This lucid collection of poems pulls readers into the surreal and the strange. Moder takes us on cerebral journeys via allegory and dream logic, with a rotating cast of dying and rising deities guiding the way. In Osiris, “the dead return to us,” arising from stanzas that “count the measure of their ribs against the blushing snow.” A collection that is thoughtful, emotionally resonant, and quietly daring while painting a multifaceted portrait of impermanence — of love, grief, heartbreak, loss, renewal, grace and, ultimately, forgiveness.
COMING SPRING 2026
WHAT THEY’RE SAYING ABOUT THE BOOK
This poetry collection is a striking meditation on belief, intimacy, and the fragile architectures we build to make sense of experience. Through a rich interplay of the personal and the mythic, the poems explore how the body becomes a threshold between faith and doubt, touch and distance, vulnerability and survival. The language is precise and textured, attentive to sensation while remaining intellectually alert, allowing images to carry emotional weight without overstatement. Across the collection, moments of tenderness coexist with unease, creating a charged atmosphere that feels both immediate and reflective. Rather than offering answers, these poems invite the reader into sustained attention: to what is felt, what is imagined, and what resists naming. The result is a collection that is thoughtful, emotionally resonant, and quietly daring. One that affirms Moder's capacity to present marvellous poetic complexity without simplification.
– A.R. Arthur, Editor of Fahmidan Journal
Tim Moder’s lucid work pulls us into the surreal and the strange. These illuminating prose poems are fascinating, philosophical, and strikingly haunting. Moder skillfully takes us on cerebral journeys via allegory and dream logic. This is an enigmatic, engaging collection of prose poems. I couldn’t stop reading and visualizing these vivid revelations.
– Jose Hernandez Diaz, author of Portrait of the Artist as a Brown Man.
In this stunning debut, Tim Moder offers a multifaceted portrait of impermanence. These poems build a “world of slants and angles, temples and monuments,” where loss echoes against the stark, dangerous beauty of nature. Whether swamp wrestling with Pan or confronting the snake in his grandma’s bread box, navigating a mine with Kore or ordering pizza with Ceres, Moder oscillates between the personal and persona alongside a rotating cast of deities where “everyone is on display.” With a keen ear for sound and rhythm, Moder engages in “soul work. Exploration. Finish. Build. Tear down. Diminish until there is no light to read.” In Osiris, “of course, the dead return to us,” arising from stanzas that “count the measure of their ribs against the blushing snow.”
– Stefanie Kirby, author of Fruitful
This poetry collection is a delight for lovers of history and mythology. An homage to ritual, grief, birth, death, and all that goes unspoken, it explores the intersection of mythology and the rural American landscape. Moder invites us down a path of Gothic and religious imagery, through crypts and rituals, drawing on Roman, Akkadian, Egyptian, Zoroastrian, Greek, and Celtic mythologies. He masterfully marries everyday domestic scenes with the timeless, echoing weight of the ancient world. Tim Moder is a poet to watch. Fans of “Orpheus," "Salt Bones" and "Love in Colour” will love this collection.
— Elizabeth M Castillo, author of Not Quite an Ocean
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
TIM MODER is a poet from northern Wisconsin. He is an enrolled member of The Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. His poems have appeared in Denver Quarterly, Cutthroat, South Florida Poetry Journal, One Art, Pinch, and others. He is the author of the chapbooks All True Heavens (Alien Buddha), American Parade Routes (Seven Kitchens),
and The Angel of Coincidence (Inkfish). His poems have been nominated for Best Of The Net and The Pushcart Prize.