Transitions: Early Poems: 1979–1989

by Greg Zeck

50 poems from the 1980s about love, lust, family, friendship, and the whole ontological business, both savage and civilized, as Paul Gauguin would have it, of where we come from, what we are, and where we're going. The poems are accessible while exploring age-old themes. The tagline, "Poems for those who may or may not read poetry," is meant to invite the reader, whether familiar with poetry or not, into the themes and dreams of poetry.

104 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 31, 2020

Reviews

[Andrea Rail · Rating 5 out of 5]

Make yourself comfy because once you start reading, you won’t be able to put it down. It is a sequence of poem stories of growing up incidents whose universality you will recognize, through the specificity of the author’s experiences.
The writing itself is, to me, astonishing. A gift to be shared.
Many of the poems have a little key next to the title, which takes you to a short narrative of context of that particular piece.
Nostalgia, tenderness, amusement, hilarity, horror, sadness. Life.
So, I defy you to download the sample and see if you are able to stop there.

[Candace · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am thoroughly enjoying reading this collection of poems by Greg Zeck. I definitely identify with the audience who doesn't read much poetry; however, these poems have indeed been encouragingly accessible. While some are more straightforward than others, the more obscure ones have been extremely enjoyable to read (and reread). I'd highly recommend this collection to anyone! It's also just an all around great book to have on the coffee table or bookshelf to spark some creativity and/or conversation.

[Jeannie Zeck · Rating 5 out of 5]

Greg Zeck invites non-poetry readers as well as those of us who are poetry enthusiasts to read his book. The book is beautifully coherent from its cover of Gauguin's painting of Tahitians on the lush island to the introduction, the table of contents divided into three sections, each asking a question posed in the title of Gauguin's painting and taken up by Mr. Zeck in his poems: Where do we come from? What are we? and Where are we going? And, finally, the endnotes welcome readers even more deeply into the experiences of the poems by offering explanations and sometimes little stories that enrich the experience of reading this book.
Zeck's poems are captivating with their vivid imagery and details, sly puns, humor, paradoxes, slant rhyme, and insights. In "No Muse," for example, Zeck presents a day when his muse evades him in spite of his hours spent writing. His attempts have been "frustrating, head ramming, vain gate storming." Abandoning poetry for the time being, he takes to home repair and lawn work hours later returning to his computer screen where he discoveres "here/sprouting suddenly in vivid/ green against a black background/the seeds of words that somehow/have slipped through the cracks/and are making a poem." the imagery of home repair and poetry writing meet as do the poet and his son, the younger man also being the origina of the poem's title and a seed that grew and matured and may be, at this moment after all, the muse his father desires.
As with this poem, the ones I enjoyed most are the family and friend poems that so richly describe the poet's experiences. "Suburban Sacraments" describes Zeck's childhood attending Catholic school with his best friend, experiencing his friend's death years later after a truck accident, and visiting his friend's mother afterward who, seeing Greg, her "substitute son," weeps. He tells her, "Della, it's no sin to cryYou're sixty-two, and I'm old/enough to be your first-born and know better. Mother,/ for pity's sake, hold on." In the last stanza, Zeck blends Catholic imagery with this scene of deepest grief.
The compassion, energy, vivid imagery, insights, and humor draw me into this book of poetry. I recommend it to anyone who is curious about poetry or is already a lover of the genre. As Zeck suggests in his introduction, poetry will "stretch the imagination," which is "fine exercise."

[Zeck Gregory]

Hell, what can I say about this book? I wrote it as well as read it. It's a collection of poems from my 30s, when after losing a job I began to write poetry. Nobody could tell me, in other words, I couldn't write. Poetry is a matter not only of reading and studying poetry AND having life experiences, but also of mastering poetic form (I'm not talking rhyme or meter here, but all the components that go into making up a poetic voice). OK, to be something like modest here, let me turn to the 3rd person. Using Gauguin's well-known triptych as a model, Zeck organizes the book into three parts: Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? The title "Transitions" seems to refer to life stages, and the human need to graduate from one to the other, whatever outcomes are achieved -- childhood and family, for example; youth and independence; marriage, love, and lust; and, finally and overarchingly, finding, as in poetry, alternatives to the lost faith of childhood.