<p>&ldquo;A joyful love of life shines through brilliantly in Tim Suermondt&rsquo;s <em>The World Doesn&rsquo;t Know You</em>. Whether the speaker of the poem is spreading tar on a roof with his father, envisioning Sinatra spurned by a lover, or wearing a Mets cap in a cathedral, the tone is consistently appealing: charmed and charming. The love poems to his wife are written with enormous feeling and no sentimentality. Not a word is out of place in this book and Suermondt&rsquo;s voice is equal to the vast range of people and places encountered throughout the collection.&rdquo;&mdash;John Skoyles, Author of <em>Suddenly It&rsquo;s Evening: Selected Poems</em></p><p><br />
&ldquo;You will marvel at the poems in Tim Suermondt&rsquo;s new collection the way you would marvel at a spring bubbling up from God-knows-where with a water so sweet and clear that you can&rsquo;t help but cup your hands and drink deeply. Poem after poem in<em> The World Doesn&rsquo;t Know You</em> brims with exuberant, colloquial, big-hearted insight. Soon you realize that these are Suermondt&rsquo;s psalms, his praise-songs and love-songs for the lives we manage to eke out of a world that intermingles hopes and fears, glories and misery, and gives us every once in a while a glimpse of a band of sparrows flying overhead &ldquo;in ordained ragged formation / ever so beautifully.&rdquo;&mdash;Fred Marchant, Author of <em>Said Not Said</em></p>