About the Poems - CM
About the Poems
by Corey Mesler My work, both poetry and prose, has evolved over the past twenty or so years, from work centered in angst, anger, desire and existential bemusement to one more focused on a calmer, personal spirituality. Luckily, I've maintained my existential bemusement, which lends most of what I concoct an ironic edge. Consequently, my subject matter has matured to encompass more honesty and more naked emotional content. This has been aided by the births of my two children, now 16 and 9, who present a varying and dizzyingly challenging subject matter, one which shifts and shapeshifts daily. My concentration, over the past few years, has been on creating art which mixes the everyday with the holy, an art which, one hopes, can represent the whole human range of emotional turmoil. I find similarities in the summons of both parenting and creativity. What is holy? you ask. Say, Bob Dylan, my daughter's simple optimism, the unearthly light in Bergman's black and white films. Or, to borrow from John Updike, the Buddha's smile and Einstein's halo of hair.