Tibbetts Brook Park, 1953

Lee Slonimsky’s unique talents—a lyric voice, an affinity for mathematics and science, a playful way with language, and a passion for the natural world—combine with kaleidoscopic beauty in his new book of poems. Tibbetts Brook Park, 1953 is rich with small, precise observation about the larger world while highlighting a number of recurring obsessions—dragonflies, gnats, birds, and chicory—including a stunning sequence of sonnet-based poems about the life of Pythagoras. Slonimsky has a deft touch with rhyme and meter and a deep thirst for answers: “Where else did petal numbers come from? (Seventeen or eighteen, twenty-one; erratic but specific, mostly prime)”. This is an unexpected and revelatory book from an exceptionally gifted poet.

    Liza Bennett, author of Bleeding Heart