Customer Reviews

Picnic on the Moon

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Coe's poems show how strawberries, barefeet, wind, barbecure or the blues can wipe out for a while the grimmer realities of modern life. In that way, even the longer poems feel like haikus: they set up a scene such as guys pulling down a slate roof or a crazy bothering you on the bus, and then wipe it out with humor or sensuous pleasure or music or an understanding that a person can change and grow. Coe's musical background gives rhythm to his poems about Ella Fitzgerald, James Brown or Charlie Mingus. And his two poems on women in the process of freeing themselves from oppressive relationships are remarkable -- and touching.

I heard Charles Coe read a few of his poems last night in Cambridge, MA. He captures the essence of daily life. The imagery of New England is especially powerful if you are far from home or just rejoicing in what life has to offer. If you crossed Marge Piercy and Robert Frost and were listening to Ella Fitgerald you might approach the experience that is Charles Coe. Pure joie de vivre!!!! Go eat some up yourself!!!

I've had the pleasure of hearing Charles Coe read his poems and other fabulous writing. He is such a powerful observer of this difficult life but he never loses his cool. Picnic on the Moon is a must for anyone who welcomes the heat of a fireplace combined with the heat of literary friction.

Reading Charles Coe's poetry, I find that I am disappointed that I am only reading it; the page seems not enough. In his verse you are confronted with the voice of someone that you would like to sit down with for a beer, discussing life, art, and whatever little things that creep about the edges of our everyday. Perhaps this is because so much of his work is so effortless, direct, and engrossing that it seems more like a wistful conversation with an old friend than the finely crafted and deeply affecting verse that it is. Throughout Picnic on the Moon Coe presents a reverence for the small things (an old slate shingle, the smile of a woman on the bus, a ride to the airport) that does more than make the reader appreciate them. Rather, his examinations make you sad for all the times in your life that you failed to notice the significance of such things, the times you wasted in waiting to read him. As expert as he is at exploding their smallness, Coe doesn't only paint pictures of the little things. His reflections on graying Russian WWII vets in "For a Russian Soldier" or the deep struggles of a loved in "My Sister Read to Me" attest to his poetic grasp of the macro. Coe is a poet of singular voice, who has seen much, and harbors regrets but who accepts the past and greets the future with enthusiasm and no small degree of wonder.

... because it sits by my bed. I have read the poems over and over, and they still tingle me with rich insights from a world I would not know otherwise. If you are a poet who wants to improve, or if you are someone who just loves reading Magic, this book shows the way, without rules, just plenty of soul. Warm, engaging, thrilling.

Picnic on the Moon is a rich and vibrant collection of poetry. The voice of the poet resonates within the consciousness of the reader; images of loss and hope continue to shimmer quietly long after the poems are read. The title poem transports us away from "the earthly roar and rubble": away from violence, poverty, and exploitation, to another landscape where children "romped beneath a blue-green earth / that glittered like a fragile and precious jewel." And yet even as we must leave the serenity of the picnic on the moon, with all its beauty and all its peace, the poet offers these words:

Don't be sad when we climb into the shuttle
for the trip home.
For we each carry back
a cool and quiet place within ourselves.

The poems in this collection bring the reader to this "cool and quiet place", and in giving voice to the darknesses of life, the poet also lights the way to hope. Picnic on the Moon is a beautiful work and a meaningful companion for life's journey.