Todd F. Williams
Book of Poetry
All
Water Is
Holy
All Water Is Holy, the second full-length book of poetry by author Todd Williams, "is the sound of a flood in the desert." The former South Dakota journalist, now living in Saudi Arabia, examines water, as life, in its many transitions, from birth to death and everything in between, including thunderstorms, glaciers, tornadoes, water bears, sweat, a tea kettle's whistle, and even seventh-grade swim class.
Order here
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All Water Is Holy is the sound of a flood in a desert. Memories are water in allies forms and wherever it is found — boiling kettles, garden hoses, baptismal founts, retreating glaciers — carving, eroding, and reshaping the dry, dusty landscapes of hard realities. The inhabitants of Williams' poems are fortunate to be watched over by a protective father, attentive husband, mourning son, and empathetic friend. His well-measured observations blend the water of memory with the sand and grit of real life, floating us into a riparian zone 'where mystery/becomes a murky truth/without answers.'
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— Eric Lochridge, author of My Breath Floats Away From Me
Words about Words (for the poetry in
All Water Is Holy)
All Water Is Holy often is a triumph in lyrical fluidity and expanse — with water as conduit as we follow the poet effortlessly through memory. What a pleasure to encounter a poet with rhythm and texture, with vulnerability and candor; what a pleasure to 'feel the pull of everything ever lost while delighting in our return to shore."
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— Michael 'MJ' Jones, author of Hood Vacations
Todd Williams demonstrates an imagination broad and deep in these poems, offering prophesy and prayer that capture events and ideas in pinpoint detail. Voices of memory, images that evoke a vision and understanding that a reader always hopes for. From childhood memories of tragedy and humiliation, to hope and desire and recognition of a world full of wonder, water saturates the poems, sweat and streams and steam and tears and clouds and snow and vapor and the bulk of the body. Williams leads the reader to 'a stillness that seemed to have stopped time' the most ordinary circumstances, just what we ask the poet to do. Stop and see. That's what these poems say. What more can we ask?"
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— John Nelson, author of Bootjack and West River
