Praise for BRING YOUR NIGHTS WITH YOU: New & Selected Poems, 1975-2015
IT IS as if all of human experience, knowledge, and geography are encoded and distilled within this new double volume of poetry by Thomas Simmons, such is the tremendous conceptual, intellectual, and sonorous range of the work. The poet incorporates so much worldly perception and literature within these pages that it is as if the reader is being offered a vision of both human and unearthly existence at once.
The drama of voice and also of diction magnify and amplify this literary magnificence, the mature work of a humanist whose learning and poetic ability extends beyond any specific personal moment, engaging with a thoroughly extensive mortal terrain. However, there exists an unseen sub-textual performative quality inside all of these poems which raises the words and lines off the page--within the mind of the reader--and which supply the language with an enigmatic non-verbal quality: simultaneous, immediate, and so profoundly finite. This uncanny pneuma is intrinsic to the worth of these two fine books.
It is as if the poet is foretelling his own life, but in paradoxical retrospect, such is the vivacious and vital nature of consciousness at work in these lines. It is a distinction of writing and awareness, of both sadness and fascination, as thepoet's attention careers away from a world before grace towards an imperishable and indelible comprehension.
The poet says, Among those I loved you were the first ... whose only choice was to prevent my ever reaching you; and then later, How to say good-bye when one has already gone? Such sentiments are the mysterious and contrary threads that run through the fabric of this wonderful poetry binding the emotions and material detail into one strong medium, a tissue of song whose mastery lies not only in the expression but in its even greater indication of what cannot be said. Such is the genius of knowing the unspeakable and yet being competent and compassionate enough to endure that terrific and necessary effort which art can only imply.
--Kevin McGrath, Harvard University
There's a deep, rumbling power to these poems, a kind of wild but tempered energy that comes only when you're lucky enough to encounter a poet capable ofweaving accessible narrative with vivid, well-crafted lyricism. There's humor, too, not to mention savage intelligence paired with refreshing humanity and political conscience. In short, Simmons has gifted us with a collection spilling over with my favorite breed of poems: the kind you can teach in a classroom, lounge with on a beach, or cling to in the waiting room of an E.R., confident that at the veryleast, you're in good company.
--Michael Meyerhofer, author of What To Do If You're Buried Alive
