The Pitch
Tom Thompson
Urban experience drives the savvy, energetic lyrics of Tom Thompson’s impressive second collection. The Pitch revels in the contradictions of the city: interiors & exteriors, beauty & fear, pastoral & constructed, the Buy & the Sell. Written with a keen attention to sound and filled with transparent, iridescent, ephemeral imagery touched with whimsy (bubbles, baubles, squeaks, fandangos), these spirited poems convey a sense of both urgency and warmth—together celebrating the city’s hustle and hucksters, its pride of citizens and suspects.
“Inspired by that infamous city-dwelling poet Baudelaire, the 48 poems of Thompson’s second collection swagger, looking with equal parts wonder and spleen through the streets of New York….In the best of these, Thompson makes the awful beautiful and the beautiful awful, in the hope that ‘when / radiance comes we go / with it even if it blinds us.’”
—Publishers Weekly
"[Thompson’s] poems are not bound by the constraints of realism or logic but live in that zone above the trampoline's bounce, a place seemingly-but illusorily-gravity-free...wordplay and punning pour expertly from his poet's cup."
—Library Journal
"The Pitch is finally an ebullient celebration, itself a place where the "looted images" of Thompson's city and life can rise to amaze us regardless of their original homes."
—Colorado Review
"Tom Thompson's The Pitch uses the lyric's music to propel the reader through his perceptions of the world and identity..."
—Xantippe
"Before the sum of the parts of the city can equal the limits of location (here defined by concrete, water towers and rooftops), Tom
Thompson's poems pull the speaker back out of the crowd. The Pitch is located in the moments where atmosphere ends and subjectivity begins. Here the 'not quite' occupies space and all notions of urban are disallowed from overtaking the landscape. This collection is an astonishing experience that turns a room into an everywhere. The book is exquisite and luxurious and mysterious."
—Claudia Rankine
about the author
Tom Thompson is the author of Live Feed. Recent poems have appeared in Boston Review, Colorado Review, Conduit, electronic poetry review, The Hat, Kiosk,Volt, Xantippe and other publications. He lives with his wife and two sons in New York City and Coxsackie, NY. He works at an advertising agency in the city.
Author photo by Miranda Field
two poems from the pitch
electronic press kit (pdf file)
