Midwest Book Review on A LOOSE RENDERING: TIME, MEMORY AND OTHER CONSIDERATIONS by T.P. BIRD

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Published: Monday, 16 January 2023 18:05

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Deftly crafted, thoughtful and thought-provoking, original and inspirational, A Loose Rendering: Time, Memory, and Other Considerations by T.P. Bird is an elegant compendium of memorable verse on subjects both individual and universal. A volume of poetry that will linger in the mind and memory long after it has been finished and set back upon the shelf, A Loose Rendering: Time, Memory, and Other Considerations is unreservedly recommended for personal, professional, community, and academic library Contemporary American Poetry collections.

What does it mean to think of time and memory loosely? With the publication of A Loose Rendering: Time, Memory, and Other Considerations, preacher and poet T.P. (Tom) Bird's work helps us answer that question.

Bird divides his fifty "renderings" into three sections-"Time & Memory"; "Poets, Presidents and Me," and "Other Considerations." In the first, his metaphors evoke a gently self-mocking nostalgia--for a Saturday trip to a barbershop, a boyhood leap into a leaf pile, a young soldier's time in Bavaria.... Old memories become road trips into his father's past, and his grandfather's. Comfortably familiar metaphors-ice, gnarled trees, burning leaves, stone walls, full moons-code an aging man's values as he loosely reshapes a past which "never leaves you, and which you never leave."

In his second section, Bird aligns his life's path with the works and days of presidents and poets. Fourteen presidents, from Truman to Biden, and 67 poets, from Walt Whitman to Mary Oliver, stand as guideposts marking his path into and through American culture.

In his final group of poems, "Other Considerations," existential questions about time, space, memory, and meaning become whimsical word puzzles, image-fests, and philosophical debates, leading to a genuine appreciation for the beauty of the natural world and a deep, albeit cautious, faith in a creator.

 It should be noted that A Loose Rendering is also available in a digital book format (Kindle, $8.99).

Editorial Note: T.P. (Tom) Bird is a retired industrial drafter/designer and Christian minister. He has published in a number of journals and is the author of a chapbook as well as three full collections.