A Way With Words

Tim Cullen's poems arrive like overheard thoughts-sharp, unsettled, alive to the fragility underneath things. A philosopher grappling with Lucifer's problem. A green Buick suddenly precarious as a glass egg on ice. Lucky children learning grace isn't "granted only them."

These are poems written in the margins of a busy life-composed between trials and travels, rewritten across years. The five-line form (when he keeps to it) gives each piece just enough room to pivot, to land a thought before the next arrives. The subjects shift: seasons, water, circuses, galleries, the mathematics of romance that "won't work / regardless of chemistry."

There's wit here, and melancholy, and philosophical restlessness of someone who's spent decades in demanding courtrooms while keeping one ear tuned to something larger.

Tim Cullen grew up in Washington, DC, as the oldest of eleven children. This is his first book of poetry.