You Are the Phenomenology

"Timothy O'Keefe's poems are nimble, conversational, jagged. They're fun to read, but unsettling, at large in the flux of the moment, alert to 'Not events, but atmosphere. Not trains in the night, but whistling.' All through You Are the Phenomenology we're swept along by the cracking charge of O'Keefe's lyric momentum, precise and wayward, particularly in his 'Quadrilateral' poems. You won't always know where you're going in these poems, and that's good; one of their pleasures is anticipating what sudden felicitous turn comes next."—James Haug, Juniper Prize for Poetry judge and author of Legend of the Recent Past

"Here, Timothy O'Keefe has written the material world's reply to Orpheus, a shaped music of phenomenal affections and voices: of 'violet'; of 'coverlet'; of 'chasms.' Here are poems suddenly peerless and true."—Donald Revell, author of Drought-Adapted Vine

"The stranger who picks up this book enacts the generosity of spirit anyone is glad (or relieved) to be granted; you'll find yourself in these poems, the way we see ourselves in sidewalk windows where we least expect us."—Dara Wier, Juniper Prize for Poetry judge and author of You Good Thing

"Can language ever really intersect with the reality of our physical experience? These are poems obsessed with finding, and mining, that intersection. 'The opposite of agency is weathervane,' O'Keefe writes, in these remarkable, sonically rich and deeply intelligent poems."—Paisley Rekdal, author of Imaginary Vessels