American Fractal

by Timothy Green

“In American Fractal, Timothy Green braids together an alert and nimble intelligence, a liveliness of phrasing, a polished sense of form, and a whimsical surrealism—braids them and brings them to bear on our contemporary world. The result, poem after poem that sidles up to the truth and smacks it on the lips or, playfully or in earnest, upside the head.”
            —Gregory Orr, author of Concerning the Book that Is...

“The poems in Timothy Green’s American Fractal find love within love; landscape within landscape; the ‘I’ and ‘you’ nestled within the bigger ‘I’ and ‘you.’ Unpredictable, uproarious, and true to the wonder of the moment, Green’s poems are chockfull of magical imagery that blurs the waking and dream life.”
            —Denise Duhamel, author of Queen for a Day and Kinky

Looking for the order within disorder, Timothy Green would “wake the body from its only available dream.” Green appreciates how strange this order can be, and that the extraordinary is the hallmark of the individual. In these poems, a man auctions his forehead as ad space, cutlery rains from the sky, spiders devour their mother: in other words, here is life.
            —Bob Hicok, author of This Clumsy Living
 
 
“Timothy Green’s American Fractal is a remarkable study in the refraction of language. As with memory, language bends and shapes itself, defining and redefining images like opposing mirrors, reflecting an infinite succession of epiphanies. The effect is evocative, energized and sure-footed, full of nuance and thematic dexterity, as in his exquisite poem ‘Hiking Alone’ where insights like glimmerings in a ‘box of moonlight,’ are made translucent by the kind god of this fine poet’s imagination. This book has the gift of passion. It has fire at its core.”
            —James Ragan, author of The Hunger Wall and Lusions

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Timothy Green was born in Rochester, New York. He worked in an mRNA research lab, and as a group home counselor for mentally ill adults, before moving west to serve as editor of the poetry journal RATTLE. His poems have appeared in many journals, including The Connecticut Review, The Florida Review, Fugue, Mid-American Review, and Nimrod International Journal. Green has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Rhysling Award, and is winner of the 2006 Phi Kappa Phi award from the University of Southern California. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, the poet Megan Green. American Fractal is his first book-length collection.