Review
Contemporary American poetry is much maligned these days by commentators who disparage its unwillingness to take on political themes or to protest the status quo. What is most gratifying about Trowbridges work is that more often than not the poems are about such things but not overtly, not with the raised voice and fist. These poems are a plain-spoken affirmative to the question: Can poetry matter? -- The Florida Review, Russ Kesler, vol. 21, No. 1
Geographically and emotionally, William Trowbridge sends out his brainy, riveting poems from the center. He keeps his ego in check, his eye out for the telling surprise, the formative stroke of good luck or bad; his keeps his remarkable ear out for the vernacular. He knows himself, people, places. His poems have a dead-on exactness, swerving across interior and public life unerringly. And they are wonderfully written. The poems hook you in seconds. He establishes his concerns without apology or fanfare, always with a control of tone bordering on the uncanny. He avoids sentimentality and excess the way Warren Spahn avoided the middle of the plate. One hopes this kind of propulsive energy will take Trowbridge to many more books. He is now one of the countrys foremost poets. -- Tar River Poetry, Richard Simpson, 1996
Reading one of the poems of O Paradise, the third collection by William Trowbridge, I felt I was attending my high school reunion, or was actually back in high school, rediscovering the awkward, gawky past, personal and public, I had tried to assume was dead and gone, although persistent, sometimes horrifying memories over the years. In this collection wonderfully entertaining in its sharp comic inventiveness, yet at the same time unsettling in that darkness that hides just beneath the surface of the most successful comedy we talk in ancient tongues to our former selves about the narratives and figures and styles of the past even as we make discoveries about what weve become. And were made to laugh at ourselves. Trowbridge is one of the most foremost standup comics of conemporary poetry. O Paradise is filled with a razor and stiletto wit and sudden thrusts of a quirky, penetrating wisdom for which there can be little or no defense. Its the work of an authentic American poet at the top of his form, an ironist and satirist (and entertainer) who uses humor as a moral weapon against fools wherever they rear their heads: in history, in books, on the silver screen, in the mirror. -- Prairie Schooner, David Citino, Summer, 1997
Some famous poet or other once said that poetry is serious play, and now here is this truth more evident than in O Paradise, William Trowbridge's third collection of poetry. Little escapes Trowbridge's eye for the comic. In poems like "Valediction Explaining Divorce" and "At My Wife's Family Reunion," we are shown over and over again the humor underlying the various tragedies of our domestic American existence. Like the best comics, Trowbridge is a master of delivery, as in these lines from "The Dead": They like it quiet, slow-paced, no renters. Some have practiced all their lives for this, sitting stone still at their desks, nodding off in the BarcaLounger after the network news. And yet, like the best poets, he never loses sight of the tragic. As easily as he uncovers the laughable in our daily tragedies, Trowbridge exposes, like a surgeon, cholesterol in the arteries of the American dream. One will have a hard time putting this book down, and those familiar with his two previous collections, The Book of Kong (Iowa State University Press, 1986) and Enter Dark Stranger (University of Arkansas Press, 1989), will relish in a new addition to the "Kong" poems, "Kong Views an Experimental Art Film at the City Library." This is fast-paced, nervy poetry whose witty, vernacular language is at once accessible and masterfully controlled. Trowbridge said that O Paradise continues his work "mainly in the seriocomic," but also "explores another borderland that between actuality and memory, between consciousness and unconsciousness, between self as flesh-and-blood and self as ghost." In a time when much of the current poetry is self-conscious, overtly political and partisan, when too many poets seem unwilling to speak to the comedy and tragedy surfacing daily in our real lives, William Trowbridge steps forward in O Paradise as a poet nothing less than necessary. -- Arkansas Times, Daniel Tessitore, 0February 5, 1995
The care that Trowbridge has shown these poems, the continued mockery he makes of our daily darkness, the juxtaposition of melancholy and laughter, make this an exceptional book. -- Hurakan: A Journal of Contemporary Literature, Mark Sanders, No. 2, 1995
The poems that comprise William Trowbridges O Paradise are smart, ironic, and nearly always concerned in some fashion with the passing of time. Trowbridge has an ear for interesting syntax that nonetheless stays within the bounds of respectable prose; he also has a taste for allusion . . . his poems are powerful and quite moving. O Paradise, the title poem, evokes that exquisite moment in which eros and auto mechanics suddenly merge: his hands/dark with gear oil and expertise, and hers the same,/so that if they kissed, and they did, they had to hold/their hands away as dancers might a pas de deux by Kelly and Caron. The poem is a lovely reimagination of Sapphos fundamental insight which is perhaps the quintessential lyrical insight that it is whatever one loves that becomes the most beautiful thing on the dark earth. -- Northwest Arkansas Times, Paul Spillenger, September 1, 1995
Trowbridge has perfected his comic idiom in this third collection. He draws mainly from popular culture movies, magazines, newsreels, pop music along with an occasional trip into high culture. Trowbridge wryly recounts the mixed blessings of marriage, parenthood and bereavement. My weakness for reader-friendly poetry is something I refuse to apologize for. By all means, read this friendly book. -- Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Fred Eckman, May 7, 1996
William Trowbridges generous, multi-faceted collection, O Paradise, is his third and best book yet. As before, he can be an extremely funny poet; poems here like Letter to Aethelred the Unready, Endangered Species, and Kong Views an Experimental Art Film at the City Library will strengthen his reputation as one of our finer writers. O Paradise brims with a starker vision, too, poem after poem regarding the losses and adjustments of middle age with melancholy stoicism, however edged with humor. His subjects are marvelously diverse, in fact, including movies and other bits of pop culture, an unfun family reunion, various visits to museums or historical texts, a saxophone solo by Paul Desmond, a poetry reading by the late Etheridge Knight, the L. L. Bean catalog, and the trance of interstate driving. What unites this diversity is his supple but instantly recognizable voice, a weary deadpan spiced with colloquial verve. -- Poetry International, David Graham, April, 1998
You can see the topic of paradise and the theme of mutability most clearly in the title poem: Maybe it isnt choirs of cherubim with perfect pitch/or lions snuggling up with lambs and shepherds. Maybe/its something like a friend and I once saw,/looking in his basement window when we were shy/with zits and stumble bones. The narrator and friend spy on the latters big brother and girlfriend tinkering with his motorcycle. -- Writers Digest, March, 1996
Geographically and emotionally, William Trowbridge sends out his brainy, riveting poems from the center. He keeps his ego in check, his eye out for the telling surprise, the formative stroke of good luck or bad; his keeps his remarkable ear out for the vernacular. He knows himself, people, places. His poems have a dead-on exactness, swerving across interior and public life unerringly. And they are wonderfully written. The poems hook you in seconds. He establishes his concerns without apology or fanfare, always with a control of tone bordering on the uncanny. He avoids sentimentality and excess the way Warren Spahn avoided the middle of the plate. One hopes this kind of propulsive energy will take Trowbridge to many more books. He is now one of the countrys foremost poets. -- Tar River Poetry, Richard Simpson, 1996
Reading one of the poems of O Paradise, the third collection by William Trowbridge, I felt I was attending my high school reunion, or was actually back in high school, rediscovering the awkward, gawky past, personal and public, I had tried to assume was dead and gone, although persistent, sometimes horrifying memories over the years. In this collection wonderfully entertaining in its sharp comic inventiveness, yet at the same time unsettling in that darkness that hides just beneath the surface of the most successful comedy we talk in ancient tongues to our former selves about the narratives and figures and styles of the past even as we make discoveries about what weve become. And were made to laugh at ourselves. Trowbridge is one of the most foremost standup comics of conemporary poetry. O Paradise is filled with a razor and stiletto wit and sudden thrusts of a quirky, penetrating wisdom for which there can be little or no defense. Its the work of an authentic American poet at the top of his form, an ironist and satirist (and entertainer) who uses humor as a moral weapon against fools wherever they rear their heads: in history, in books, on the silver screen, in the mirror. -- Prairie Schooner, David Citino, Summer, 1997
Some famous poet or other once said that poetry is serious play, and now here is this truth more evident than in O Paradise, William Trowbridge's third collection of poetry. Little escapes Trowbridge's eye for the comic. In poems like "Valediction Explaining Divorce" and "At My Wife's Family Reunion," we are shown over and over again the humor underlying the various tragedies of our domestic American existence. Like the best comics, Trowbridge is a master of delivery, as in these lines from "The Dead": They like it quiet, slow-paced, no renters. Some have practiced all their lives for this, sitting stone still at their desks, nodding off in the BarcaLounger after the network news. And yet, like the best poets, he never loses sight of the tragic. As easily as he uncovers the laughable in our daily tragedies, Trowbridge exposes, like a surgeon, cholesterol in the arteries of the American dream. One will have a hard time putting this book down, and those familiar with his two previous collections, The Book of Kong (Iowa State University Press, 1986) and Enter Dark Stranger (University of Arkansas Press, 1989), will relish in a new addition to the "Kong" poems, "Kong Views an Experimental Art Film at the City Library." This is fast-paced, nervy poetry whose witty, vernacular language is at once accessible and masterfully controlled. Trowbridge said that O Paradise continues his work "mainly in the seriocomic," but also "explores another borderland that between actuality and memory, between consciousness and unconsciousness, between self as flesh-and-blood and self as ghost." In a time when much of the current poetry is self-conscious, overtly political and partisan, when too many poets seem unwilling to speak to the comedy and tragedy surfacing daily in our real lives, William Trowbridge steps forward in O Paradise as a poet nothing less than necessary. -- Arkansas Times, Daniel Tessitore, 0February 5, 1995
The care that Trowbridge has shown these poems, the continued mockery he makes of our daily darkness, the juxtaposition of melancholy and laughter, make this an exceptional book. -- Hurakan: A Journal of Contemporary Literature, Mark Sanders, No. 2, 1995
The poems that comprise William Trowbridges O Paradise are smart, ironic, and nearly always concerned in some fashion with the passing of time. Trowbridge has an ear for interesting syntax that nonetheless stays within the bounds of respectable prose; he also has a taste for allusion . . . his poems are powerful and quite moving. O Paradise, the title poem, evokes that exquisite moment in which eros and auto mechanics suddenly merge: his hands/dark with gear oil and expertise, and hers the same,/so that if they kissed, and they did, they had to hold/their hands away as dancers might a pas de deux by Kelly and Caron. The poem is a lovely reimagination of Sapphos fundamental insight which is perhaps the quintessential lyrical insight that it is whatever one loves that becomes the most beautiful thing on the dark earth. -- Northwest Arkansas Times, Paul Spillenger, September 1, 1995
Trowbridge has perfected his comic idiom in this third collection. He draws mainly from popular culture movies, magazines, newsreels, pop music along with an occasional trip into high culture. Trowbridge wryly recounts the mixed blessings of marriage, parenthood and bereavement. My weakness for reader-friendly poetry is something I refuse to apologize for. By all means, read this friendly book. -- Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Fred Eckman, May 7, 1996
William Trowbridges generous, multi-faceted collection, O Paradise, is his third and best book yet. As before, he can be an extremely funny poet; poems here like Letter to Aethelred the Unready, Endangered Species, and Kong Views an Experimental Art Film at the City Library will strengthen his reputation as one of our finer writers. O Paradise brims with a starker vision, too, poem after poem regarding the losses and adjustments of middle age with melancholy stoicism, however edged with humor. His subjects are marvelously diverse, in fact, including movies and other bits of pop culture, an unfun family reunion, various visits to museums or historical texts, a saxophone solo by Paul Desmond, a poetry reading by the late Etheridge Knight, the L. L. Bean catalog, and the trance of interstate driving. What unites this diversity is his supple but instantly recognizable voice, a weary deadpan spiced with colloquial verve. -- Poetry International, David Graham, April, 1998
You can see the topic of paradise and the theme of mutability most clearly in the title poem: Maybe it isnt choirs of cherubim with perfect pitch/or lions snuggling up with lambs and shepherds. Maybe/its something like a friend and I once saw,/looking in his basement window when we were shy/with zits and stumble bones. The narrator and friend spy on the latters big brother and girlfriend tinkering with his motorcycle. -- Writers Digest, March, 1996
