C. L. O'Dell was born in the Hudson Valley. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, Ploughshares, the New Statesman, New England Review, The Southern Review, The Iowa Review, and have been featured on Poetry Daily and RTÉ. A recent semi-finalist for the 92Y's Discovery Poetry Contest and the Brittingham & Felix Pollak Prize, his poem "My Father Named the Trees" was selected by Dorianne Laux for the Best New Poets anthology. He is founder and editor of The Paris-American.

Poems Online

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"under each slab of darkness,
an infant bit of light was still learning how to turn
​into nothing"

— from "While Lying on the Back of a Blue Whale"