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Timothy Black

Website
Years: 2010

Biography

Timothy Black's first book, Connecticut Shade, a fusion of poetry, prose and play, was published in 2008 and is currently in its second printing from WSC Press. Tim's poetry has appeared in the journals The Platte Valley Review, The Logan House Anthology of 21st Century American Poetry, The Great American Roadshow and Words Like Rain. In 2009, Black won the Helen W. Kenefick prize from the Academy of American Poets for his poem, Heavy Freight. In 2009 he was awarded a grant to edit and publish Where We've Been and What We've Seen, an anthology of student essays dealing with the experiences of war veterans in northeast Nebraska. He is currently working with Nebraska State Poet, William Kloefkorn, on a book of interviews and portable poetry workshop. Timothy lives in Wakefield, Nebraska with his wife, author Cynthia Black and two sons, Jake and Titus.

Poem

This is not a Chant at All

If she had been born in Gethsemane, she would have poured

fresh strawberries instead of spoiled red wine. She was

as sure of this as the ring around her own white breast. God,

she assumed, could fetter even the Milky Way, charm galaxies

with a golden tongue. If this is true--if turned soil is the point

of access & a point of cleansing for an earthworm--than sweat

& toil must be the place of admission for a man carrying rubies,

must be the segue between heaven and earth, must be savage

undoing, our admission to a world of wonder & bad memories.