Product Description

Peter Meinke writes with the wisdom of a prophet. His poems speak truth with the self-assurance of a man willing to laugh at himself and, by extension, he invites us to laugh at ourselves as well. In this, his eleventh collection, he is in his element, writing poems of humor and sadness, taking readers to a place they had only a vague hope of ever reaching.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2220564 in Books
• Published on: 2000-07-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 104 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Sonnets, villanelles, sestinas and even a concrete poem reminiscent of May Swenson rub shoulders in Meinke's 12th collection, arranged alphabetically by title. Unfortunately, the occasions that engender these formal variations fail to yield fresh diction or insight. Take for example the sonnet "Circe," in which the temptress is described in rhyming couplets that faintly recall Hecht's equally problematic "Dover Bitch": "Her breasts were small and tight/ shoulders round Her thighs (we all could see) were white:/ in short her attributes were fine/ and we turned tipsily into swine." Akin to a poet like James Broughton, there is usually a playful quality to Meinke's rhymes, as in the opening stanza of "Grandfather at the Pool": "Now that I'm old/ respectable and white and pink/ you tease like bold/ hotblooded courtesans who think/ old men prefer thin beer to drink." But this is the kind of verse that modernity seems to have passed by. At other times, Meinke, whose new and selected Liquid Paper appeared in 1992, seems downright sophomoric, as in a poem like "Making Love with the One," where a "one armed girl" made love to in a library is mirrored by a one-lined stanza at the center of the poem. Meinke's speaker is better off in a poem like "The Waltz," which meanders down the page in musically descriptive tercets: "So we turn one last time/ more or less in tune/ across the pockmarked floor:// Scarecrows on the moon." (Aug.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"Thank God for Peter Meinke's voice of literary sanity, for these poems of a lovable, beleaguered man trying to make sense of a difficult world. Zinc Fingers is a delight from beginning to end." -- Edward Field

"Zinc Fingers is Peter Meinke's solid voice at its most recklessly passionate pitch, framed by the eloquent syntax of its silences....problem." -- Dionisio D. Martnez

Absence (1)
Apples
Arthritis In St. Petersburg
Assisted Living
The Brain
Certitude
Circe
The Cliff At Gorge De L'areuse
Coal
Coffee
Driving Through A Storm Near Boothbay Harbor
Each Morning
Election
The Examiner's Death
Finches On Aycock Street
Fortunato Pietro
Francis
Grandfather At The Pool
A Handheld Camera Visits Billy's Bar At Happy Hour
A Hawk In Athens
His Teacher's Reply
History
Home On Cape Cod
A Hot Day In June
The House On Taylor Avenue
The Housekeeper In London
The Humane Trap
Ibises
In Memoriam
Japanese Soldier
Jj Nortle
John Keyes & Freud
Kissing
Les Temps Modernes
Letting Go
M3
Magnolia
Making Love With The One
A Meditation On You And Wittgenstein
Mulch
Multiple Readings In National Poetry Month
Nailbiters
Naked Poetry
No Circe
Nor Iron Bars
On The Road
The Open
Our Groundhog
Pensacola
Philosophy In Billy's Bar
Pickpockets
The Plains Of Mars
Possibility
The Professor And The Librarian
The Queen Ant's Love Song
Revelation
Seven & Seven
She, Being An Artist
Short Meditation On Long-suffering Poets
Sort Of A Sonnet
The Teacher
Tough Professor Sonnet
The Uniform
Vincent
The Waltz
The Wave
The Witness
The Young Poet Speaks
Zinc Fingers
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

Review
“Meinke’s latest collection stands among his best, using a variety of forms from free verse to sonnet to villanelle and a wide range of tones from light to ‘first person jugular,’ to use Meinke’s own phrase.”
“In the best of Meinke’s work his impressive skills yield poems of scope and extraordinary power. . . . His greatest gift may be his ability ot shed enormous light through small windows. . . . Most of us can mulch and most of us can muse, but only a genuine poet can forge that lightning connection between such things over and over again.”
--Tampa Times


“Thank God for Peter Meinke’s voice of literary sanity, for these poems of a lovable, beleaguered man trying to make sense of a difficult world. Zinc Fingers is a delight from beginning to end.”
--Edward Field