Ebook Overview: “Great Pond” – The place Magnificence and Laborious Truths Swim Collectively

By Carolynn Kingyens

Ed Meek’s potential to harness language and cadence is similar to watching a cowboy harness a wild mustang.

Great Pond by Ed Meek. Kelsay Books, 88 pages, $20

I used to be thrilled to overview Ed Meek’s earlier assortment, his third ebook, 2020’s High Tide. I’ve been a good friend and fan of his work ever since. One of the fast indicators of excellent poetry is the power of the narrator’s voice and tone; it ought to information the reader via its association of poems with the talent of a consummate host. This was my expertise whereas studying Meek’s fourth ebook—Great Pond. As Stephen King put it in his quantity On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft: “Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.”

The transference of point-of-view takes actual mastery on the a part of the poet, to have the reader see what the poet sees, really feel what the poet feels. Meek accomplishes this transference brilliantly, nearly effortlessly, beginning along with his eponymous poem, “Great Pond.” While swimming alone on the pond in Wellfleet, he’s joined by two younger ladies and their American Quarter horses that had emerged from the woods:

 

They have been lithe and beautiful, tanned of their swimsuits.

I believed they have been stopping for water, however the ladies

Rode their horses into the pond,

Slipped off their backs and swam beside them,

Ropes in hand, as if it have been probably the most

Natural factor on the planet. Then

They slid again on like seals and rode the horses out,

into the woods…

 

The horse theme returns within the poem “Mustangs,” after the narrator “pulled off the highway in Montana to take a piss” however is caught up as a substitute, with the rapture of witnessing “a pack of feral mustangs” working free:

 

…galloping for the unharnessed pleasure of pace

as if it have been 100 and fifty years in the past

when Blackfeet chased them down for enjoyable.

 

Nature can be a key presence in his poem “In the Provinces,” which focuses on a summer season spent in Wellfleet through the COVID pandemic:

 

the solar assumes his throne.

Mornings, the kettle ponds shimmer.

Pitch pines admire their reflection

from the banks. We watch

an osprey catch a perch

to feed her chicks earlier than

we immerse ourselves

within the pristine water.

 

The poem then takes a flip, specializing in different cities “far, far away” from the coastal city of Wellfleet, the place the virus runs rampant in nursing houses and prisons. Meek personifies the virus with witty duality:

 

The virus wants a drink at a bar after a tough day

working the road on the meatpacking plant.

The virus decides to submit an advert within the personals:

Loves to celebration and hang around with buddies!

Loves seaside blanket bingo!

 

We have been all witnesses to what occurred in Minneapolis. In “Asylum,” Meek hones in on the trauma, concentrating on the menace to the bond between moms and their youngsters when confronted with thuggish violence as “the agents must learn to ignore the crying and screams.” This poem recollects the haunting spirit of the novel Sophie’s Choice:

 

It’s as simple as slicing a wire,

to separate the moms and youngsters—

those looking for asylum

from gangs and violence,

so determined to flee

they’ll danger seizure

by the border patrol

and customs brokers who want

at the very least two officers—

one who grabs the children,

the opposite the moms—

pinning their arms from behind,

to pry them aside

like oysters.

 

And, within the poem “Warhol’s Marilyn,” he compares, with linguistic panache, the buxom blonde film star to a commodity quickly growing in worth:

 

…How Marilyn the image

multiplied exponentially

like bunnies within the suburbs in spring

till omnipresent as rap music

she was a goddess out there to all

who worshipped her,

she was claimed

by an athlete, a playwright, a president…

 

They say the loss of a kid is probably the most painful of all human experiences—a membership no guardian needs to affix. In his transient however highly effective poem, “The Death of a Child,” Meek describes grief as a black cat within the basement of reminiscence. “The Last Thing He Said” is a few son who shoots himself on account of “an overwhelming sense of shame.” Nagging questions stay for his mom and sister:

 

If solely I’d supported him, she mentioned,

as a substitute of combating;

over what, she’s forgotten now.

The injustice of the world

what triggered him most—

he argued till his aunts and uncles

refused to host and his mom

steered he depart her home.

 

In the poems “Class of ’69” and “Hungover Sundays” Meek reminisces about his college fraternity days, echoing Eddie Money’s traditional tune, “I Wanna Go Back” …and do it throughout however I can’t return, I do know:

 

…And the instances we’d been jumped—fights we’d gotten into

and pulled one another out of. Nights we’d blacked out

and woke in unusual beds and backyards

and the again seat of strangers’ vehicles.

And ladies who picked us up or who we picked up—

stunning loopy horny ugly ladies we want

we may keep in mind or overlook.

 

Meek’s potential to harness language and cadence is similar to watching a cowboy harness a wild mustang. That athleticism is underscored in his quasi-ode to Allen Ginsberg, “In the Starry Dynamo.” This poem approaches perfection:

 

And didn’t he harbor an eye fixed for element channeling Whitman

whose steps he adopted into the huge and fertile fields

of his thoughts’s illustrious eye whereas cultivating his ear

for the music of poetry that all of us hear in our childhood

of imaginary buddies whom we banish

on the savage psychotic battlefields of adolescence.

 

It is troublesome to not observe Meek’s inviting voice, meandering across the stunning, although at instances alarming, shores of Great Pond, the place wander the ghosts of his mother and father together with the our bodies of hard-knock individuals, surviving on society’s fringes, pushing their “Homeless Shopping Carts.”

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Carolynn Kingyens is the creator of the poetry collections Before the Big Bang Makes a Sound (2020) and Coupling (2021). Her forthcoming and most existential ebook, Lost within the Bardo, is scheduled for launch in just a few weeks. In addition to poetry, Kingyens writes narrative essays, opinions, and quick fiction. Two of her quick tales have been chosen for Best of Fiction 2021 and 2023.