Saint World by Joe Weil
Reviewed by Linda Lerner

Saint World by Joe Weil, Iniquity Press, Vendetta Books, PO Box 253, Seaside Heights, NJ, 08751, 2023, $12.00, 100 pgs.

 On reading Joe Weil’s  poems in Saint World I was reminded of a line from Chekhov’s The Seagull in which someone says, “I am in mourning for my life.”Remove “my” in one version, and together you have a book that is essentially one long elegy.“ While many poems mourn the passing of friends, family, even the city he was born in, It is life itself Weil is mourning, life he loves more than anything, life he feels passing even as he embraces it: “Everyone dies all of a sudden.” (“In Memory of Dietrich and His Trees” (52).

Weil is uneasy about being called a poet; in “A Blessing,” he says, “This poem / is not trying to be a poem;” (p.13) He only wants to express how he feels, not write what passes as good poetry Variations of this occur in several poems. In the collection’s final poem, the title, “There’s So Much I Love In Life,” (99), is followed by, you can’t  begin /a poem that way, but he does to  “break(ing) the 4th wall,” “cut through all this traffic.” (“Because I am Lost,” (70).

Weil can write, a so-called good poem, as seen with images like “The thunder comes as if / the sky engineer hit the wrong key” (“Thunder on a Sunny day”(42) or  “Ghost Poem That Falls into It’s Own Smile” (32), and “Orange Is the Happiest Color” (71), but that isn’t what he’s aiming for.

Weil worked in a factory for years, a place where he always felt like an outsider, as he does now teaching in a university. When a student called him, “her favorite professor,” he says he doesn’t even know what that. is,69)  as he doesn’t know what a poem is. He’s not even sure who/what he is (“Just Be Yourself” (20).

But any reader who picks up this this beautifully produced book, reads these poems, will, and respond to his honesty and, yes, skill as poet. Angela Mark’s black and white intriguing  illustrations serve to enhance the poems in Saint World just as Dave Roskos’s  excellent foreword further elucidates our understanding by drawing specific connections  between Weil’s background and his poems.

Joe Weil has written some of the most moving, and honest poems I’ve read in a long time.
Get this collection; it will stay with you long after you have read the final poem and put Saint World down.