Tom Edison is one of those people who make me believe there are still kind strangers out there.
We met on the evening before Thanksgiving. Everyone in this college town had already gone to their parents for a night of home cooking, while I was here in Eugene. I’d invited eight people over to my place for a feast at the last minute.
I am no Wolfgang Puck nor did I plan ahead for the meal, so at 9:30pm on Thanksgiving eve, I headed to Safeway on 18th to cross everything off my shopping list.
My cart was piled double wide with about $300 of groceries and I’d made the fatal mistake of choosing self checkout.
Later I realized this was a fateful miss and it brought me to Tom.
He helped me scan my heaping cart of green beans and yams and we got to talking in the 1000 years this took.
By the end of the exchange, I knew he was a Californian, an April Aries and poet with his first book on the way. All he knew about me was that I was not destined to earn a Michelin star in the near future.
“Recurring Dreams: (Poems: 1989-1990)” is Tom’s debut book of poems written during his senior year of highschool and published 33 years later, on Mar. 24 this year.
Inside you’ll find tales of first love, stories of innocence — and becoming un-innocent — and a vulnerable look into navigating the awkward years when you’re both a young adult and a kid.
It’s the first book of a collection of poems from a series he is preparing to publish. 2027 is the year he says they’ll all be out if all releases go as planned. After ‘27 he’s got philosophy books, screenplays and science fiction on the release roster. Tom’s one busy dude.
Back to the matter at hand, “Recurring Dreams” is the perfect snapshot of being a young adult and a more honest look at adolescence than I’ve read from anyone who’s plastered in the Barnes and Nobles window display. Edison’s got courage in the raw qualities of “Recurring Dreams.” I’d call it the published-yet-unfiltered diary entry of a teenager seeing the world for the first time. It allows itself the space to be sweet while still being real.
Edison goes back in time to when he moved into his grandma’s house in Riverside, CA during the summer of 1989. “It was the summer between my junior and senior year of high school,” says Edison. “My grandmother had bought me my first typewriter that July. I was furiously writing all the time.”
In real time, the author typed out details. Walks with his highschool sweetheart and the dirt under her fingernails. The morning after New Years Eve in “Young Existentialist Club,” though he admits it was written before he knew what the word existentialist meant. Feelings of dread and feelings of firsts. It’s a rare voice that only those formative years can really provide. Others try and recall the time once it’s passed to no avail, but Edison captured it as it played out in front of him.
I could talk about the book all day, but you might as well just read it for yourself. I’d recommend keeping an eye out for “When I was Young,” “Primavera,” “We Slumber On” and “She’s Here.”
After three decades of growing up, Edison looks back on those “Recurring Dreams” years with tenderness.
“I was a teenager for sure, but simultaneously a version of myself as I am now,” he recalls, smiling with his book in hand.
The cover features a younger Edison, but at a divey Eugene sports bar as we sit across from each other with a plate of nachos and a beer I spilled between us, I see him just the same.
Tom Edison’s second release ‘The Religion of Wonder” (Poems 1991) will be released in Early September. You can find it on Amazon.com along with the first book.
