Peter Waldor

 

Beginning Polyamory

Peter Waldor is a poet from New Jersey who, after many years of visiting, has made Telluride (CO) his home. We have become good friends and have spent many hours hiking or snowshoeing in the San Juan Mountain we both love (him far more than me). We have performed together and he has published many books to critical acclaim. He has a spate of new books coming out and I wanted to showcase some of the marvelous poems therein.

As I wrote to him after diving into the first of these newbies,  Beginning Polyamory.

I couldn't help dipping into Beginning Polyamory's first 50 pages

Just as some of your marvelous reviewers attest, I found the pieces

"like obsidian ... polished into jewels or napped to the keenest blade"

"concise, even abrupt" with "spare irony" both "elliptical and colloquial"

featuring a "peculiar plainspoken deliberateness" that is "trenchant" and "whimsical"

The Holiness of Lovemaking is serious and First Kiss humorous

Lifestyle is a deep truth

"I guess light or dark / can bring fruit to ripeness" -- YES!

Epistolary, Your Foot -- you capture brief snippets and make them funny, ironic

Dress and Good Luck -- expectations reversed

I especially loved Precipice with its great lines:

"and I can't think of a worse

curse than 'whatever,'

especially when said quietly,

with skill."

Backwards, Fouled It Up, Something Missing, Tee Shirts, Power-Sharing

full of quirky telling details and always fearlessly honest

Size Matters and Hardness maybe risque but so deliciously restrained at the same time

"soft as a rubber / pencil in a magic trick"

Gift of a Cigarette that adds an irrelevant last detail that completes the verisimilitude

Warden, Lovers and Friends, Fifty Years Later

Just a marvelous collection / lyric travelogue through the experience of polyamory