Bridget Meeds on Jay Leeming's Poetry

From the Ithaca Times (May 10, 2006):

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When reading Jay Leeming's first collection of poems, Dynamite on a China Plate, it's hard not to think of fathers. Along with his literal father Joseph (who is honored in the acknowledgments), Leeming's literary fathers - Robert Bly and David Lehman - hover above this collection. A first book is often the melding of influences into something new. That something new made by Jay Leeming is a full-bodied, intelligent and thoroughly satisfying group of poems.

      Like Robert Bly, Leeming takes a craftsman's approach to constructing a well-made poem. We also see his influence in Leeming's deep connection to the "rightness" of image. And there's rarely a spare word in any of these poems. Consider, for instance, "Apple," quoted in full:
      
      "Sometimes when eating an apple
      I bite too far
      and open the little room
      the lovers have prepared,
      and the seeds fall out
      onto the kitchen floor
      and I see
      that they are tear-shaped."

      From the simple and homely image of an apple, we move quickly into the world of sex and knowledge.

      Leeming has a rare talent for image, metaphor and simile. Turns of phrase such as "the cry of the crow is a jack-knife opening" or "in the cricket-heavy darkness" show his deft hand. The early poems in the book, which tend to be a simple and attractive as wood polished to a sheen by use, appear to have been his school in which he refined his careful description.
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