Critical Commentary
"David Feela’s poems speak with a sort of ironic voice that allows a range of emotions...They are as unpredictable as the world we face and so are a wonderful knowing reflection of it."
–Richard Jackson, author of Dismantling Time (U of Alabama)
"They (the poems) are the work of a bemused philosopher and humorist whose explorations of some historical moments create memorable images and revelations...They reveal with a gentle touch and considerable intelligence a lot about who we are and where we’re going."
–Leslie Ullman, author of Slow Work Through Sand (Iowa Prize, ‘98)
On Little Acres
In this fine collection, David Feela’s poems lead the reader into a world that is both ordinary and extraordinary. As the poems meander through rural and natural landscapes, they show Feela’s empathy for the small and the neglected, for what has been abandoned and what deserves to be celebrated. Feela has the talent to make empty fields and vacant farmhouses burst with new life. Other poems find beauty and shed light on daily experiences, illuminating human nature with its joys, its failures, and its in-between moments. Like ripples moving outward from the middle of a pond, the poems in Little Acres lead the reader to insights that reach far beyond the poems’ everyday subjects.
--Bill Meissner, author of the poetry books American Compass and The Mapmaker’s Dream and a novel, Spirits in the Grass.
If you are looking for subject-matterless, incoherent, monomaniacal and Narcissistic poetry with little if any appeal to emotion, intellect or lasting aesthetic value other than authorial self-worship, you must put this book down immediately or risk a severe burning of your palms. If you want to read a book filled with love, life, and razor wit based on incredible observation and perception, written in some of the sharpest, best-crafted lines you’ll find out there anywhere on the vast horizon of poetry, brimming with the freshest imagery and figurative language you’ve seen in eons, this just might be your lucky day. It’s been a long time since I said I totally loved the reading of a book of poetry: that dry spell has just ended.
--David Lee, First Poet Laureate of Utah, author of over a dozen collections including the 1999 Pulitzer Prize nominated, News From Down to the Café, recently released, Bluebonnets, Firewheels, and Brown-Eyed Susans, and a forthcoming collection, Mine Tailings.
On David Feela’s The Home Atlas (WordTech Editions, 2009)
“What I have always loved about David Feela’s poetry is its distinctive blend of solemnity and wit, and the poems in The Home Atlas offer this and more. Whether it’s Petrarch, Mother Teresa, or his own mother, writing letters about the weather, Feela’s compass steers him clean to each poem’s immaculate heart. ‘Places invent their language,’ the poet tells us. David Feela unwraps language’s possibilities and offers them as precise and perfect gifts.”—Lisa Lenard-Cook, author of Dissonance, Coyote Morning, and The Mind of Your Story
“David Feela is the voice of a voyager, but one who turns his caring and keen traveler’s eyes on the landscape of home and family. The Home Atlas a wilderness guide for each of us on own terrific yet close-at-hand adventures, right here, right now, where ever we might be, on our own voyages of the heart.”—Ken Wright, author of The Monkey Wrench Dad and Why I'm Against It All
“David Feela’s poems speak with a sort of ironic voice that allows a range of emotions from the tender to the tough, from the comic to the tragic, and with rare intelligence. They are as unpredictable as the world we face and so are a wonderful and knowing reflection of it, and more, they discover what we didn’t know before, the rare vision that this stunning new poet brings to that world.”—Richard Jackson, author of Part of the Story, Worlds Apart, Alive All Day, and Heartwall
“These poems are the work of a bemused philosopher and humorist whose explorations of some historical moments create memorable images and revelations. These are poems I would like to send into space for other beings to decode because they reveal with a gentle touch and considerable intelligence a lot about who we are and where we are going.”—Leslie Ullman, author of Natural Histories, Dreams by No One’s Daughter, and Slow Work Through Sand
“Feela is a master of the transcendent quotidian. He shapes life’s little moments into brilliant epiphanies of light and grace and unfailing good humor. His flourish of language prizes the accessible, the simple, while always injecting a wry twist of compassion, not cynicism. Use these poems like get-out-of-jail-free cards. No-sit meditations. They will take you past gaming, past lies, into the deep heart of the mystery.”—Art Goodtimes, author of As If the World Really Mattered
