A hush comes over the audience when Peter Meinke reads. Many young (and not-so-young) writers ask him to
read their poetry and teach them to write better. "I enjoy it," he said, "when I'm not too busy. You can help them,
save them time. No one can teach talent, but poetry is a craft as well as an art." Meinke often can point out certain
unconscious ticks a writer may have developed (too many adverbs, for example, or repeated sentence structures),
and he can suggest other poets who the beginning writer should read.
Meinke recalls how it was when he was studying poetry (he has a Ph.D. in Literature from the University of
Minnesota, which he attended while Allen Tate, John Berryman, and James Wright were teaching there). As an
undergraduate, he went to Hamilton College in New York (where Ezra Pound went) in the fifties.
"Back then, there were no workshops," he said. "We didn't study contemporary poetry. I started by imitating my
favorite writers, John Donne, Keats, Thomas Hardy--I still love them." He didn't read contemporary poets until he got
out of the army in 1957.
But poetry has always been important to Meinke. "I suppose anything you like becomes important. I really think the
country would be a better place if more people read poetry: it's an art that stretches the imagination, empathy,
which I think is in short supply these days."
"I'm not a confessional poet," he said when asked. "The best part of me is my poetry. I'm not interested in anybody
knowing about me, except through my poems." He added, "I think most people would like them: they're reasonably
accessible but repay close reading--at least I try to write that way." Meinke usually starts a poem from something
that has actually happened, but then it takes on a life of its own. He changes it for sound, for drama, for energy.
Nevertheless, he thinks that if you read enough poems by anyone, you'll get to know him or her fairly well.
Meinke, who is 63 but looks much younger, says poets (like everybody else) are living to be older nowadays.
"Poetry used to be thought of as a young person's calling--a romantic idea--but now a lot of writers are in their
sixties, seventies, and older: Stanley Kunitz is still publishing wonderful poems in "The New Yorker" at ninety! They
take care of themselves, don't get fat," Meinke said. "Sounds boring, doesn't it! But it's not."
For lunch, during our interview, Meinke munched on an amberjack sandwich and fresh fruit. The fact that poets
take better care of themselves has made a difference in their poetry: poems that look at life from the point of view of
the elderly, or from a broader and longer perspective. Less glorification of drinking, though Meinke admits to a
lingering fondness for martinis. So many writers of the previous generation had alcohol problems: Lowell, Tate,
Wright, Delmore Schwartz, Elizabeth Bishop, Hemingway, Faulkner, Sinclair Lewis, Fitzgerald, Hart Crane--a long
and unhappy list.
Meinke can remember his father enjoying the three-martini lunch. "When I was growing up, that was the way to live,
and I did that myself for a long time. I thoroughly enjoyed it, like my father." And like his parents, he was also a
smoker. "I associated drinking and smoking with writing," he said, "and only gradually cut down."
But quitting cigarettes wasn't difficult for Meinke. They had lived in Warsaw, Poland, in 1978-79, where he was a
Fulbright Senior Lecturer at the University of Warsaw. "I smoked awful Albanian--or was it Algerian?--cigarettes
because they were cheap, and often stayed up late drinking and smoking with our Polish friends--those were
exciting days, when solidarity was just beginning." When he came back to the states he could barely talk through
his aggravated throat, and gave up smoking on New Year's Eve 1980.
While involved in many activities and sports during his high school years (he was on the New Jersey All-State
basketball team) Meinke thought he had kept secret his love of writing. But when he recently returned for his 45th
high school class reunion, written right there in the yearbook under his name was: "Wants to be--Writer; Probably
will be--Censored."
I don't know about his ever having been "censored," but Meinke certainly became a writer, having authored 10
volumes of poetry, a book of short stories that won the 1986 Flannery O'Connor Award, and two children's books in
verse, as well as a critical monograph on the poet Howard Nemerov. Five of his books have been published in the
prestigious Pit Poetry Series, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press.
He and his wife Jeanne, an accomplished artist whose pen & ink drawings have appeared in "The New Yorker,"
"Bon Appetite," "Gourmet," and elsewhere, have been married 38 years and have four grown children. The Meinkes
have lived in St. Petersburg, Florida, since 1966, in the house that graces the cover of the paperback edition of
LIQUID PAPER (painted by their daughter Perrie, the artist who lives in Italy). He has no special plans, he said,
except to "write a little more, a little better."
read their poetry and teach them to write better. "I enjoy it," he said, "when I'm not too busy. You can help them,
save them time. No one can teach talent, but poetry is a craft as well as an art." Meinke often can point out certain
unconscious ticks a writer may have developed (too many adverbs, for example, or repeated sentence structures),
and he can suggest other poets who the beginning writer should read.
Meinke recalls how it was when he was studying poetry (he has a Ph.D. in Literature from the University of
Minnesota, which he attended while Allen Tate, John Berryman, and James Wright were teaching there). As an
undergraduate, he went to Hamilton College in New York (where Ezra Pound went) in the fifties.
"Back then, there were no workshops," he said. "We didn't study contemporary poetry. I started by imitating my
favorite writers, John Donne, Keats, Thomas Hardy--I still love them." He didn't read contemporary poets until he got
out of the army in 1957.
But poetry has always been important to Meinke. "I suppose anything you like becomes important. I really think the
country would be a better place if more people read poetry: it's an art that stretches the imagination, empathy,
which I think is in short supply these days."
"I'm not a confessional poet," he said when asked. "The best part of me is my poetry. I'm not interested in anybody
knowing about me, except through my poems." He added, "I think most people would like them: they're reasonably
accessible but repay close reading--at least I try to write that way." Meinke usually starts a poem from something
that has actually happened, but then it takes on a life of its own. He changes it for sound, for drama, for energy.
Nevertheless, he thinks that if you read enough poems by anyone, you'll get to know him or her fairly well.
Meinke, who is 63 but looks much younger, says poets (like everybody else) are living to be older nowadays.
"Poetry used to be thought of as a young person's calling--a romantic idea--but now a lot of writers are in their
sixties, seventies, and older: Stanley Kunitz is still publishing wonderful poems in "The New Yorker" at ninety! They
take care of themselves, don't get fat," Meinke said. "Sounds boring, doesn't it! But it's not."
For lunch, during our interview, Meinke munched on an amberjack sandwich and fresh fruit. The fact that poets
take better care of themselves has made a difference in their poetry: poems that look at life from the point of view of
the elderly, or from a broader and longer perspective. Less glorification of drinking, though Meinke admits to a
lingering fondness for martinis. So many writers of the previous generation had alcohol problems: Lowell, Tate,
Wright, Delmore Schwartz, Elizabeth Bishop, Hemingway, Faulkner, Sinclair Lewis, Fitzgerald, Hart Crane--a long
and unhappy list.
Meinke can remember his father enjoying the three-martini lunch. "When I was growing up, that was the way to live,
and I did that myself for a long time. I thoroughly enjoyed it, like my father." And like his parents, he was also a
smoker. "I associated drinking and smoking with writing," he said, "and only gradually cut down."
But quitting cigarettes wasn't difficult for Meinke. They had lived in Warsaw, Poland, in 1978-79, where he was a
Fulbright Senior Lecturer at the University of Warsaw. "I smoked awful Albanian--or was it Algerian?--cigarettes
because they were cheap, and often stayed up late drinking and smoking with our Polish friends--those were
exciting days, when solidarity was just beginning." When he came back to the states he could barely talk through
his aggravated throat, and gave up smoking on New Year's Eve 1980.
While involved in many activities and sports during his high school years (he was on the New Jersey All-State
basketball team) Meinke thought he had kept secret his love of writing. But when he recently returned for his 45th
high school class reunion, written right there in the yearbook under his name was: "Wants to be--Writer; Probably
will be--Censored."
I don't know about his ever having been "censored," but Meinke certainly became a writer, having authored 10
volumes of poetry, a book of short stories that won the 1986 Flannery O'Connor Award, and two children's books in
verse, as well as a critical monograph on the poet Howard Nemerov. Five of his books have been published in the
prestigious Pit Poetry Series, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press.
He and his wife Jeanne, an accomplished artist whose pen & ink drawings have appeared in "The New Yorker,"
"Bon Appetite," "Gourmet," and elsewhere, have been married 38 years and have four grown children. The Meinkes
have lived in St. Petersburg, Florida, since 1966, in the house that graces the cover of the paperback edition of
LIQUID PAPER (painted by their daughter Perrie, the artist who lives in Italy). He has no special plans, he said,
except to "write a little more, a little better."
| Peter Meinke: The Man and the Works by Patricia Lieb |
Liquid Paper
Smooth as a snail, this little parson
pardons our sins. Touch the brush tip
lightly and--'abracadabra!'--a clean slate.
We know those who blot their brains
by sniffing it, which shows
it erases more than ink
and with imagination anything
can be misapplied . . . In the army,
our topsergeant drank aftershave, squeezing
my Old Spice to the last slow drop.
It worked like Liquid Paper in his head
until he'd glide across the streets of Heidelberg
hunting for the house in Boise, Idaho,
where he was born . . . If I were God
I'd authorize Celestial Liquid Paper
every seven years to whiten our mistakes:
we should be sorry and live with what we've done
but seven years is long enough and all of us
deserve a visit now and then
to the house where we were born
before everything got written so far wrong.
(from LIQUID PAPER: NEW & SELECTED
POEMS, U. of Pittsburgh Press, 1991)
© 1991 copyright Peter Meinke
Smooth as a snail, this little parson
pardons our sins. Touch the brush tip
lightly and--'abracadabra!'--a clean slate.
We know those who blot their brains
by sniffing it, which shows
it erases more than ink
and with imagination anything
can be misapplied . . . In the army,
our topsergeant drank aftershave, squeezing
my Old Spice to the last slow drop.
It worked like Liquid Paper in his head
until he'd glide across the streets of Heidelberg
hunting for the house in Boise, Idaho,
where he was born . . . If I were God
I'd authorize Celestial Liquid Paper
every seven years to whiten our mistakes:
we should be sorry and live with what we've done
but seven years is long enough and all of us
deserve a visit now and then
to the house where we were born
before everything got written so far wrong.
(from LIQUID PAPER: NEW & SELECTED
POEMS, U. of Pittsburgh Press, 1991)
© 1991 copyright Peter Meinke
The Secret Code
Bach was rising from another room
like a secret code in a mathematician's castle
when you came toward me in a summer dress
light slatted through the oaken banister
like a secret code in a mathematician's castle
floating down the stairway in the afternoon
light slatted through the oaken banister
an idea of harmony made manifest
floating down the stairway in the afternoon
striping your slender body like a strobe
an idea of harmony made manifest
The music wound you in a golden braid
striping your slender body like a strobe
and Bach and April and undying youth
like music wound you in a golden braid
conspiring until I knew the dream
of Bach and April and undying youth
would cling across the downward years
conspiring until I knew that dream
despite the disharmonic tarnishing of time
would cling across the downward years
and fuse our lives together like a fugue
to spite the disharmonic tarnishing of time
Then all turned mysterious and blessed
and fused our lives together like a fugue
when you came toward me in a summer dress
turning all mysterious and blessed
while Bach was rising from another room
(from SCARS, U. of Pittsburgh Press 1996)
© 1996 copyright Peter Meinke
The First Marriage
imagine the very first marriage a girl
and boy trembling with some inchoate
need for ceremony a desire for witness:
inventing formality like a wheel or a hoe
in a lost language in a clearing too far from here
a prophet or prophetess intoned to the lovers
who knelt with their hearts cresting
like the unnamed ocean thinking 'This is true'
thinking they will never be alone again
though planets slip their tracks and fish
desert the sea repeating those magic sounds
meaning I do on this stone below
this tree before these friends yes in body
and word my darkdream my sunsong yes I do I
do
(from SCARS, U. of Pittsburgh Press 1996)
© 1996 copyright Peter Meinke
imagine the very first marriage a girl
and boy trembling with some inchoate
need for ceremony a desire for witness:
inventing formality like a wheel or a hoe
in a lost language in a clearing too far from here
a prophet or prophetess intoned to the lovers
who knelt with their hearts cresting
like the unnamed ocean thinking 'This is true'
thinking they will never be alone again
though planets slip their tracks and fish
desert the sea repeating those magic sounds
meaning I do on this stone below
this tree before these friends yes in body
and word my darkdream my sunsong yes I do I
do
(from SCARS, U. of Pittsburgh Press 1996)
© 1996 copyright Peter Meinke
| Three Poems By Peter Meinke |
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