At Some Point

Time is slippery. At Some Point openly acknowledges this while exploring the intersections between past and present, childhood and adulthood, midlife and mortality. Joyously and solemnly tugging on the threads that connect us—to life, to the planet, to each other—David O’Connell finds meaning in the small things: vacation photos, middle school band concerts, and Halloween decorations.

An earworm, a sudden memory, the arrival of a fox in the neighborhood, even camaraderie among other patients awaiting colonoscopies—all are grist for O’Connell’s ability to view the world simultaneously anew and as it once appeared. Wistfully admiring his daughter’s awareness of how the pandemic has turned snow days into remote teaching days, he observes “thirteen winters, / I’m finding, is enough to become wise.”

From the quotidian to the profound, this is a collection that hovers around your consciousness, reshaping your own vision and insight.

“Plain-spoken, warm, and affectionate poems give way to deeper observation as O’Connell turns a wry eye on finitude and mortality. These poems never leave us behind, embracing a world in which even a ‘lummox’ (like us) can be ‘gobsmacked’ by ‘so many choices’ that ‘the whole universe seemed possible.’ This is a capacious and big-hearted book.” - Ronald Wallace

David O’Connell’s previous poetry collections include Our Best Defense and the chapbook A Better Way to Fall. His work has appeared in New Ohio Review, Ploughshares, Cincinnati Review, Southern Poetry Review, and North American Review, among other journals. O’Connell lives in Rhode Island with his wife, the poet Julie Danho, and their daughter. His work can be found at davidoconnellpoet.com.

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