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Title: Terrain Vague by Richard Meier ISBN: 0-9703672-1-X Publisher: Consortium Pub. Date: 27 November, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.00

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Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (4 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: At first the title seems unfortunate for a book of poems
Comment: At first the title seems unfortunate for a book of poems. You begin reading the poems and realize, indeed, many are vague in a way that distances rather than engages you. But if you persist you find the poems, especially when taken in small groups, are quite rewarding. They are moody and analytical (which I like) and after a while they take on a mythical quality. Two things deterred me (slightly): The poems fall back sometimes on the old stand-by, irony, and sometimes they begin and end with descriptions of scenes and of seemingly slight actions occurring within the scenes, and naturally we are supposed to assume that something momentous is underway, but sometimes it is difficult to get just what that something is. The poems are very subtle. Yet these are small complaints and I recommend this book esp. for advanced readers of poetry. Looking forward very much to the poet's next.

Rating: 5
Summary: breathtaking emotion
Comment: Richard Meier's Terrain Vague is a collection of whirls and lucid dreams. Wonderful writing, this collection, winner of the 2000 Verse Prize is surprisingly his first. What did I especially like? A particular fearlessness in the language. I enjoyed the unexpected resounding sounds I heard in the rain from "Dear Letter":

"The innocence you gave me on a platter I recognized,/ the head that follows self into the river,/baptist, narcissus, thank you./ Your veils are green and fill the trees/in Tuscaloosa/ where I see myself not seeing you/ in the delicious caper of a rain that came and went or comes and goes. The applause is famous/..."

And the tightest of word play, as in the "on" in "Going To Be":

"Missing the bus was how it expressed itself/on me, the sun on me, and the bus missed/ both as itself and the expression of the split world where I wasn't when I chose to be/..."

Definitely a worthy and lovely read I plan to return to repeatedly.

Rating: 3
Summary: Yes, but then, not Quite
Comment: Though often compared to Palmer, Meier fades in comparison to the exquisite linguistic, and often haunting, beauty that Michael Palmer has wrought. Maybe my slight disappointment with this book is its youth. Meir relies on a kind of distanced irony that grows a bit ... expected? A voice common among his generation, particularly with the other writers on the Verse list. Perhaps none of this is fair, there are many fine moments in here. But let Meier find more emotional texture and variance as time passes to make less obvious his linguistic shifts.