Bill Tremblay, 12th Annual ODU Literary Festival

Bill Tremblay is the author of five books of poetry. The poems in Crying in the Cheap Seats, 1971, were called ambitious and intense, natural and sprawling. His vision is turned in on himself and turned back on the world, on the crises of conscience that envelop all men. The Anarchist Heart, 1977, drew this praise: Bill Tremblay\u27s poems are committed to life… . Tremblay looks at his history and moment, tangles with it all, struggles from it and deals it to us in the poem. Home Front, 1978, brought this response: Bill Tremblay\u27s poetry grows like the broadening light of day: discovering new angles and textures in the old human concerns, seeking out the pockets of shadow which mask true motive and feeling. Of Second Sun: New and Selected Poems, 1985, critics said, There is often a wonderful energy...a kind of whirling energy...he has a fantastic grasp of the way human psyches, especially those in distress, move, and he does not encourage the pale esthetic stuff…but writing about the most important experiences... . Duhamel: Ideas of Order in Little Canada, a collection of poems in the voice of a French-Canadian painter living in New England, has been praised for the way the harsh complex clarity and the paradoxically tender compassion of this book make an extraordinary power for the dimensions of its hero. Bill Tremblay offers a unique testament to a world whose brutal fragility has found no other way to speak. Born in Connecticut, Tremblay now lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, and teaches at Colorado State University