The Blind Man’s Meal by Peter Grieco

In The Blind Man’s Meal, Peter Grieco extends classical painterly brush strokes toward new logical conclusions and imaginative possibilities. Here rarefied museums scenes are reclaimed to live and breathe again and to ask vital questions about the human condition. Grieco is a poet who cares enough about language to approach it as a master painter. That feeling of care resonates throughout  his work, delightfully.

–Lisa Jarnot, author of  Robert Duncan, The Ambassador from Venus: A Biography (University of California Press, 2012), and Joie de Vivre: Selected Poems 1992–2012 (City Lights, 2013).

Peter Grieco has always been an inveterate museum-goer, and one feels his engagement with the pictures he has studied at every step. These poems are brilliant, in almost the literal sense of the word: if the phrase had not been used too often, one would be inclined to say that they “leap off the page.” Grieco’s effort to achieve the tangibility of the painterly medium in words can be sensed in every line, and is successful to an astonishing degree. One can feel, and almost taste, “the blind man’s bread.” The violence of physicality breaks through: “Shall I strip, paint my body / blue & roll across the scissors?” Grieco is a poet of great versatility (see, for instance, his “procedural” poems) and of deep quality. His work will be read when many other poets now popular will have been forgotten.

–Irving Massey, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University at Buffalo (Emeritus), author of Necessary Nonsense: Aesthetics, History, Neurology, Psychology, Ohio State UP, 2018.

Peter Grieco is an excellent poet, versatile but always genuine. In addition to writing on the classical themes of poetry, Peter has done series on Freud’s ‘ Interpretation of Dreams’ and on works of art (‘ekphrastic poetry’.) I urge the publication of his work, which I hold in the very highest regard.

–Arthur Efron, Professor Emeritus  of English, University at Buffalo