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Between the Moth and the Stone

by Timothy A. Bachman

97 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #03-0938; ISBN 1-4120-0569-8; US$14.00, C$15.83, EUR11.50, £8.00

This book features poetry that whispers, sings and shouts. Tim Bachman has collected a wide variety of poems for this first book. These poems have been gathered from the author's personal journals spanning 30 years. In this volume the reader will take pleasure in words that search, define and illustrate with strong imagery and underlying feelings that wholly embrace life.

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about the book      about the author      reviews      sample excerpt      catalogue info

About the Book This book features poetry that whispers, sings and shouts. Tim Bachman has gathered a wide variety of poems for this first book. These poems have been gathered from the author's personal journals spanning 30 years. Between the moth and the stone, the flame dances steadfast on the wick. Tim's poems are organized and themed according to each fragment of this verse beginning with "Between". The first collection of poems explores the provocative and often perplexing feelings we face when confronted with two unclear choices. The poems found in the chapter titled "The Moth" explore the desires and compulsions that drive people to behave sometimes irrationally yet in a curiously predictable manner. In the chapter entitled "The Stone" Tim's poetry focuses on the earth and how we participate in nature's ultimate scheme. These poems challenge us to take a few moments to appreciate the earth's ordinary gifts. Passion, love and loss are the principle themes in "The Flame." Each poem draws the reader closer to understand the exhilarating feelings that consumes and binds us in relationships. "Dancing Steadfast," recalls the many decisions that define our lives and the resulting consequences. The last chapter "On the Wick" experiments with words out of order and a zany journey through an irrational mind.

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About the Author

Tim provides the creative vision and leadership for his graphic and interior design studio. His work focuses on creating exciting environments for retail experiences. He currently lives with his wife Kathy and twins Bronwyn and Nathan in Central Ohio.

For Tim Bachman, crafting words into meaning, creativity and design are all natural pursuits in his life as an artist, poet and designer. Poems exist side-by-side with pen sketches, decorative patterns and ideas-in-progress in his journals. . Tim believes that a poem once written provides a more accurate recollection than a photograph. The poems in this collection are from his "family album".

Tim has published articles in several trade journals featuring design and creative solutions for retailers and businesses. He is an avid photographer and graphic artist and has exhibited his award winning work in several regional shows.

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Reviews

Paula Bardell's review for A Chrysalisfull Of Poems.

Between the Moth and the Stone gathers together three decades of Timothy A. Bachman's work, harvested from his personal journals, constituting a record of his evolving inner life and self-narrative.

Timothy is an artist and designer, " ... a visual thinker", whose "curious nature" compels him to record "passing unintelligible ... string[s] of rough words", that he can later "craft into a more controlled rhythm". Many of his poems are influenced by his experiences as an American, but others are inspired by universal emotions and beliefs. He feels that American society is beginning to emerge "from a culture of materialism," betrayed by the very objects they for so long coveted. Indeed, he describes his fellow Americans as "bewildered"; unable to comprehend why they "chose to acquire these expensive toys".

Born in 1947, Bachman lives in Hilliard, Ohio, a small conurbation between Big Darby Creek on the west and the Scioto River on the east, about ten miles from the city of Columbus. He and his wife run a successful design business, which enjoys an international reputation for "finely designed and produced retail environments and visual communication strategies".

He started writing poetry in college, encouraged by his English professor, and realised fairly early on that his compositions were "more than just personal note taking". After completing full time education, he and his wife spent five years with a community of like-minded people, living off the land, building their own home, helping to construct geodesic domes and solar houses, opening craft shops and generally learning how to exist without 20th century clutter. During this period, they moved to a remote woodland area, where they learned a great deal about nature and the natural environment from two elderly ladies who lived nearby with their sheep. They then went on to travel widely, making new business contacts and meeting fellow artists in Australia, Africa, Europe, Indonesia and South America, while continuing to write and create.

These days, although Timothy takes pleasure in attending poetry gatherings and lists among his favourite writers Bob Dylan, Edgar Allan Poe and the 13th century Islamic mystic, Mowlana Jalaluddin Rumi, he freely confesses that he seldom reads the work of other poets. He does, however, "respect most people's work as shared evidence of their own journey".

As one would expect from a selection of journal entries, Between the Moth and the Stone is largely autobiographical and the poems grounded in everyday experience. He seldom expresses deep resentment or intense angst, with the exception of poems like "Oh Yes, And This My Love" (page 63),

I am weary of pleasing you
free me to do simpler things
that needs no invention.

although, his voice occasionally manifests a tension between controlled detachment and an earnest desire for human contact.

The book is restless in its six-part shape - the Introduction describes it as a volume that "whispers, sings and shouts" - with its primary themes emanating from the short verse on the first page (which reminds me almost of a Hindu invocatory). Its recognisable themes broadly concern choice, behaviour, the natural world, passion, consequences and the irrational or 'zany' mind.

Seven snails slither to the shell's edge to form a crown
on the back of the tortoise as she trudges in her cautious circle.
Stretching her leathered neck to see the queen and the jester
emerge from bent saplings in the edge woods in a foot race
scattering the morning dew with barefoot quickness.

"Polka Dot Queen" (page 20)

One of the main drawbacks to self-publishing (this volume is a Trafford publication), is that the authors often have to select and edit their own work. Because poets are so close to their compositions, it can be exceptionally difficult for them to recognise their strengths and shortcomings, and for them to distinguish between the good and the mediocre. Appraisal requires honesty and independent judgment - seldom supplied by loving friends and family - and it is for this reason, I believe, that one or two weak poems have found their way into the collection. An example is "Occupant", on page 88, which reads more like a literary warm-up exercise than a polished poem.

Nevertheless, at his best, Timothy makes the familiar fresh again. The daily moments he records in his poems highlight the heart's need for community and the soul's desire for seclusion - revealing also that love can exist in either place. His work is by turns poignant and comic (read "Grandma" on page 77); and you sense that he had great fun writing certain pieces, such as "Coffin Fable" (the final poem on page 97):

Politely sit at my coffin fable
have a cup of coffin with dream
lettuce talk and stand pieces of Scrabble
pour lives and laugh and scheme.

Poems like "Evening Has Nothing More To Say" (page 82) are wistful and agreeably reflective:

Sitting in that old chair again
I slide this morning's mug away
from its wet sweat ring on the table
and empty my pockets to rid myself of the day.

He can also be mischievously sexy ("The Soda Jerk", page 54), delightfully romantic ("Adoringly Between Your Toes", page 50) and cheerfully eccentric ("Folded Remains", page 85):

Once again I misplaced my mind.
and found it folded neatly
into white paper parcels.

Although this volume would almost certainly have benefited from a little more honing and pruning (in the words of the German lyric poet, Rainer Maria Rilke: "you must have ... many ... memories and yet it is not enough to have memories ... the memories themselves are not important." They give rise to a good poem "only when they have changed into our very blood, into a glance and gesture, and are nameless, no longer to be distinguished from ourselves"), Bachman's poems are essentially honest, uncomplicated and refreshingly free of intellectual cant.

I thoroughly look forward to reading his second collection, which is scheduled for publication in 2005.

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Sample Excerpt

SEMI-PRECIOUS CHOICES

Semi precious spirits free from encumbrance
gleeful for mastering their passionate presence
choose the unattended glance that calms
and close the distance with eager open palms.
This is how we are, we are so becoming.

Welcome the reckless precious haste
unspoken purposes unlocked and two-faced.
Free to fill the supreme emptiness in each head
with fine cut glass that mirrors the lone fountainhead.
See who we are, we are so becoming.

Semi precious hands sweep a blurry harried race
barely above the clock's porcelain face.
Middle age is removed from the pocket of the thief
along with gems of thrills, smiles and disbelief.
Keep what we are, we are so becoming.

Here are the jewel-crusted ceilings
caked with serious choices and mottled feelings
One after another or together they must be taken.
This is the dream in which we awaken.
Here we are, we are so becoming.

Semi precious choices are our sovereignty
offered to satisfy our addicted uncertainty.
Time has no power to suspend this dream
that floats as jeweled light upon a summer stream.
We are, we are so becoming.

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Catalogue Information

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