In his new collection, Just Beautiful, Tim Suermondt writes poems about the present, the past and the future, poems dealing with the glories and follies, the tragedies and triumphs of the human heart and of the world. His poems never ask to be more than poems, but they will change your perceptions in ways you couldn't imagine. |
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Although the title of Tim Suermondt’s new book of poetry, Just Beautiful, has a larger meaning, it's worth noting that the poems inside are indeed beautiful, but not "just" beautiful. His take on the world is unique, the droll wit like a wake-up call, the sweetness like a smile, the reckonings wise, unpretentious, and deeply true. His voice is like nobody else's, though one
might think of Billy Collins as a cousin. Prizes should be given, honors bestowed, to a poet who has so thoughtfully and with such evident, contagious delight made us aware of cadences and conclusions we knew nothing about till now. Read and enjoy.
—Kelly Cherry, The Retreats of Thought: Poems
Honest, funny, tender, wry, hopeful in the face of hopelessness, the poems in Tim Suermondt's Just Beautiful celebrate the everyday life we all know well, though we may overlook the quotidian wonders that Suermondt, rough arms swinging like clumsy songbirds, calls to the attention of our grateful eyes, ears, hearts.
—Charles Harper Webb
You could call Tim Suermondt the Mondrian of contemporary American poetry, that is, if Mondrian had a wicked sense of humor to accompany his ethos of simplicity, clarity, and bright colors. In Just Beautiful the warm-hearted jokester, sports aficionado, and lover of his own anonymity Suermondt knows it's tough to bring chaos to order, but he revels in those "Just Beautiful" moments when it happens. The poet longs for clarity in this mystifyingly
incomprehensible world, and he achieves it at last in the domestic beatitudes of poems from his midlife marriage, where happiness reigns simply because an apartment door is painted a brilliant blue. Just Beautiful is just that. PS I laughed out loud at his one-liner about, of all people, Simone Weil.
—Molly Peacock
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