Professor's Poetry Book Called 'Scenic and Intimate'

A new book of poems by Valparaiso University professor Dr. Edward Byrne is being lauded by critics for its lyricism and deep exploration of life and nature.

“Seeded Light,” Dr. Byrne’s sixth collection of poems, is the most extensive book of the English professor’s career.

“‘Seeded Light’ contains a fairly comprehensive scope of poetry,” Dr. Byrne says, “that expresses, through imagery written in accessible language, a variety of views on subjects as diverse as nature, art, literature, music, memory, imagination, friendship, family, love, loss, life, maturity and mortality.”

Dr. Byrne says lyrics in his newest collection connect the past to the present, raising readers’ awareness of their own worlds.

Noted poets have offered praise for the book.

Award-winning poet David Baker writes “Edward Byrne shows the lyric couplet to be a form with its own remarkable flexibility and narrative capacity. ‘Seeded Light’ is memorial and social, scenic and intimate, by turns, providing a humane pathway of one gentle man’s passage through the world in all its weather and worry.”

“Seeded Light,” poet Alfred Corn writes, “offers abundant evidence of a mind’s alertness to the world of nature and to modern urban reality….The fineness of Byrne’s perceptions and the musicality of his lines make following his journeys an instructive pleasure.”

“Seeded Light” is available now at online booksellers. Editions signed and numbered by the poet can be obtained at a 10 percent discount with free shipping by sending a check (payable to Edward Byrne) for $16.20 to: Edward Byrne, Department of English, Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, IN 46383.

Dr. Byrne’s previous poetry books have received numerous honors and awards. His first full-length collection of poetry, “Along the Dark Shore,” was a finalist for the Elliston Book Award, offered by the University of Cincinnati to the best volume of poetry published in the United States by a small press; “The Return to Black and White” was selected by Library Journal as one of its Best of the Small Press Publications; “Words Spoken, Words Unspoken,” was awarded the Cape Rock Prize for Poetry in 1995; and “East of Omaha” was nominated for a Midland Authors Award in 1999.

Dr. Byrne has had poems and essays appear widely in literary journals, serves as the editor of Valparaiso Poetry Review (http://www.valpo.edu/vpr) and writes articles regularly for the VPR editor’s blog, “One Poet’s Notes,” and his personal blog, “An Author’s Assemblage.”

More information about Valpo’s Department of English can be found online at http://www.valpo.edu/english.