WHAT OTHER AUTHORS ARE SAYING:
“Sometimes, Michael Meyerhofer’s poems are
excruciatingly tender, the next moment (or poem)
blistering satire, the next walk-into-a-wall funny.
The one thing that’s predictable about his poems is
that they are unpredictable. I think it’s almost time
for the poets of my generation to start picking out
chairs on the rest home porch. There’s a whole new
generation coming up, and they mean business, and
Meyerhofer is one of them. I will read every word
he writes until I can read no more.”
—Thomas Lux
“Meyerhofer’s tough, lovely poems remind us that
the aim of being human, of moving through what
Keats called ‘this Vale of Soul-Making,’ is to rise
above ourselves, to take this sorry predicament and
turn it into something shining and valuable.”
—George Bilgere
“Michael Meyerhofer takes us with him everywhere
he goes, from the back rooms of hash-slingers to the
Star of Africa…. I like these poems, kinetic and
half-crazed, they remind me that poetry is an
explosion, that energy plus mass equals a dark
magic.”
—Dorianne Laux
“Meyerhofer has the inner resources and the craft to
address worlds imagined and ideal, but he insists on
writing chiefly of this one, and he does it fearlessly,
making neither warmth nor anger…. He reminds me
of a young James Wright. He reveals the heart as do
few other poets who have suffered an education.”
—Rodney Jones
“…the start of a career that will mean much to those
readers of poetry in search of a writer who will never
falter in telling them the hard yet gorgeous truths of
life.”
—Allison Joseph
“What is striking about [Leaving Iowa] is its
unabashed confessionalism. But it is confessionalism
that has an effect on the reader—not just the effect
of catharsis for the writer, like so many poems that
tread into personal black waters. In writing about his
own life, the death of his mother, his childhood
poverty, his medical problems at birth that left
visible marks on him for a lifetime—Meyerhofer
offers a brand new way of seeing.”
—Karen Craigo
“There’s real voice: an all-too-rare accomplishmen
in these days of gentrified poetry. The language here
is consistently fresh—a volatile mix of humor and
anger, spot-on pity and forgiveness—that gives the
ear meaningful work to do.”
—Craig Challender