With the release of "The Shutting Door" (Ibbetson
Street) a new full length book of poems in about a month, I'm honored
to have received the following endorsements and blurbs. I am humbled,
proud and grateful. These are the best poems I've ever written because
of their form, content and the state of my mind-- where I've been
writing from in my sobriety.
Timothy
Gager is a genius of
the quotidian, keenly observing the details of our lives and rendering them so
that we can hear the deep pulse of our identities, of our pure being, within
them. The Shutting Door is a ravishing, wonderful, enlightening book.
Robert Olen Butler,
Pulitzer Prize Winner, Author of 18 books.
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“The Shutting Door” is the first
full length book of poetry in nine years from the prolific writer Timothy Gager. I read these poems, constantly
sucked in, pulled beneath the surface by the accessible complexity, the
swirling eddy’s of darkness, shockingly abrupt intercuttings of profane and
sacred, surprised by the streaks of tenderness… and thought , who am I to write
anything about a poet who, like his wolves, howls at the sun because the
moon has yet to hear, who is an acute observer of the way things completely
breakdown. And then I realized that in many of these poems Tim has done
something remarkable and worth shouting about: he has rescued irony from the
terrible detachment of the hip and the surface slickness of the cool. Rooting
irony in the power of attachment, in gut felt emotion, connection and
immersion, he has once again made it revelatory and profound. There
is much more to be found in this collection but for that alone , hats off and
shouts of joy to Tim Gager.
Michael Ansara, co-founder Mass Poetry
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In The Shutting Door, Gager studies the crisp space between
life's summation and the gathering of what harvest may wait for us as we work
at a more genuine quality of being. In a world of social media he shows
himself brave and committed to truth, but not without humor. This is a
delightful new work from a poet who consistently shows that he believes in what
connects us and makes us hu
Afaa M. Weaver, “The Government of Nature”and thirteen
other books
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Worldly, witty, and often
satirical, these poems also have a tender side, a feeling of loss and longing,
a sense of thwarted hopes and dreams. It is as if the poet has glimpsed something
wondrous and maybe all-important just beyond a door that is closing. What did
he see in there? Was it his beloved, or the remnants of love grown cold?
Was it the hem of God, or the remnants of a faith no longer held? Was it
a little bit of truth and beauty mixed together, or was it the death of either,
or both? Questions on this order are at the heart of these poems, and the
glimpses of the answers are real enough to help us keep going.
Fred Marchant, author of The Looking House
The Shutting
Door is gritty, captivating book that immediately pull you in
and doesn't let go. Tim Gager writes through the lens of a damaged angel,
someone who has seen forgiveness from all sides. The result is wondrously
eloquent, giving us these beautiful, dangerous, arresting poems about what it
means to be human. Gager’s poems “never stop trying to fly
--January Gill
O'Neil, author of Underlife,
Executive Director of Mass Poetry Festival
"The Shutting Door" is
unflinchingly honest and deeply personal, with a gentle sense of melancholy
offset by the occasional touch of gallows humor. These poems shift effortlessly
from meditations on nature, tales of love found and love lost, and astute
observations on the human condition. Timothy Gager
mines gems of truth from the plain soil of ordinary life.
--Charles Coe, author of All Sins Forgiven: Poems for My Parents
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