by Donald Wheelock (Author)
Wheelock's introductory metaphor describes a poet's challenge: To launch with billowing sails / a course aimed true, in sight, / well-rhymed, concise, entails / lines hauled in tight. Wheelock packages his views about the world in literal terms-"the froth of distant ocean surf / exploding against the dory-sides" or fog ("a second sea"); "the hawk knows hunger: it is himself "; the hummingbird is a "jeweled artifact." A boot jack or a highboy become more than domestic objects.
Wheelock describes sleep as "a little patch of death without a dream"-"night's vacuum"- "a handout from eternity" "death is "a gift of nothing." But this isn't a heavy book. It's scattered throughout with wit. The heart, a "knotted fist of stubborn shiny gristle" as a symbol for love? "Why not a liver, or a brain, a bowel?"
Above all-whatever his topic-these are indeed lines hauled in tight.
-Deborah Warren, author of Connoisseurs of Worms
Donald Wheelock's "Billowing Sails" declares his intent: "To launch with billowing sails / a course aimed true, in sight, / well-rhymed, concise, entails / lines hauled in tight." It also entails a welcome display of playful, ironic humor of the sort that pervades It's Hard Enough to Fly throughout. A notable achievement.
-William H. Pritchard, author of Lives of the Modern Poets
Turning to formal poetry in his ninth decade, the composer and educator Donald Wheelock has proven to be a quick study, fashioning poems of clarity and concision. In his poem, "Plus One Makes Four," Wheelock compresses material worthy of a novella into seventy-five short lines. "Above the Arctic Ice" reads like a poem by Deborah Warren, whom Wheelock acknowledges as a mentor. Silence plays a part in many of the best poems gathered here. There is an unspoken exchange at the heart of "Meeting on the Stairs." A silence unintentional and final haunts the poems "Obituary Picture, 2021" and "Alone." "Wake" is the quietest of elegies. Indeed, silence is allowed to have the last word in "From Where This Silence Settled," and in "Is Every Death Our Own?" Often, a first book is said to show promise. This one arrives as a promise fulfilled.
-Alfred Nicol, Author of Animal Psalms