Some Identity Problems, poems by Corey Mesler. Kanona, NY: Foothills Publishing, 2008. $16.00 (pa.)

Corey Mesler is one of the most widely read poets I’ve ever encountered. His collection opens with quotes from Flaubert and Todd McEwen, and throughout he quotes writers and songwriters (and even Mel Brooks), juxtaposing ‘high’ art with ‘common’ art, all the while balancing between the two to create a dialogue, not just with the accepted cannon, but the outsider cannon as well. Mesler’s concern isn’t with who said what, but with what is said. It’s a lesson.

Many of these poems are brief, almost haiku-like with stripped down language which, at first glance, might seem almost devoid of emotion because it lacks the familiar flowery tone of bad poetry, but at just the right moment Mesler opens up and is surprisingly revealing. “Blues for Wendy Ward” is a good example. The narrator describes finding a picture of a past girlfriend, and instead of describing the relationship or even its ending, Mesler focuses on the girl’s smile in the photo which was, “patient:/ you were waiting for what life/ would bring you after me.” In just five lines, Mesler has created a portrait of a relationship which resonates with implications.

It is difficult to sum these poems up in just a few lines, even when they are only that length on the page. Themes of ‘the writing life’, parental hang-ups, several poems deal with specific writers, Mesler’s daughter whose, “beauty [is] like the light from a star”; Mesler is a writer’s writer, meditating on what it is to write and also what it is to live. He’s also a father, a husband, a son, and a man. He’s widely read and widely lived, all of which make for interesting reading—he’s not just going for the knee-jerk reactions, there’s wisdom in these poems. In “Finding Rilke” he describes reading while his daughter plays nearby. He sticks his finger in the book and, “When I looked/ back it said this:/ ‘Live the questions.’/ And tonight, I thought, enough,/ tonight, just this.”

In “The Blessing of the Egrets” Mesler describes startling a flock of egrets while driving. The kids in the backseat are unimpressed, “They are still young/ and nature is natural to them…so when a small/ miracle appears they/ are a match for it.” He says. A lesser poet may have taken this opportunity to lecture or chide or even to wax poetic (if you’ll forgive me), but Mesler takes a different path: “It is up to/ you, it is up to me,” he says, “to startle, and, now, to witness.” And that’s exactly what Mesler does in poem after poem.

-CL Bledsoe