At Some Point (Wisconsin Poetry Series) - Softcover

O’Connell, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0299355446 ISBN 13: 9780299355449

Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press, 2025

Synopsis

Time is slippery. At Some Point openly acknowledges this while exploring the intersections between past and present, childhood and adulthood, midlife and mortality. Joyously and solemnly tugging on the threads that connect us—to life, to the planet, to each other—David O’Connell finds meaning in the small things. An earworm, a sudden memory, the arrival of a fox in the neighborhood, even camaraderie among other patients awaiting colonoscopies—all are grist for O’Connell’s ability to view the world simultaneously anew and as it once appeared. From the quotidian to the profound, this is a collection that hovers around your consciousness, reshaping your own vision and insight.

About this title

About the Author

David O’Connell’s poetry collections include At Some Point, Our Best Defense, and the chapbook A Better Way to Fall. His work has appeared in New Ohio Review, Ploughshares, Cincinnati Review, Southern Poetry Review, and North American Review, among other journals. O’Connell lives in Rhode Island with his wife, the poet Julie Danho, and their daughter. His work can be found at davidoconnellpoet.com.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

“Unable to carry


their overloaded backpacks, my daughter
and her friends wheel them to school
like battered airline luggage, struggling

to pull them along their shortcut
through the cemetery. As they cross,
she tells me, they’ll each, out loud, say

I'm sorry, though she’s not sure who
started this, and, pressed, rolls her eyes,
embarrassed to admit the reasons they do.”

—Excerpt from “Intervale Cemetery”

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0299355446
• ISBN 13: 9780299355449
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 84