About In Confidence
In Confidence is Jim Tilley's debut collection of poetry, ranging from lyric to narrative in form. About half of the sixty poems in the book are open-form sonnets, most of which deal with personal and societal dislocation. The collection covers a variety of subjects, from father-son and husband-wife relationships to issues of politics, the economy, and the environment. Several poems are presented in pairs based on the same underlying setting or situation but with markedly different development—they portray a kind of "quantum" picture with both states existing at the same time, not a surprising result from a poet with a doctorate in physics.
Praise for In Confidence
- Billy Collins
- U.S. Poet Laureate, 2001-2003
- Stephen Dobyns
- Lamont Poetry Selection, 1971
- Claudia Emerson
- Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, 2006
- Elizabeth Spires
- Whiting Award, 1996
- David Wojahn
- Finalist, Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, 2007
- Reviews
Jim Tilley does confide in his readers here as he explores a refreshing variety of subjects—everything from the complexity of father-son and husband-wife relations to the more solvable problems of dark matter and the origins of the cosmos. But what wins our confidence is not his range but his steady hand on the poem and his steady gaze at the world.
—Billy Collins, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2001-2003
At first glance Jim Tilley’s In Confidence seems to consist of calm, graceful poems of upper middle class domesticity, but turkey vultures wait in the yard and many stories have unhappy endings. Instead the poems are about trying to maintain “this fragile equilibrium” like a tightrope walker tip-toeing above a lion’s den. One sees the quiet elegance is all that keeps one from shouting, “Watch out!” These are finely crafted poems in which readers will find bits and pieces of their own lives.
—Stephen Dobyns, Lamont Poetry Selection, 1971
In Jim Tilley’s In Confidence, we see the internal and external workings of the world through a mature poet’s multifaceted lens. Crafting his poems with formal care, Tilley always aims for “the clearest vision one can imagine,” whether looking through the intricacies of scientific reasoning, the “perennial memories” that accompany aging, or the unexpected, undeniable logic of “the metaphor out there in the snow.”
—Claudia Emerson, Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, 2006
It is rare to encounter a first book of poems as clear-eyed and accomplished as Jim Tilley’s In Confidence. The press of everyday experience informs these deceptively calm poems, rippling with disturbing undercurrents. Whether imagining the incursion of windmills in Nantucket Sound (Vase of Tall White Stalks), or seeing “something fractal in forsythia” (In Spring, Mathematics Are Yellow), Tilley’s imagination is fluent and unforced, his eye fresh to the natural world that he searchingly inhabits. At his best, Tilley writes about the ordinary moments in a life in an extraordinary way.
—Elizabeth Spires, Whiting Award, 1996
Jim Tilley is a bracing and quietly confident writer, able to consistently surprise us, whether in missives from domestic life, topical poems, or poems which quirkily address what he calls “the big questions.” These are wry, bittersweet, and unobtrusively instructive poems in the tradition of Wilbur, Schuyler, and Dunn, and they are very much worth reading.
—David Wojahn, Finalist, Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, 2007
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