Three Mouths by Tod Thilleman

...suspension of linguistic meaning that verges toward music, a mid magnetic
between meaning and resonance that touches on both only to veer off, return,
whirl to a stop and begin again... there is a liberating aspect to hearing or
reading a poem that eludes signification only to capture it soon enough...
with echoes or Samuel Greenberg and Hart Crane...   Allan Graubard

No single note can contain or describe this work, nor is there a quiet sameness
which will lull one beyond question. Instead there is a composed concentration
in the center of calamitous movement—movement which embodies inquiry, which
listens as a means of locomotion, transferring setting to sound, venturing out along
many circumstances.  Laynie Browne, from the introduction

Tod Thilleman began to attract attention with his sequence collection Wave-Run
and has continued to mine secrets and depths inherent in language, but often
ignored. The magic of words—that they have lives of their own beyond their obvious
power to communicate information .... Between continues that process, informed
by his conductus, the Daemon. It is a great privilege to have been allowed to
follow the quest. Theodore Enslin

Zukofsky tells us that those without greek can still pick up the sound of the sea—
and know that it is the sea—from hearing Homer’s language. Those who sound the
language of Tod Thilleman’s Wave-Run may at first feel submerged in a foreign
language only to arrive at a later—and deeper, more alive—realization of English and
of a different sea. “Cupped, cupped coiling wave contains/somewhere line’s form’s
language.” The same is true vice versa.   John Taggart

Wave-Run roars up the beach with all of modernity and its detritus glistening on the
crest. Thilleman’s craft, the drive and punning images of his language, movingly
replay in contemporary terms the old myth of Ocean and our fascinated love of it.  Michael Heller

Wave-Run’s surge and inevitability have as much to do with our individual selves as
with the world’s primal forces. This book is a spiritual journey. It is also an intellectual
journey gathering several traditions—the Classical of Homer, the Romantic of Shelley,
the Modern of Pound and Olson. Thilleman’s unabashed indulgence in the sensuous,
moreover, reveals his sympathies with Moore and Crane, Zukofsky and Duncan.
Wave-Run’s deeply intuitive, intelligent and vibrant poems will gain a great many
admirers.   Burt Kimmelman

...it returns the city of New York to water, to the sea...Wave-Run is a celebration of
the poetics of flow... of the line always in motion.  Joe Napora

One important realization Sonic Model urges is that sound itself is the fundament of
our lives. The roar through a subway wind tunnel is not unlike the roar of the beach.
To be alive everywhere is a commitment implied in all his work.   Burt Kimmelman