Customer Reviews

Arguments for Stillness

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Arguments for Stillness is an anthology of free-verse poems that range in composition from vulgar curse words to pop culture, slices of everyday life, ancient history, and nods to allegorical references from classic literature and drama. An enthusiastically written collection, brimming with energy and the vivacious need for expression. "Smoking Is Not an Activity": He is a banished man for a time / Because he his wife hates cigarettes. // He tries to understand this as he sits / In the hallway's smoky exile feeling / Like Trotsky without an agenda.

Sit back, relax and enjoy well written poetry

With no gimmicks, no extravagances, and a candid and clever use of language, these poems are simply delicious to read.

This book of poetry speaks honestly and clearly from a strong person who has found a voice through his poetry. The poems speak simply but clearly to me. I am looking forward to reading more of his poetry in the future.

Campbell's poems of direct and elliptical commendations for silence have touches of the Buddhist attribution to silence of a moral value and also a personal use for keeping one's mental senses and even enhancing one's emotional senses. Some of the poems in the last section titled "East" in fact mention Buddha. Campbell is from Nebraska, and is now in Indonesia working as a technical writer for an American mining company. But in his poems silence is more than a state for Buddhist contemplation. Silence is not a strategy or means for escape from the world or for shutting it out. Instead it is a kind of engagement with the world--as when the thoughts of the poet "alone in that hotel hot tub" in the poem titled "Epistemology" move with enhanced mental and emotional sense from his sleeping wife to their wedding, to his brother, and to historical religious figures. Silence not only yields keener memories and observations, but also leads to a particular perspective--in this poet's case, one that is recurring wry and occasionally humorous, showing that silence can be enlivening.

This volume of poetry from Erik Campbell will require a lot of careful reading of the volume itself and of the texts to which he alludes. This volume will be a companion of mine for a long time to come.