Adversaria

Winner of the 1993 Terrence Des Pres Prize for Poetry

This is the debut collection of Timothy Russell--born in Ohio, raised in West Virginia, and employed at Weirton Steel for twenty years. Adversaria celebrates the rough beauty of ordinary life and laments its inevitable decline. In depicting life in and around a small town with a steel mill, these poems combine colloquial style with a late imperial tone to capture the stark contrasts and contradictions of a life lived between the mill and the silent grace of the natural world.

"[T]he genuineness and authority of Russell's work cannot be gainsaid; he brings us close to "ordinary life," and then inside its strangeness." -- Poetry

"The life that Russell portrays, hard as it is, is a whole life, awful and lovely." -- Hudson Review

"Adversaria is a classy addition to the Rust Belt strain of the American grain." -- Taproot Reviews