Publication Date: April 15, 2026
Paperback, 124 pages
ISBN: 978-1-966677-42-0
In his poetry collection Pareidolia, Michael Brosnan asks us to see life in the abstract. Floating clouds, a fishing heron, or ducks on a pond all become metaphor describing the abstract concepts that form his life, all our lives. In the title poem we are told to listen to “the bright trill / of the winter wren,” that it is “an exhortation of how to greet / the day with full on awareness / that this is it, the all of it, bathed / in grace and beyond our grasp.”
Brosnan exhorts us to ask the unanswerable and yet constantly seek the answers in music, nature and most importantly, in self-reflection. The perpetual questions of where have we been? How does that affect where we go or end? The adult version of “are we there yet?” Do we ever get there? And if so, how do we know?
Brosnan forms poems based on phrases that come to him in a seemingly random manner. In reality these works are carefully composed and exquisitely crafted. These poems move us to look around and more importantly, listen around us. What is the “soul contained in sound”?
Praise for Michael Brosnan & Pareidolia
Michael Brosnan’s terrific fourth book, Pareidolia, lives within the curious and wonderful moments where lives brush against each other. Here, encounters with ducks, herons, lovers, tuna sandwiches, and strangers are a “parade in random patterns.” Yet Brosnan deftly — and with such heart — turns these associations into the very essence of how we experience life: nonlinear, and with an immediacy to the threads which connect us to each other, which ground us in who we were and who we will become. “Some days you’ve just got to believe / there is no grand plan,” Brosnan writes, taking genuine comfort in the seemingly chance ways our lives take shape. Through it all, Brosnan is a poet in awe of his surroundings, eager to document with clarity everything from the tongue of the vole to the expanse of language, seeking meaning within each thread that makes a life.
—Samantha DeFlitch, author of Cornerstone & 2025 Artist in Residence at Acadia National Park
An exquisitely crafted lyrical lens held up to a life not merely lived but deeply examined, Pareidolia, as the title might suggest, is an artist’s attempt to find, in the shapes and lines of poetry, meaning and patterns in the great mystery of our shared human existence. Navigating through city and country, through the natural world and the human, through the music of language and the language of music, Brosnan, with stunning verse, meditates upon joy and loss as only an older poet can and yet with all the vibrancy and energy of a still discovering artist. Pareidolia is an achievement of voice and style available only to the mature and fully realized poet.
—Matt W. Miller, award-winning author of Tender the River & Club Icarus
About the Author
Michael Brosnan is a poet and writer based in Exeter, New Hampshire. He is the author of three earlier collections of poetry: The Sovereignty of the Accidental (2018), Adrift (2023), and Emu Blis, Bums Lie, Blue-ism (2024), the latter of which was a finalist for the Wandering Aengus Book Award. His poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals and has won awards from various arts organizations. He is also the author of Against the Current, a book on urban education, and writes often on issues related to teaching and learning.
Publication Date: April 15, 2026
Paperback, 124 pages
ISBN: 978-1-966677-42-0
In his poetry collection Pareidolia, Michael Brosnan asks us to see life in the abstract. Floating clouds, a fishing heron, or ducks on a pond all become metaphor describing the abstract concepts that form his life, all our lives. In the title poem we are told to listen to “the bright trill / of the winter wren,” that it is “an exhortation of how to greet / the day with full on awareness / that this is it, the all of it, bathed / in grace and beyond our grasp.”
Brosnan exhorts us to ask the unanswerable and yet constantly seek the answers in music, nature and most importantly, in self-reflection. The perpetual questions of where have we been? How does that affect where we go or end? The adult version of “are we there yet?” Do we ever get there? And if so, how do we know?
Brosnan forms poems based on phrases that come to him in a seemingly random manner. In reality these works are carefully composed and exquisitely crafted. These poems move us to look around and more importantly, listen around us. What is the “soul contained in sound”?
Praise for Michael Brosnan & Pareidolia
Michael Brosnan’s terrific fourth book, Pareidolia, lives within the curious and wonderful moments where lives brush against each other. Here, encounters with ducks, herons, lovers, tuna sandwiches, and strangers are a “parade in random patterns.” Yet Brosnan deftly — and with such heart — turns these associations into the very essence of how we experience life: nonlinear, and with an immediacy to the threads which connect us to each other, which ground us in who we were and who we will become. “Some days you’ve just got to believe / there is no grand plan,” Brosnan writes, taking genuine comfort in the seemingly chance ways our lives take shape. Through it all, Brosnan is a poet in awe of his surroundings, eager to document with clarity everything from the tongue of the vole to the expanse of language, seeking meaning within each thread that makes a life.
—Samantha DeFlitch, author of Cornerstone & 2025 Artist in Residence at Acadia National Park
An exquisitely crafted lyrical lens held up to a life not merely lived but deeply examined, Pareidolia, as the title might suggest, is an artist’s attempt to find, in the shapes and lines of poetry, meaning and patterns in the great mystery of our shared human existence. Navigating through city and country, through the natural world and the human, through the music of language and the language of music, Brosnan, with stunning verse, meditates upon joy and loss as only an older poet can and yet with all the vibrancy and energy of a still discovering artist. Pareidolia is an achievement of voice and style available only to the mature and fully realized poet.
—Matt W. Miller, award-winning author of Tender the River & Club Icarus
About the Author
Michael Brosnan is a poet and writer based in Exeter, New Hampshire. He is the author of three earlier collections of poetry: The Sovereignty of the Accidental (2018), Adrift (2023), and Emu Blis, Bums Lie, Blue-ism (2024), the latter of which was a finalist for the Wandering Aengus Book Award. His poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals and has won awards from various arts organizations. He is also the author of Against the Current, a book on urban education, and writes often on issues related to teaching and learning.
