J.R. (John) Thelin

Works

Spin: Tales from the Diamond (forthcoming, 2025)

This is a chapbook that explores personal memories of playing baseball as a youth and how that experience may fit into a larger societal context, then and now.

Spin: Tales from the Diamond (forthcoming, 2025)

A North American sport since the 1840s, baseball has been described as “the national religion of the U.S.” and “America’s favorite pastime.” Spin: Tales from the Diamond tracks one writer’s love of the game from sandy lots to major league parks, from pickup games by grade school players to suffering, as an adult, another losing season by his favorite professional team since childhood. The chapbook is also a story of father/son connections, of hoped-for romance and glory, and a meditation about growing up, and old, in the U.S.A. #poetry #baseball #chicagocubs #fathersandsons #baseballdiamonds #sandlots #gregmaddux J. R. Thelin’s collections of poems include Last Cha Cha in Albuquerque (2017) and Breath Into Bone (2010), as well as three previous chapbooks: Those Last Few Moments of Light: Poems of the Dead Boy (2023); The Way Out West (2005); and Dorrance, Narrative, History (2004). After working for many years in Development, Thelin retired as senior development researcher from University of Virginia in 2020.

Last Cha Cha in Albuquerque

This book explores the greater Metropolitan area of Albuquerque in the early 1970s with portraits of young people of several ethnic groups, including White, Black, Hispanic, and American Indian.

Last Cha Cha in Albuquerque

J.R. Thelín’s previous collections of poems include Breath Into Bone (Smalls Books, 2010) and two chapbooks, Dorrance, Narrative, History (Pudding House Publications, 2004) and The Way Out West (Concrete Wolf, 2005). In 2008, his entry to the Bomb magazine poetry competition was chosen by Kimiko Hahn as the winner and was published in the spring issue for 2009. Thelín has attended numerous schools, including Carleton College, Colorado College (B.A.), and Vermont College of Fine Arts (M.F.A.). He lives in Buena Vista, VA and works at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. John is also a professional musician (drummer) and a foreign film fanatic.

Those Last Few Moments of Light: Poems of the Dead Boy

A chapbook of poems in which there is a primary featured speaker, who is not the dead boy, but who interacts with this boy who remains on the earth despite being dead, and comments upon the dead boy's actions and relationships.

Those Last Few Moments of Light: Poems of the Dead Boy

"Part meditation on time and reality, part homage to an era that no longer exists, Thelin captures with narrative intensity the hold the past has on the present." —Pui Ying Wong