It's Colder Than Hell, Starving Elves Eat Reindeer Meat, Santa Claus Is Dead

Jeff Weddle writes like an ancient warrior, a survivor and a dreamer. Time and wisdom have taught him to find balance in the details, and allowed him the honesty to say everything hurts. He paints cautionary tales in a world where we are governed by the mad. He struggles for his tiny victories in the greatest hotel room he has ever been inside. Jeff Weddle sees saints' libraries and says he is looking for a miracle, but almost anything will do. In the end he writes what he believes with power and truth that come from a lifetime of understanding and a commitment to leave pages like ready bullets. Jeff's poems are locked and loaded and aimed dead at your heart your head and your spirit. Matt Borczon, author of My Reality (Alien Buddha)In an early poem in Jeff Weddle's new collection, the poet creates a metaphor of an old woman cooking bacon, not for the protein itself, but for the grease it will produce. I would suggest that this is a perfect metaphor for Weddle's poems. They sizzle down in the mind and leave us starving for the next sensory overload. He has a way of making the ordinary poignant and even luminous, and distills things down to their essence, like this bacon grease, alchemical and still useful. The poet also says that "I am holy like a razor/agitated like a buffalo/repentant like an electric chair." This is a man ready for tragedy and comedy simultaneously, and aware of the capable violence and redemption inherent in the act of writing. These poems could only have been written by someone who has experienced life openly, freely, painfully, and experimentally in order to acquire the wisdom which could utter: "and we/fade with the weight of moments/like so much drying dew." Joseph V. Milford is the author of the poetry collections CRACKED ALTIMETER (BlazeVox Press) and TATTERED SCROLLS AND POSTULATES, VOL I. (Backlash Press). He is an English professor and Creative Writing instructor living south of Atlanta, Georgia. He also edits the online poetry thread, RASPUTIN, A POETRY THREAD.