Reviews

Reader Reviews:

By Fiona D. on October 13, 2017
This book of achingly beautiful poetry showcases Tim Conroy's unique gift for imagery, and also a gift for triggering your recognition of things you carry unnoticed until you hear him speak them. He weaves a bright tapestry of love and pain and loss and family and belonging and hope, and every bit of it blooms inside your mind’s eye until it soaks into your heart just like it belongs there. His heroes are the ones who stand, who persevere to give gifts of truth and caring, who pick up pieces, who
hold hands and whisper love. There's sorrow here, but also soaring joy and redemption. Conroy’s poems are raw and lush at the same time, earthy and elegant, and leave an echo long after you've read them. If you ever get a chance to hear him read, you should go. He reads with an urgency that suggests he knows that he’s putting something into your hands that just might save your life.

By Anon on October 11, 2017
What a beautiful debut book of poetry best read in as few sittings as possible to avoid a break in the journey-like mood the poet creates. Having some knowledge of the poet’s life from having read (and viewed) stories from the life of his brother, Pat Conroy, it is fascinating to hear another side of the same story as witnessed through the eyes of a poet. Tim Conroy’s poetry takes us from that place where his brother left us and in a new direction of healing and coping and ending up at a better, more
forgiving place. Regardless of the family connections, these poems stand on their own. Tim Conroy is his own man and his own poet.

By Whodunit on October 13, 2017
This is a lovely, thought-provoking volume of poetry. It has the complexity and the love of language one expects from a Conroy, but this poet's view of the world is not that of his older brother, Pat. Each work resonates on its own, yet they come together like movements of a symphony. Poetry works best when it makes us think, when it asks that we dig deeper to understand. Spend time with this book. Let its words reach you in unexpected places inside you. You will not be disappointed.

Editorial Reviews:

“In this dwelling of scars/the history of dirt is blood,” Tim Conroy tells us in this excellent debut. There is sadness in these poems, vivid renderings of childhood abuse and of lives that ended too soon, but the beauty of the natural world is also acknowledged, as is the realization that memory offers consolation as well as sorrow, all of which leads to the poet’s hard-earned affirmation that “love has saved me.” Bravo! – Ron Rash

“In the journey you inventory/all it is you carry,” writes Tim Conroy early on in Theologies of Terrain. These fine poems map a complex and beautiful journey through loss, love, and, finally, revelation. They chart masterfully the complex hills and valleys of grief and memory. They probe at the edges of the mystery of family, maybe the landscape most full of hard, sometimes impassible terrain. There are many beautiful poems here, and we are lucky to have such a collection to map our own journeys. – John Lane