Subtly incorporating myth, history, landscape, pop culture, and aesthetics as possible solaces within the labyrinth of grief, The Tangled Line explores the fragile circumstances of family and fatherhood. These poems remind us that when we try to possess, literally or figuratively, materially or metaphorically, legally or lyrically, we create the possibility of violence to ourselves, others, and the world--often injuring that which we hold most dear.

"Father-son. Bodies. Seeing. Conventions of sentences. Grace. Distrust. Guilt. Souped-up engines. Sorrow. Love. Process. Hunger. Elk hair. Celebrities. Topeka. Arkansas. Tennessee. Spokane. A myth. The new you. A chicken-necked Daedalus. A pale cavefish. Red berries. If you're looking for a poet who can 'describe Breton to the Enlightenment,' look no further" 
Gillian Conoley



2009

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Range of Voices offers five poems by each of the twenty poets included in Range of the Possible, Tod Marshall's landmark anthology of interviews with contemporary poets. These one hundred poems provide a complementary resource with which to gain further insight into the diverse practices of these important and distinctive poets born between 1941 and 1959. Readers of contemporary literature and students of contemporary culture will find this collection driven by the same energy that led David Baker, poetry editor of The Kenyon Review, to describe Marshall's earlier book as "invigorating, enlightening, and refreshing."  Among the twenty poets included are Linda Bierds, Gillian Conoley, Robert Hass, Edward Hirsch, Christopher Howell, Yusef Komunyakaa, Dorianne Laux, Li-Young Lee, Lucia Perillo, David St. John, Dave Smith, Carolyne Wright, and Robert Wrigley.





2005
"Marshall perspicaciously identifies a distinct generation of American poets who, born between 1941 and 1959, came of age and came to poetry in a world dramatically transformed by nuclear weapons, the civil rights movement, environmental devastation, technological proliferation, rampant consumerism, Third World warfare, and overpopulation. Curious about how this generation views poetry as a craft and a practice, who their influences are, and how they work, Marshall conducted interviews with 20 diverse, immensely talented poets who have powerful feelings about artistic diversity and passion, the unbreakable connection between reading and writing poetry, and devotion to vision and form. Each conversation--from learned discussions with such intense poet-scholars as Robert Hass and Edward Hirsch to the mystical perceptions of Li-Young Lee to Linda Bierds' interest in writing about lives other than her own to Yusef Komunyakaa's connection to place--deepens the reader's appreciation for all the knowledge, emotion, and conviction that make poetry the wonder, pleasure, and solace it is. "
Booklist


2002
Eschewing irony for direct statement, the poems in Tod Marshall's first collection imagistically, musically, and passionately articulate a faith in human transcendence. From the mud of our formation ("Choir") to the dust of our dying ("After Kandinsky"), Marshall's poems lyrically obsess over how the broken and violated can envision and speak a heaven of which we know. 

"Marshall's debut collection is a startling, compelling, and simply gorgeous book of poems. This is a poet who believes passionately and profoundly in the power of beauty and art—yet trusts neither entirely. Impeccably crafted and stylishly adept, these poems speak to both the losses of our cultural history as well as to the hopes we still hold to renew this moment of our present. Dare Say marks the arrival of an impressive and powerful young poet."
David St. John


2002