
Contracted World, The
New & More Selected Poems
Peter Meinke(Author)
University of Pittsburgh Press
Published on 20. January 2006
Book
Paperback/Softback
128 pages
978-0-8229-5918-2 (ISBN)
Description
The Contracted World includes representative poems from four of Peter Meinke's previous collections. In poems that show us what it is like to grow up in America, love, nature, cities, sports, war, and peace are filtered through the imagination and verbal skills of one of our brightest poets.
The new poems experiment with form, and address a life that is shrinking in specific ways: the poet is aging, the world is getting smaller, our post-9/11 freedoms are eroding, and our choices seem fewer and less attractive. Despite feelings of anger and loneliness, the narrator speaks to us in a personal, accessible, and often humorous voice.
The new poems experiment with form, and address a life that is shrinking in specific ways: the poet is aging, the world is getting smaller, our post-9/11 freedoms are eroding, and our choices seem fewer and less attractive. Despite feelings of anger and loneliness, the narrator speaks to us in a personal, accessible, and often humorous voice.
Reviews / Votes
Each poem is striking, and many are immediate favorites, all composed of vigor, sentiment, the high idealism and the self-humor that are particularly ours, and dished up in the twang and slang of American plainsong. * <i>Publishers Weekly</i> on <i>The Night Train and the Golden Bird</i> * Meinke hits his real stride, roving with eager curiosity and honesty from free verse to well-wrought sonnets and back again. . . . Meinke's control over his medium is remarkably secure. He can push traditional verse toward doggerel without endangering his honesty. * <i>Poetry Magazine</i> on <i>Trying to Surprise God</i> * If you are one of the millions who is bored, perplexed or overawed by contemporary poetry, do the muse, and yourself, a favor: buy and read Peter Meinke's Night Watch on the Chesapeake. . . . His strong instinct for significance and an ear always cocked for the clang and splash and euphony of language . . . sounds spoken, fresh, not 'poetic.' * <i>St. Petersburg Times</i> on <i>Night Watch on the Chesapeake</i> * There is a little of the Ancient Mariner in the tenacity and urgency with which Peter Meinke addresses his readers. These poems get hold of us by the coat lapels and when they release us we are delighted, shaken, and considerably wiser. * Ted Kooser on <i>Scars</i> * [Meinke's poems] never omit the music of language and a real search for meaning; and while by turns playful, satirical and paradoxical, they never undercut their honesty by descending into nonsense. * <i>Coldfront Magazine</i> *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Pittsburgh PA
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 162 mm
Thickness: 10 mm
Weight
231 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8229-5918-2 (9780822959182)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
01/2006
Princeton University Press
€25.49
Available for download
Person
Peter Meinke is emeritus professor of creative writing at Eckerd College. He has published numerous books of poetry, including Scars, Zinc Fingers, Liquid Paper, and The Contracted World: New & More Selected Poems. Meinke is the recipient of many awards,