Jack Myers' poems are both interesting and exciting. There is a difference if you think about it?you've read poems that have interested you without exciting you, and vice versa (more rarely). Sometimes you're more interested in poet than in poems, more excited about things you've heard about poet than poems. Luckily for me, I don't know a lot about Jack Myers (although I've met liim and like him), so poems are thing. A funny thing happened while I was reading poems: I realized that he sets them against a domestic situation, some more than others, but all in degrees. And I realized that I don't particularly like poems that deal with domestica (also a popular cheap Greek wine). But I liked his (was interested and excited) and, not being an overachiever, wondered why. Normally I like poems in which some sapsucker is drinking himself silly or wallowing in self-pity or -abuse. So I started study each poem in an attempt figure why I liked them. (I should say what I mean by domestica: anything do with wives, walls, parents, apartments and babies.) Maybe first thing I noticed was Jack's ability time a poem so that when he hits those last two or three lines you really feel power that has been build ing up. I'm thinking in particular about Leaving. first three and a half lines are depressing (what could be more depressing than moving of families through necessity?); then, poem moves into a kind of wistfulness, (Myers) taking his son see beautiful bathers enjoying a kind of taunting freedom; but wait?next thing you know, man and his son are running flat out (an image you can really see, lit?e kid running like a bat of hell) to win that final letting go. And they make it?matter of fact, they can't stop, they're leaving, going, going, ideal way move. All of above happens within space of seventeen lines. That's what I call timing, not mention using exact perfect images keep poem moving its exhilarating climax. Myers uses almost same form in How Get Outside. This time he (voice) is addressing his wife; together they spent the best years of our life inside a cage filled with responsibility. (What could be more depressing than responsibility, unless it's families moving?) Then language begins change, becomes more intense?wail, screamed, blew/ a blue note its limit, straining, break/ this house apart. Myers is getting up momentum. All of a sudden, it's Come on, let hard years fly. . Imagine that train ... is roaring through right now. Moving again, again that kind of exhilaration. It's like running 440?you have pace yourself in beginning, pick it up in middle and finally leg it down backstretch like a house afire, holding nothing back. Jack Myers, 440 man of modern poetry. The Family War is something else again. form is different?a littie longer, divided into three stanzas?but voice is also different. In beginning