Synopses & Reviews
In
Lucky Bones, Peter Meinke moves fluidly through free and formal shapes, taking the reader on a tour through America in the 21st century: family, politics, love, war and peace, old age and death are looked at in ways that are surprising, clear, and warm-hearted. Lit by flashes of anger and laughter as he surveys his territory from the vantage point of old age, the poems are, in the end, both sane and profound, set to Meinkes own music.
Consisting of over sixty new poems, the book begins with a house-shaped poem about a family in a beloved old home, and then moves out into the world with poems about a fire-bug, drive-by shootings, and the often violent human condition before circling back to the home and a final epitaph. A clear-eyed feeling of loss permeates Lucky Bones, but not despair: in the midst of conflict, Meinkes world is full of wonder, and wonderful people.
Review
Peter Meinkes
Lucky Bones takes youwherever you may beto places you
think to experience. Captivating and essential.”
Sue Walker, Poet Laureate of Alabama, 2003-2012
Review
Past praise for Peter Meinke
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 Scars
Review
Meinkes wit is sly, as dry as a good martini.”
Colette Bancroft, on Unheard Music
Review
The authors fourteenth book of verse, it further consolidates his reputation among the best and brightest of our countrys poets.”
Bookshelf, on The Contracted World
Review
“Lucky Bones, quantifies the passionate nature of interior intensity and hell-bent fervor by eviscerating a cosen set of targets inhabiting this vale of tears that we call life. Many of his poetic commentaries Meinke delivers in fromalist verse with a cunning dry wit that both elucidates and cautions.”
—Fox Chase Review
About the Author
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 and More Selected Poems. Meinke is the recipient of many awards, including the Olivet Prize, the Paumanok Award, three Poetry Society of America Awards, the Flannery OConnor Award, and two NEA Fellowships. In 2009 he was appointed the first Poet Laureate of St. Petersburg, Florida.