ABOUT PEDESTRIAN DOMESTIC

AN INTIMATE AND THOUGHTFUL NEW COLLECTION FROM AWARD WINNING POET JEFF TIGCHELAAR

Like the Ohio River moving through Huntington, West Virginia, Jeff Tigchelaar’s new collection floats its readers through considerations of small-town life, fatherhood, and the simplest aspects of everyday existence: office doughnuts, JFK coins, holding a child during their first storm, being bitten by a ladybug. At its heart, Pedestrian Domestic asserts our faith in one another, leaving us questioning our ability to declare that nothing is true, “doubting myself and then doubting myself / for ever having doubted.”  

Through dream sequences, persona poems, and callbacks to classic American poetry, Pedestrian Domestic presents a new stencil for introspection and moves us through a workweek timeline all its own, where “I shouldn’t but I turn / and look for as long as I can.” This book is love; this book is wrestling; this book is staying home. Like the endless stacks of paper essential to a writer’s life, Tigchelaar’s uncommon poetry shows that there is no best way to be a parent, a partner, an artist, except to remain entirely yourself. 

PRAISE FOR PEDESTRIAN DOMESTIC

“Funny and tender, I love this book for its inquisitive spirit, and for how it swivels from the historic to the personal to the existential (often in the same poem). This is a book that can quietly ask big questions, and it does so in ways that are inventive, surprising, and full of feeling.”
—Matthew Olzmann, author of Constellation Route & Contradictions in the Design

“Come take a walk with Jeff Tigchelaar in Pedestrian Domestic through a landscape of wisdom and wit. Tigchelaar’s domestic sphere is one where the most important questions of our lives unfold — How do we care for each other? How do we learn to hold on and let go? What do we do when we’ve accidentally zipped our child’s soft neck into their coat and they are screaming bloody murder? Pedestrian Domestic has beautiful answers and excellent questions — these poems are a pleasure and an enlightenment to read.” —Kathryn Nuernberger, author of HELD: Essays in Belonging

“‘What’s your real name?’ ends the associative riff of ‘The Thing and the Place’ from Jeff Tigchelaar’s brilliant collection Pedestrian Domestic, in which seemingly plain-spoken free-verse poems exploit word play and line breaks to turn meanings on a Franklin dime, and sometimes, to reveal the ironies and pathos of American lives and voice. In this poem, the speaker is isolated in the family attic, and in his head, due to covid, and remembers, finds, invents and curates the thing and the place, and thus positions himself with Thoreau and Dickinson and Melville as among American literary isolates, some of whom he satirizes in the poems, even as he represents himself as sometimes hapless: as the opening poem’s title asks ‘Is there anything I can do?’ Much of the poetry is remembered dialog, the poet with himself and family, and some overheard. All reveal the poet’s ear for spoken English, and, in my view, sometimes delve into the psychology of self-consciousness and shame. ‘What IS my real name,’ I ask after reading the deeply smart Pedestrian Domestic.” —Mary B. Moore, author of Amanda Chimera

“These poems should delight and refresh anyone’s day with their quirky humor and subtle elevation of the quotidian into a world of transcendent wonders. Tigchelaar’s command of a wide range of tonal registers creates a diverse cast of voices that’s also impressive, all the more so as these voices often come to us in a wild and hypnotic rush that reminds me of Ginsberg and Corso. I was also impressed by his uncanny ability to make poetry spring to life from entrancing and sometimes exotic renderings of balloons and blackbirds, of Band-Aids and ladybugs, of Chevy trucks, Wonderland hedgehogs, and so much more! Highly recommended.” —Marc Harshman, Poet Laureate of West Virginia & author of Dispatch from the Mountain State

“The poems in Pedestrian Domestic offer the breeziness of a screened sunporch, a cooling warmth. But beware the good-natured directness, the smooth articulation of Tigchelaar’s observations. There’s doubt here, deep and abiding questions, a wry humor that comes in several shades of dark. Without being overtly confessional, these poems build an intimacy with the loved and lost ones in the poet’s — in anyone’s — life. And his insights are far from pedestrian, with a slanted sense of irony and gratitude. Chamomile tea served with a twist of jalapeño. A rich and moving collection from a poet who consistently lifts our common language into the memorable.” —A.E. Stringer, author of Asbestos Brocade & Late Breaking

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jeff Tigchelaar is a former newspaper reporter, editor, and stay-at-home dad whose writing has appeared in journals including New Ohio Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, North American Review, Pleiades, and The Laurel Review, and in anthologies such as Verse Daily, Best New Poets, and New Poetry from the Midwest. His poetry garnered a fellowship from the Ohio Arts Council, and his first book, Certain Streets at an Uncertain Hour won the 2016 Kansas Authors Club Nelson Poetry Book Award. Jeff currently works at Cabell County Public Library in Huntington, West Virginia, where he resides with his wife and two children. In Huntington. Not at the library.