The New Gods

If William O’Daly’s poetry, like Neruda’s or Lorca’s, suggests an understanding of surrealism,” writes Peter Weltner in his foreword to The New Gods, it is “a surrealism of the vital world, of a language that marries ‘spirit and action’ to a pure purpose, a sustained improvisation ‘between roots and sky’ that binds the near with the far, distance with the here and now.” Wise, beautiful, and lyrically grounded in the elemental, the poems comprising O’Daly’s first full-length volume chart a trajectory well beyond the self and with a stunning breadth of vision. They span cultural and historical geographies and the expanse of time to celebrate the relationships that sustain the human family and challenge the solipsistic origins of our inhumane words and actions. The New Gods invites us to participate in the authentic, in “the solace of not seeking,” even as “we give the earth back to our feet.