The Contracted World

Each poem is striking, and many are immediate favorites, all composed of vigor, sentiment, the high idealism and the self-humor that are particularly ours, and dished up in the twang and slang of American plainsong.

* Publishers Weekly on The Night Train and the Golden Bird *

Meinke hits his real stride, roving with eager curiosity and honesty from free verse to well-wrought sonnets and back again. . . . Meinke's control over his medium is remarkably secure. He can push traditional verse toward doggerel without endangering his honesty.

* Poetry Magazine on Trying to Surprise God *

If you are one of the millions who is bored, perplexed or overawed by contemporary poetry, do the muse, and yourself, a favor: buy and read Peter Meinke's Night Watch on the Chesapeake. . . . His strong instinct for significance and an ear always cocked for the clang and splash and euphony of language . . . sounds spoken, fresh, not 'poetic.'

* St. Petersburg Times on Night Watch on the Chesapeake *

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 *

[Meinke's poems] never omit the music of language and a real search for meaning; and while by turns playful, satirical and paradoxical, they never undercut their honesty by descending into nonsense.

* Coldfront Magazine

• Commended for Florida Book Award (Poetry) 2006