Simple Absence: Poems & Reflections

One of poetrys dreams is amplitude the book of poems that gives a sense of lifes fullness even as it depicts the losses. Nancy Meneelys Simple Absence speaks eloquently to that dream the range of poems honoring and testifying to a host of situations--public and private. Each poem deftly enacts the drama of trammeled and untrammeled emotion. Though the poems embody essences of form and feeling lines and stanzas moving crisply down the pages there is nothing minimal here. The breadth and depth are both inspiring. Theres nothing absent in these richly-textured various-structured deeply-felt and capacious poems (plus a few prose pieces). Great pleasure is to be garnered from Meneelys powers of description; precise wholly new better than anyones I know. Wonder is here as well in the particular objects observations ideas and emotions this poet chooses to treat as subjects: idiosyncratic in the best sense. From first thought to last the readers ride is electric and ultimately bedazzling.