What We Love: Poems by Ed Meek

What We Love. Poems by Ed Meek ( Blue Light Press 1st World Library PO BOX 2211 Fairfield, Iowa 52556) $16. http://www.1stworldlibrary.com/

Some years ago Ibbetson Street published a chapbook of poems by Ed Meek titled: “Walk Out” Since then I have seen Meek’s poems crop up in a fair number of journals in the small press. Meek’s poems are on the surface deceptively simple, but underneath lie the layers of meaning. Meek writes equally well about nature, as he does people. He captures the nuances and telling detail, so important in the construct of a poem. Case-in-point—in Meek’s poem “Divorce” he uses the conceit of divorcing the tired image of oneself, at say—fifty years old. Here is Meek’s convincing grocery list of a midlife crisis (believe me I know):

“Move to a new city. Leave behind/ that fat lazy fool who returns your hopeful gaze/ in cruel mirrors every morning/as you brush your caffeine-stained teeth/…This is the year to take a train into tomorrow/ one-way ticket in hand,/ where no one knows your name/ and you can be someone else..”

In “At the Beach on the Hottest Day of the Year” Meek describes floating on the water in a blissful state of suspended animation:

“…Instead I remain suspended, belly up,
eyes closed to time, which goes by, I guess, without me.
As if I’d left my body behind and become
nothing more or less than thought
buoyant as a bubble in the air.”

Recommended.

Doug Holder/ Ibbetson Update/ Feb. 2007