The Sound of It

Poetry. "The familiar streets and landmarks throughout Tim Nolan's THE SOUND OF IT will resonate with Minneapolis natives, and even some New Yorkers. The sounds of Nolan's poems cover a full octave—from childhood to "Almost Fifty," Diamond Lake Road to Palestine, brussels sprouts to Holy Thursday. Nolan harmonizes the ordinary morsels of life with the profound in such a way as to awaken the reader to a conscious living in the moment. He focuses on past and future as inseparably flowing elements of the present. Within this overture of poems, "the voice you hear is generous and expansive like Whitman's, at home in the 'easy suit' of the body and yet always surprised to be part of the here and now" (Joyce Sutphen). Nolan's voice embodies his longing to offer "something lasting that might be repeated and would carry a life of its own."—Minnesota Literature

Tim Nolan received a BA in English from the University of Minnesota and an MFA from Columbia University. He graduated from William Mitchell College of Law and is an attorney in Minneapolis. Garrison Keillor has read several of Nolan's poems on the National Public Radio program The Writer's Almanac, and the former United States Poet Laureate Ted Kooser selected Nolan's poems for American Life in Poetry. New Rivers Press published Nolan's first book of poems, Nolan's first collection, THE SOUND OF IT, which was a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award in Poetry in 2009. He practices as an attorney in Minneapolis where he lives with his wife Kate and their three teenagers.