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In Common Things

poems by Jefferson Singer

Jefferson Singer's meditative lyric and narrative poems trace patterns of relationships—e.g., husband and wife, parent and child) over a full life course encompassing origins, conflicts, steady habits, and loss. They explore the roots of creativity and spiritual awakening with gratitude for every common and uncommon pleasure—“the hallelujah of azaleas everywhere” and “the spark, the light, the Yes.”

POETRY / General

ISBN: 978-1-962082-37-2 (print; softcover; perfect bound)
ISBN: 978-1-962082-40-2 (print; hardcover; dust jacket)

LCCN: 2024945024

Released September 17, 2024; Copyright 2024

108 pages

Author Biography

Jefferson Singer is the Faulk Foundation Professor of Psychology at Connecticut College in New London, Connecticut, and a clinical psychologist with a psychotherapy practice in West Hartford, Connecticut. He graduated from Amherst College with a double major in psychology and English, receiving both the Academy of American Poets Prize and a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. After earning a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Yale University and conducting a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of California San Francisco, he began his career in the psychology department at Connecticut College. After a long career of publishing articles and books in the fields of personality, psychotherapy, and autobiographical memory, he has increasingly devoted himself to writing poetry and has had poems appear in Sixfold, The Raven’sPerch, Orenaug Mountain Poetry Journal, the Medical Literary Messenger, and the anthology Winter Glimmerings. This is his first book of poetry. An avid hiker, he loves spending time on the trail with his wife, but also reading to his young grandchildren.

Endorsements

“The poems of Jefferson Singer arise from his astute and sensitive observations of the ‘common things’ of the everyday, as well as our common, human experiences. Whether contemplating a visit to an amusement park, watching a baseball game on T.V., or hiking with a friend, these poems move us through the realms of love and family, loss and faith. There are victories here—large, small, miraculous.”
—Kate Rushin, Poet-in-Residence, Connecticut College; author of The Black Back-Ups (Firebrand Books)

“Jefferson's poems are filled with delicate observation and reflective ends, thick with grief, love, family, and the powerful connecting thread between us all. These are the types of poetic recountings of human connection that blow around in the wind and land in the hands of people who need them most.”
—Asia Calcagno, writer, educator, and 2022 Luminarts Cultural Foundation Poetry Fellow

“In Common Things is graced with those daily epiphanies that remind us how any moment can be a revelation, whether raking leaves, sitting in a dentist’s chair, or walking to the supermarket. These moving poems are, as Singer writes, ‘hymnals of the everyday,’ deepening the way we see the world.”
—David Grubin, film-maker; producer, American Experience and Healing and the Mind with Bill Moyers

“The aptly named Singer deftly evokes Wordsworth’s love, ‘the life / In common things,’ with joy and appreciation throughout his lovely, tender, reverent, funny debut, reveling in the sustenance and beauty in family, friends, neighbors, nature, the world—every quotidian thing we can neglect or see as blessing: ‘witness I did not miss / the henna-haired woman / singing with the windows / of her white Volvo open.’ These poems remind me of all I have to be grateful for, and how glad I am to be alive.”
—April Ossmann, author of Event Boundaries (Four Way Books)

“These poignant and contemplative poems open our hearts, and, with new eyes, we consider memory, mortality, the deep joys of family, and the humbling power of nature. Moments are captured, time stops as words carry us into an inner space where love and loss live side by side.”
—Susan Marie Powers, Poet Laureate of Scotland, Connecticut; author of Break the Spell (New London Librarium)

“I’m grateful for this beautiful collection of poems that explores the relationships, prayers, landscapes, and so-called ordinary moments of our lives ‘that held our gaze / caught our breath before we slept again.’ The experience of reading In Common Things felt diastolic; I paused and received poems of loss and joy and necessary, life-giving rhythms.”
—Summar West, poet and Director of College Writing, Connecticut College

Articles and Reviews