Like All Light: Poems
A full-length poetry book, published by Gunpowder Press in Santa Barbara, California, as the winner of the Barry Spacks Poetry Prize in 2021.
“From the opening lines of Like All Light and throughout the collection, Todd Copeland wraps these poems in elegiac language both lyrical and haunting. His flood of memories—real and imagined—will remain with the reader long after the reading is done. Take your time; it’s well worth the journey.”
—Lynne Thompson, Los Angeles Poet Laureate
“These attentive love poems—love of place, love of family, love of language—are ‘worldly’ in a most generous, deeply human and humble sense. Heir to metaphysical poets like Charles Wright and James Wright, Copeland understands that poems not only reflect but take place; and in his vision, landscapes (literal and metaphorical, internal and external) are so reverently observed that each reveals its singular luminosity.”
—Lisa Russ Spaar, author of Madrigalia: New & Selected Poems
“Like All Light is aptly titled in that these poems illuminate our world with, as the poet writes, an ‘elegiac brightness.’ Copeland’s world is a fallen one, but one that is still suffused with grace, if one knows where to look, and these poems teach us how to do just that. We are invited to ‘make something / that never existed before.’ Pound urged poets to ‘make it new,’ and Copeland answers that call in a collection of phenomenal tenderness and beauty.”
—Austin Smith, author of Flyover Country
The Book as Knife: Poems
A poetry chapbook, published by Ravenna Press in Edmonds, Washington, as part of its Triple Series, in 2021.
The Immortal Ten
: The Definitive Account of the 1927 Tragedy and Legacy at Baylor University
A narrative nonfiction book, published by Baylor University Press in 2006.
“Since that tragic January day in 1927, and for the several decades that followed, most Baylor people and many Texans vividly remembered the bus-train collision that resulted in the deaths of ten Baylor athletes and students. But details can elude us and memories grow dim with the passage of time. Now, based on some marvelous in-depth research, Todd Copeland has brought that day and those victims and survivors back to life. His dramatic account should be ‘must’ reading for Baylor people everywhere, as well as for those for whom Southwest Conference history still commands a place close to their hearts.”
―Dave Campbell, former Waco Tribune-Herald sports editor and founder of Texas Football magazine
“Todd Copeland has told the story of Baylor’s Immortal Ten with a dignity of remembrance justly deserved by the young men who lost their lives. He has made each of the passengers of that ill-fated bus become personal acquaintances to the reader instead of distant shades of memory. The Baylor spirit that is personified in the story of the Immortal Ten has been indelibly enriched by Copeland’s masterful treatment of the subject.”
―Dr. Eugene Baker, Baylor University historian from 1981 to 1995 and author of To Light the Ways of Time