Bottum's book appears in a 2022 list of most memorable books of the year by former Paradise resident John Wilson, editor of the journal Books and Culture: A Christian Review for all of its 21 years of storied history.
The poem which gives the book its title observes that "Time's in arrears/ Crankier each frozen morning,/ The water heater groans in warning/ That it will soon give up the ghost./ Nothing lasts in a winter post." Still, the silent snow is worth listening to:
"The mind in winter may find a cleanness,/ A keening wind to clear the meanness/ Of skinflint soul and the chronic day,/ A wind to tear vain thoughts away./ Self-concern, self-esteem,/ Numbed and muted—till we seem/ Nothing but a snow-capped field:/ Draped in winter, smoothed and healed."
Bottum's accessible poems rejoice in form, rhyme, wordplay. In "Reading by Osmosis," the poet can hardly hide the sarcasm: "Percy B. Shelley and Machiavelli/ And Norman Vincent Peale--/ We've never tried opening one of their books./ We know them by their feel.// Does reading seem boring? Does reading seem hard?/ Does reading seem too precocious?/ Just pick up a book and give it a twirl./ You'll learn it by osmosis." … "We bobble, bounce, and throw them./ We never even look./ Osmosis means we know them without opening a book."
For Bottum, winter is not about being snowbound in time, unable to move, but a recognition that even though the world is shrouded in division and death, "Easter Morning" has come, will come, and has overcome:
"Time," the poet writes, "Reaches forward, hungry for winter,/ And what will save my daughter when even/ Hope is caught in the ancient snare?/ A cold fear waits—till all that had fallen,/ All that was lost, rudely broken,/ Crossed in love, comes rising, rising,/ On the breath of the new spring air."
