At Some Point

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.

“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, judge, Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry “Marvelous. Delicate, durable, intimate in feeling, and sweeping in view, At Some Point rewards belief in an American poetry that wants to ravel language, that’s keen to the mesmeric, that recognizes awe can be located in the everyday. Poems like these are what happens when grace and intelligence decide to take a walk.” - Colin Channer, Rhode Island Poet Laureate “Consistently spare, precise, and thoughtful, these poems are, above all, intimate. Subjects are not merely observed but experienced and meditated upon until loneliness, joy, and grief are, as O’Connell writes, ‘observed as passing clouds, an innate meteorology.’” - Gary Fincke

• I.Late at Night, I Watch The Blue PlanetWe’re Thinking of the Black Hole at the Center of the GalaxyFresh AirI’m Happy Because My Daughter Is SadIntervale CemeteryPeriod PieceFrank O’HaraThe PhysicianI’m Calling 911!HuntYou Must Act as Though You’ll LiveIn SpringLet’s Talk About the WeatherII.Watching My Wife ParasailThe Yard Is Full of LightI Was Startled It Was DeathWe Rush to See Their MoviesAfterThe Forecast Calls for SnowMy Friend Comes BackThis Is How It HappensIn College, We Were Assigned “The Dead”In Case You Were WonderingWatching My Daughter’s Tap RecitalThe Past Isn’t What It Was When It WasThe Rational AnimalYou Were My First FoxCathedral LedgeIII.Minor Planets of the Inner Solar SystemOh My Goodness, Here Goes Your BodyProcedureAvalancheAs If There Were LessonsHow to Tell the One About FatherhoodThis TimeEmitterI Read the Dead Are ReturningThe World as It IsEncoreAll Summer, the RainLove SongStarter HomeWhen I Hear It’s a Buyer’s MarketThe Elegant UniverseAcknowledgmentsNotes