World’s Largest Ball of Paint

Charlie Peck’s lush, straightforward storytelling nevertheless holds something back. There are secrets here, lyric disconnects, the ancient ache in everything. Which is to say, these observant poems ring true whether they are or not. I bet both, as all treasures are. Honest and surprising, edgy and tender, urgently meditative, even shocking at times: these poems, thus this poet. Proof: “When I went down to the woods that first day of winter/I found a car door against a tree trunk, the paint rubbed thin/from deer shedding their velvet…” This is how legends start. And go where? I had to find out.

–Marianne Boruch