“Man is a suffering delicate,” proclaims Eric Beeny in Of Creatures, a poetry collection that circles the mind with a tentative, ticking confidence—a nervous bouquet waiting to burst. The petals distend, pregnant with brilliant color, radiating the naked shyness kicking within. Brace yourself for the birth, for Beeny’s words surge forth, methodically, to wrestle the lure of contentment before snaking it into a headlock and then whisper kissing its ears. Just as quickly the dance recedes and the coupling severs, the face of one carried in the reflection of the other, an often bittersweet reverie raining down from a cloud or, perhaps, the moon.
Of Creatures is a delicate life-form. Its lines are inventive and brave; its stanzas surprising and strong. These poems are weighted by sadness, yet hope offers them wings.
Of Creatures is the propulsion of a heart in the chest of a child, mountainous underneath cold fall air that seeps through windows and into our beds. The disjointed phrases are our jaws unhinged from this body of wanderlust, from the whole of this poetic blood and moon, the tender savagery that Eric Beeny has us steeping in, wet with these delicately-natured fists.
