The Contracted World includes representative poems from four of Peter Meinke's previous collections. In poems that show us what it is like to grow up in America, love, nature, cities, sports, war, and peace are filtered through the imagination and verbal skills of one of our brightest poets.The new poems experiment with form, and address a life that is shrinking in specific ways: the poet is aging, the world is getting smaller, our post-9/11 freedoms are eroding, and our choices seem fewer and less attractive. Despite feelings of anger and loneliness, the narrator speaks to us in a personal, accessible, and often humorous voice.

Peter Meinke holds the Darden Chair in Creative Writing at Old Dominion University. He has been a professor of literature and creative writing at Eckerd College and has served as writer-in-residence at numerous colleges, including University of North Carolina at Greensboro and the University of Hawaii. Meinke has published seven prior books of poetry, including Scars, Zinc Fingers, and Liquid Paper. He is also the author of six poetry chapbooks and the recipient of numerous awards, including the Olivet Prize, the Paumanok Award, three Poetry Society of America Awards, the Flannery O'Connor Award, and two NEA Fellowships.