Leaving Iowa

by Michael Meyerhofer

Winner of the inaugural Liam Rector First Book Prize for Poetry. First in a series designed specifically for poets who have never published a full collection.

Genres: Poetry

Perfect Paperback

First published April 25, 2007

About the author

I'm the author of the Dragonkin Trilogy, a dark/epic fantasy series. The first book, WYTCHFIRE, also won the Whirling Prize and was a Readers Choice nomination by Big Al's Books and Pals. The sequels, KNIGHTSWRATH and KINGSTEEL, are both available now, as well, with an additional series in the works.

I've also published a few poetry books. My latest is WHAT TO DO IF YOU'RE BURIED ALIVE. Previous poetry books are DAMNATIO MEMORIAE (lit. "damned memory", winner of the Brick Road Poetry Book Contest), BLUE COLLAR EULOGIES (Steel Toe Books), and LEAVING IOWA (winner of the Liam Rector First Book Award). I was also happy to have my poem, "For My Brother," featured in Goodreads' June 2014 newsletter. For more information and at least one embarrassing childhood photo, please visit wytchfire.com (fantasy) or troublewithhammers.com (poetry).

Reviews

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I want to tell him my frustrations over
poets who think modern haiku
must be written with seventeen syllables
the way others who don't write poetry
expect all of it to rhyme in pentameter..." (from "Ode to the Repair Guy")

I think I recall saying that he was an "anti poet," meaning that he does free-verse in everything, his poems are very conversational, and everything is straightforward and to-the-point. Perhaps this is why I like him so much. Meyerhofer basically tells us bits and pieces of his life ranging from a missing chunk from the tip of his ear to the death of his mother (a huge topic in many of his poems).

He definitely gets five stars from me because he came to our college on a book tour and when signing my book he asked me, "What's your name?"

I gave him a "meeting- an-actual-real-life-author-for-the-very-first-time" grin. "My name is Kelly."

He glanced up at me with a "this-is-my-first-autograph-signing-and-I'm-so-excited" look. "K-E-L-L-Y, right?"

I nodded, "Yes," and then added, "the right way."

He grinned. "Yeah, I know. But I had to make sure. Some people spell is in an odd way."

Meeting an author is really fun and I enjoyed meeting him and getting autograph copies of his book. There was definitely excitement and gratitude on his face when my friend and I giddily asked him to sign our copies.

[Toben · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meyerhofer’s no frills, working-class address is disarming. Here’s a guy who is telling it like it is, over a beer in the living room. Yet the poems are all keenly structured, varying between uniform stanzas in the first section of his book, moving to a prose poem second section, and shifting back to stanzaic poems in the final section. His book delineates a rural, impoverished Iowan landscape and traverses the speaker’s coming of age and his mother’s early death.

[Rebecca Oliver · Rating 4 out of 5]

What good contemporary poetry looks like.

[Gary McDowell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very, very good first book. The prose poems about family are particularly poignant.