Phosphorescence of Thought

Author: Peter O'Leary

Publisher: The Cultural Society (2013)

Smyth-sewn paperback.

What does the mind do with its own “excessive novelty,” the efflorescence of consciousness that saturates the world, at once waste and grace? In Phosphorescence of Thought, Peter O’Leary contemplates the frothing song of a house Wren as an instance of this “fluid exuberance” of mind. And like the bird’s song, his poetry unfurls a work of evolutionary wonder: exhilarating in its creative force, virtuosic in its repetitions and variations, and mournful in the face of environmental devastations.