There’s no such thing as one poem by Jack Myers. Every poem in Blindsided reads like three or four poems in a multi-layering. Jack Myers is true to the simultaneous hoo-ha cockamamie carnival of voices in the human heart, where Martin Buber and Monty Python are always vying for air-time.
This is a very fine collection, and it makes our vernacular snap! — Albert Goldbarth
Stylish in their pretense of being without style, wise in their pretense of just fooling around, Myer’s poems take us to a place beyond their irony and salutary laughter where we can once again trust in sanity, tenderness, tolerance, freedom, art, and love. — Seamus Heaney (on As Long As You’re Happy)
Myers’s main strength is providing order and clarity for powerful emotions through a deceptively plain-speaking style…These well-crafted poems arrive through varied and circuitous routes at moments of true feeling. — The New York Times Book Review (on As Long As You’re Happy)
Jack Myers is tough-minded and loving, no matter how hard his poems ring they are never cold to the touch. And they do touch the way that poetic revelations can when it comes during the act of writing. He is a humane lightning. — Richard Hugo (on The Family War)