The Land of Give and Take

In The Land of Give and Take, Tyler Farrell''s second collection of poems, a variety of characters appear as on a stage: teenagers and grandparents, priests and poets, the wise and the foolish. Shadowing many of the poems is a conflicted Catholicism, sometimes resentful of the Church''s claims, but recognising that, in the end, nothing else gives the same weight and meaning to this transient life.

There is morning and night
to see through their eyes.
There are amusements
to be told, invented,
two historians that begin a game.(from ''The Lives of the City, Long Forgotten'')

Tyler Farrell was born in Illinois and grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He has published poems, essays, and reviews in many periodicals, and a biographical essay for the late James Liddy''s Selected Poems (2011). His first collection of poems, Tethered to the Earth, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2008. He teaches writing and literature at Marquette University and currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

In The Land of Give and Take, Tyler Farrell''s second collection of poems, a variety of characters appear as on a stage: teenagers and grandparents, priests and poets, the wise and the foolish. Shadowing many of the poems is a conflicted Catholicism, sometimes resentful of the Church''s claims, but recognising that, in the end, nothing else gives the same weight and meaning to this transient life.

There is morning and night
to see through their eyes.
There are amusements
to be told, invented,
two historians that begin a game.(from ''The Lives of the City, Long Forgotten'')

Tyler Farrell was born in Illinois and grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He has published poems, essays, and reviews in many periodicals, and a biographical essay for the late James Liddy''s Selected Poems (2011). His first collection of poems, Tethered to the Earth, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2008. He teaches writing and literature at Marquette University and currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin.