Author Description

Review James Baker Hall:"The spirit of elegy taps its knuckle on the transparent surface of Olson's language, and when the poem has your attention it directs it toward the mysterious and encompassing business of the natural world. The intelligence at work here is at the same moment austere and tender, remote and intimate; its signal grief longs not to complain but to sing. Breathing in Darkness is clean, able work, a new voice worth listening to. I hope this book gets read." James Owens:"Breathing in Darkness is one of those books that readers will want to shelve in a handy spot, so that they can return to it over and over. We need Ted Olson. In his truest voice, he is a visionary poet, restlessly prying at the dim everyday with the shiny edge of intelligent illumination. His poems locate the connections and epiphanies, right there where they have always been, unseen until now and waiting for the right eye to find them, the right tongue to give them clarity and form. Breathing in Darkness does just that." Product Description An insightful collection of poems attentative to the natural world, the human heart, and life's light and dark places. From the Inside Flap "The spare, distilled poems in Breathing in Darkness have in them both the beauty and the dread of being. These excellent poems are 'deep in life,' in D. H. Lawrence's phrase, and they take the racing pulse both of the self and of the world" --Richard Wilbur "The poems in Breathing in Darkness show an exceptional attentiveness to both the natural world and the complexities of the human heart. I enjoyed these poems very much."--Ron Rash "The poems in Breathing in Darkness spark quick moments of insight, surprise. Olson's taut lyrics evoke a life, a world. Alert to both familiar detail and wider context, Olson sees the drama in the daily event, and the significance of the larger perspective. These are poems of families, of fathers and the comple