The Pendulum Moves Off

Description

The Pendulum Moves Off

poems by Theodore Haddin

ISBN: 978-1-956440-67-6 paperback $18.95
ISBN: 978-1-956440-68-3 ebook $9.99
104 pp.
January 2024

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From a boy’s first acquaintance with nature and the meaning of time to witnessing climate change and desolating wars, Theodore Haddin’s poems in The Pendulum Moves Off celebrate the lives of humans and Earth’s other animal inhabitants with longing, exuberance, and awakening. Time is in the clock as well as in nature, and our extraction of the natural world diminishes us as well. In truth, “tock and tick” are not forever, but the call of art and music and Haddin’s love of rivers in this beautiful and thought-provoking collection remind us of a better way of life we have yet to discover.

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Praise for The Pendulum Moves Off: Poems by Theodore Haddin:

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From houses, woods, and rivers of memory, Ted Haddin in this new collection brings home for us poems of redemption and restoration, reminding us of the numinous character of everyday life, lived in communion with mockingbirds, dragonflies, foxes, gardenias, and trout. Under the hand of the pendulum of time, in the midst of our “agony of uncertainty,” the poems teach us how to live with clear eyes, to walk with grace and a gentleness that might heal ourselves and our world. Like the clear waters of Walden Pond, Ted Haddin’s new poetry reflects the skies of our necessary hopes for the future.

—Michael Sowder, author of House Under the Moon

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Theodore Haddin’s poems ask us to see Earth as a garden on the brink of ruin, but a garden nevertheless, full of beauty and possibility. They urge us that it is high time for clarity and kindness, humility and restraint, love and reconnection.

—James Mersmann, author of Straying Toward Home

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Theodore Haddin’s pendulum is in sync with the stories he tells, poem after poem. He understands that rhythm and narrative must work together, or poetry is never achieved. Many are the images Haddin employs in this fine book, but none as striking as that of the violin: “We sing with strings in our / lonely rooms. One day someone hears music from all we’ve done.” Whether frog or fox by the road or a broken heart, his poems that are stories ring true, and I am embraced by the sound and silence of knowing his world, which is ours as well.

—Jim Barnes, author of Sundown Explains Nothing: New and Selected Poems

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Like the pendulum of the title poem, Theodore Haddin’s poems move us, and move within us, with the expressive coherence of a literary vision deeply realized and generously shared. This book’s unpretentious power grows from a lyricism that deftly blends perception and introspection. Readers who open their minds and hearts to Haddin’s poetry will find the journey richly rewarding. A wonderful collection in every respect.

—Donald Beagle, author of What Must Arise

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Theodore Haddin is a poet, editor, and emeritus professor from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Previous collections are By a Doorway, in the Garden and the chapbook The River and the Road. His poems have appeared in such journals as The Birmingham Poetry Review, Chariton Review, Valley Voices, POMPA, and Poetry South and in three anthologies. Reviews on American literature and poetry have been published in Valley Voices, The Anniston Star, Birmingham Poetry Review, and Southern Humanities Review, among others. A professionally trained violinist, Haddin has performed locally and supported music organizations including the Arianna String Quartet and individuals in Berlin and St. Louis. At UAB, he founded and directed The Humanities Forum, now named in his honor as The Theodore Haddin Forum for the Arts and Sciences.