Lucky Bones - Paperback

by Peter Meinke (Author)

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 Meinke's 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, Meinke's world is full of wonder, and wonderful people.

Author Biography

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, including the Olivet Prize, the Paumanok Award, three Poetry Society of America Awards, the Flannery O'Connor Award, and two NEA Fellowships. In 2009 he was appointed the first Poet Laureate of St. Petersburg, Florida.