trowbridge is witty, engagingly applealing, with broad experience and unique ways of seeing. These poems show his admirable range . . . . -- THE ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, April 9, 2000
Like all of our best poets, William Trowbridge has not stood still. He has continued to improve. -- PRAIRIE SCHOONER, forthcoming
This collection of impressively well-wrought poems is one in which many readers will recognize and better appreciate . . . their lives. -- BOOKLIST, February, 15, 2000
This is an entertaining and powerful collection. -- POETIC VOICES, August, 2000
Trowbridge is witty, engagingly applealing, with broad experience and unique ways of seeing. These poems show his admirable range . . . . -- THE ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, April 9, 2000
From the Publisher
In his latest collection of poems, William Trowbridge explores the fascination Americans have with movies, how "flicks" allow us to temporarily forget our problems and, ironically, to forget that real conflicts are what make us human. The language he uses is the American language of pop culture: sports talk, movie talk, shoptalk, and cliches -- all are blended together into carefully crafted lines that are uniquely Trowbridge's. Readers will be delighted to follow each poem to its effectively understated end.
These poems capture both the eerie and the ordinary. Trowbridge's surreal family, the Glads, satirizes life in suburbia and reflects the often absurd margins of our urban lifestyle. By contrast, a group of poems revolving around a packing house in Omaha (Trowbridge worked there) reminds us of those darker places in our lives that exist just "across the street from the ledgers and lapels."
The variety of subjects Trowbridge works with is refreshing. Whether he is writing about Buster Keaton, Fred Astaire, June bugs, baseball, the Holocaust, Cadillacs, or old dogs, his eye is always focused on the turn of phrase that will catch us off guard. He teaches us to laugh at ourselves or perish under the weight of our everyday lives.
