Stephen Meats was born in Leroy, Kansas, and grew up in Concordia. He was educated at Kansas State University and the University of South Carolina. For the past twenty-five years he has been a teacher of literature, writing, and an administrator at colleges and universities in Colorado, Florida, and since 1979, in Pittsburg, Kansas.
From the Editor--Denise Low, Haskell Indian Nations University:
"Why read poetry? Stephen Meats, a professor at Pittsburg State University, has the answer to this in his first book, Looking for the Pale Eagle. He surprises the reader at every turn with moments of humor, intimacy, and even Epiphany. He shows that poetry is a necessity.
In "Counting the Colors of Sycamores," the poet asserts the "colors of the blessed sycamore are five," and enumerates them:
First is pallor,
spans of forty-pointed leaves adorn
the lucent footpaths of the moon;
as when ropes of blackbirds chuckle
Third comes grace,
through its bony tangles;
a glaze on wind-clad branches
Fourth, there's shadow
in their upward dance;
as when starlight wraps
Fifth is death,
its limbs in silence;
that smooth and brittle face
of possums grinning at the dark.
Meats associates the life of the tree, and the cosmos, with a larger sense of "color."
This is a colorful and whimsical book. One poem explains "Where Lawnmowers Come From" and another describes "The Night Venus Climbed the Oak Tree": "At ten o'clock Venus hooked a dimpled knee/over the horizon and heaved/herself into the oak across the street." The poem goes on to explain that, because of her plump figure, "She took two hours to make the climb."
Many of the poems include familiar sights: hay bales, crows, and fields. Meats also describes the semi-rural life of a small town. But most of all, he writes about the possibilities of the human mind, as we follow him on fantastic voyages of language.
"Meats has committed time and thought to the honing of each poem... The poems demonstrate the writer's undeniable skill at recording the sights and sounds of the Kansas countryside."
--Eric McHenry, Topeka Capital-Journal
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